This is a story about determination to succeed...

When I finish this blog post, I will have written 50,000 words in two months. My aim is to write 300,000 words this year. I'm on target, but just hitting 100,000 words will be hard... that's the length of a novel.

So, I'm re-centring myself for the next push ahead. I know that I have rambled and lost my way, and confused myself about why I even started writing this. However, I have continued putting one foot in front of the other, in the hope that I will reach some unseen summit at some point in future.

Why do people climb mountains? "Because they're there" is the usual response you will get from a mountaineer. For me, I like the view and I like knowing that at the very moment I reach the top of the peak, I'm amongst a group of people who are similarly blessed or cursed with the desire to put themselves through great hardship and work very hard to achieve some abstract goal. Very few people in the world will be enjoying such great views at that moment in time, as a reward for their efforts.

Sometimes work is its own reward, and I certainly feel a bit of premature pride, knowing that I have produced half a novel already. Ok, so it wouldn't be a very good novel, but if I can write 3, then with some aggressive editing, there might be something readable there.

Even if I throw away everything I've written and start again, after a year, at least I will know that I have the stamina and discipline to sit and write every day. I will have some ideas about what kinds of things I'd like to write about, some themes. I can then structure and guide my writing, to produce something that is more coherent.

Ok, so writing about oneself is conceited, and nobody cares who I am because I'm not some Z-list celebrity who's famous for being an idiot on a reality TV show or whatever it is. I don't actually care who reads this now. In a lot of ways this is an insurance policy.

I wrote before about how I had written my own obituary. When I read it back, it was barely a few bullet points. I often think of that Nina Simone song that goes:

Well I'm just a soul whose intentions are good; Oh Lord, please don't let me be misunderstood

I'm actually crying as I write those words, because it feels as if I have now re-centred on why I am writing all this stuff. I'm not afraid of death, but I'm very upset about the idea of being buried as some kind of black sheep. A convenient dumping ground for other people's guilty conscience.

I've been fighting to be heard and understood my whole life and unfortunately, when you are sick and tired and exhausted, the bullies and the abusers find it very easy to drown you out. Yes, the weaker you get, the easier you are to quietly brush under the carpet.

The problem with character assassination, is that if the person still lives and breathes, they can still call you out on your preferred version of history. They can still raise their voice and say "Hey! I'm not dead yet! You didn't finish me off, despite your best efforts to bury me!". That's inconvenient, embarrassing.

I want to do something called hedging. I'm not sure if I'm going to live or die young, so I want to have some kind of life insurance policy that is more than monetary. I want to make sure that I leave some kind of useful legacy beyond cold hard cash.

So, I want to speak out on the topic of bullying, and the abuse of men. I want to speak out on the topic of depression and suicide. I want to end the stigma of being a little boy who cries at sad films. I want to end the acceptance of bullying as a "fact of life" and instead get the world to recognise it as abuse, plain and simple. I want to raise awareness of depression as a sane response to an insane world, and deal with the root causes of it: loneliness, isolation, stress, pressure, abuse, bullying, war and every other kind of human suffering.

Does this all sound ridiculous? Yes, it's rather silly, eh? Of course I'm not going to make a blind bit of difference to the world. It's set in its ways and there are problems everywhere we look. One wide-eyed, naïve, over-optimistic, non-celebrity, non-rich, non-famous 36 year old man who came from nowhere and is going nowhere... what could he do?... nothing!

I don't actually give a damn. I know how to do a few things reasonably well, so I'm just going to do them to the very best of my ability. I'm going to use all my wits and cunning and hustling abilities, combined with my lack of fear, and my strong feelings of empathy towards humanity, and just put myself out into the world and push hard.

I'm going to do what I do when I climb any mountain. I'm just going to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and not think about the summit. I'm just going to keep grinding and grinding the trail. I'm just going to keep gaining altitude little by little, knowing that if I keep going up and up, I will eventually reach the summit.

I've always been a natural climber. I can't help climbing. I just want to get high, naturally or unnaturally. Actually, just being alive is unnatural. Well, highly improbable anyway.

The universe doesn't like tall buildings, peaks. It doesn't like things to fight the forces of nature. The highest mountains in the world - The Himalayas - are also some of the youngest. The Universe has a property called entropy which can describe the tendency of things that are structured and ordered to decay and be ruined.

Entropy is busily trying to tear down Mount Everest. Meanwhile, mountaineers are taking on the entire Universe and sticking two fingers up at it, by climbing 8,848m, while it still remains so high... in millions of years time it will be nothing more than a pile of broken limestone fragments.

If you think I overestimate my position in the Universe, you're wrong. I've considered everything in context, from our best estimates of when "time" began, to just how "large" the known universe is (those things are in quotes, because space and time are actually much more complicated than we experience in our day to day life on Earth).

I'm well versed enough in General and Special Relativity to know that most questions about our place in the Universe are more unfathomable than any mind could possibly comprehend. Time and space are such elastic and supermassive things, that it's just laughable to even talk about one tiny speck of an organism being less or more important than another one.

If anybody says that I should shut up because I'm not very important or interesting, they should perhaps consider that in the context of the estimated 13.82 billion years that the Universe has had a concept of time. Assuming that person has an above average lifespan of 100 years, that'd be 100 years in 13,820,000,000, which makes their lifespan equal to 0.0000007% of that time... they're hardly important enough to make such a pronouncement, surely?

Yes, you really are a drop in the ocean:

The oceans of the world are estimated to weigh 1,300,000,000,000,000,000,000kg. You perhaps weigh 100kg... that means you are not even as much of a "big deal" as a raindrop in a swimming pool.

So, when you start talking about which human life is more or less valuable than another, you should get a grip of yourself. You need to have a reality check. Not reality TV. You need to get your textbooks out and actually look at your significance in the Universe. Then you might start realising just how arrogant and stupid you are, if you think you are a superior being.

Things start with good science, and from base principles, not with egos and guesswork. Certainly not with a cult of celebrity and hero-worship. Remember that Einstein was a patent clerk who was not very good at maths. All men are created equal.

Think big.

Halfway up Mont Blanc on my 18th birthday, enjoying a snack above the clouds (August 1998)

Tags: #climbing #suicide #bullying #depression #physics

This is a story about reaching the limits...

We are about to enter a consumer debt crisis. Credit Crunch 2.0. How do I know this? Well, I don't see any joined-up-thinking in retail banking, but I do see all the signs of a bubble about to burst.

In Germany, there is a central system that tracks what money is owed between every company. When you raise an invoice, you enter it in the system, and that way, you can see who owes who, and how much. You can do something called netting where all the balances are totalled up and you can then see exactly who's in debt and who's in credit.

The Germans have got that spot on. We need to know where the bad debt is, so we can contain toxic companies that are trading recklessly.

We don't have anything similar for consumer debt.

The credit-scoring system is only useful when people are applying for more debt. When they get into a debt crisis, they only show up when they start defaulting on their loan repayments, get to the limit of their overdraft, can't make their credit card minimum payments, default on their mortgage etc. etc.

I worked in Debt Management in 2012 and I listened to many phonecalls with ordinary individuals who didn't do anything reckless, but got caught in a debt trap. They were encouraged by consumer lenders to take out more loans to cover the last loans, and then payday loans to cover the interest, and before you knew it BOOM they were as good as bankrupt.

Personally, I hadn't been in debt since the age of 19 or so. This is unusual. I paid the deposit on my house. I paid for my wedding. I paid for my cars. I paid for our holidays... all with cash I had personally saved. The only way that was possible for me to do this was with way above-average earnings. This would have been impossible for anybody who was earning average wages.

I didn't really know what it was like for an ordinary person, living on an ordinary wage, in an ordinary way.

There was a huge amount of interest in my Debt Management startup, when I tried to found it in 2013. People still email me about it today. People still remember. I only worked on it for a short amount of time before I was consumed by my own ordinary life event - a divorce - which tore my stable world apart.

I wanted to let out our house, so that we had steady rental income, and I was able to defer the stress of financially settling the divorce until I had re-established myself back in London. I begged my wife to allow me to secure my life before she rained fire and brimstone on my head. She undermined everything I tried to do to protect myself.

By the time 2014 started, I had managed to keep my finances ticking over with Bitcoin trading, but she had wrecked me. When the house sale money eventually came in, I was in no fit state to work. She had destroyed me. I could have sold the house in 6 weeks. She managed to drag it out to 6 months. It was fine for her, she was staying in Bournemouth and she had a job. I had to rebuild my entire life.

I had a huge cash pile, but I had been stress tested to the limit and beyond. I couldn't work. I had to go to hospital. I was a wreck.

So, I ended up spiralling downwards. I didn't borrow money, but you sure rip through it if you're unwell, living in London and trying to support yourself getting better. Especially if you can't afford to sit and wait for state support. It was a Catch 22. London is where friends and my work network are, but it's certainly not easy to get any help from over-stretched boroughs. I had to turn to the private sector. That cost me a lot of cash.

So, I don't really qualify for state support... that's right. Why should I take something which I could afford to pay for privately? Only I couldn't really afford it... I got well, but then I had no personal safety net any more.

I spent all my money keeping myself alive. I had yet to thrive. 

Other people are very good at spending my money. My ex totally forgot that I paid for everything. She felt entitled. My ex flatmate, John, went overbudget on a flat that he didn't pay a penny towards, and even took some of my furniture with him when he left. He felt entitled.

Why do people feel entitled to come and pick my pocket? I've got nothing left.

The banks have done very well out of me and I've defended them. I've not claimed my PPI that I'm entitled to. I've not frozen the interest on my loans and had unfair credit charges refunded to me. I could - in fact - just throw down my tools, and say sod this for a game of soldiers. I'm trying to prevent a domino-effect of systemic failure in the banking system, which would see bank runs and total carnage as the whole system deleverages in an extremely inelegant way.

I'm trying to help my masters avoid such a crisis, but I feel like ground zero at the moment.

I need to go to work tomorrow, but I can't. I'm not well. I have been stress tested to the limit, and it's broken me.

Poor Frankie lost his home, which was his castle. Look how relaxed and happy he was there in his lovely big bed (June 2008)

Tags: #divorce #mentalhealth #frankie #banking #career

This is a story about doing the right thing for the wrong reasons...

I had 3 options: hospital, suicide, support network. Thankfully, I still have the latter.

I really didn't fancy another inpatient hospital admission. I probably would have had to accept stronger psychiatric medication, as it's pretty clear that my life hangs by a thread. One rash, hot-headed decision and it could be snuffed out in the blink of an eye. Think that sounds melodramatic? Screw you.

If you think that people say that they're depressed and suicidal because they're attention seeking, you're wrong. If you want to understand suicide a little more, you should watch The Bridge, by Eric Steel. It will cost you £2.49 and 90 minutes of your life.

I watched The Bridge as an inpatient. My suicidal plans to take Potassium Cyanide, changed. I decided that jumping off the Golden Gate bridge would have much deeper personal meaning, seeing as I had to cancel a San Francisco trip because of my horrible divorce. If you're going to die, do it quick & clean, or do it in some meaningful way, right?

Does it seem irresponsible? Well, actually I took out life insurance that covers suicide, that will leave a small legacy for my sister and my niece. I'm sure they'd rather have their brother/uncle, but suicide isn't really a choice but instead it's a reaction to unmanageable factors out of the control of that suffering individual.

So, instead of going back to hospital and being put in a chemical straightjacket, I made a video explaining what I was going to do and why. Then I booked a flight to San Francisco, packed a bag and headed to the airport. I was a man on a mission, but also a man on fire.

My friends have been scattered fairly far & wide. My friend John came back from Australia relatively recently, but we have been out of contact for years & years, and I struggled to support him - paying his rent and wages - when my need was very much vice-versa. We fell out when I grew impatient with his adoration of TV rather than job-hunting.

My friend Dave lives near Bristol. I would love to spend more time with him, but it's away from my work in London. That was one of the problems that was a coffin nail in our startup: Hubflow. I'm super grateful that Dave is such a great guy that he forgave me for becoming a complete sociopathic a**ehole as the pressure and stress of it all became too much, when I was CEO, and that we still seem to have a good friendship.

My friend Tim lives in Bournemouth. I really want to avoid that place. Bad memories linked to my divorce and startup failure. London is home. I like London.

My parents and a few old friends live in Oxford. I was dragged there against my will, and then my ex cheated on me, while I was temporarily evicted from my home. Bad memories. It's not my life... I live in London, not Oxford.

My sister and my friend MG live in Nottingham. I'd like to give it a go, but I haven't let London run its course yet. I will probably try and have a little pied-à-terre up there soon, so I have a base nearby my sister at a way lower cost than London. It's good to have an escape plan in case sh1t goes bad. Don't have one at the moment... hence suicidal thoughts.

I really want to get up to the North-East of England to see my friends Andy and Jim. It's a strange land for me though... I've been to the USA more times than I have been in the North of England, in my adult life.

So, when I booked my flights to California, USA, I knew that I was at least going somewhere with relative familiarity, even if that familiarity comes only from the movies I have watched and technology companies (Apple, Google, Oracle, Facebook etc. etc.) that I worship.

Also, I knew that there might be a chance to see long-lost friends, Ben & Jakub, who are business founders in Silicon Valley. Now, I feel very very embarrassed about the way I have conducted myself while things have not been going very well. I feel most embarrassed of all in front of these role models of mine, who have handled the same pressure and stresses. They have done it without vindictively and publicly blaming their shortcomings on their ex and/or parents.

Embarrassment drove me into my shell, made me withdraw. I didn't want the London Kitesurfers and my Cambridge peers from the Springboard Program to see me - an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky, extroverted, capable and entertaining guy - so subdued by unhappiness in a destructive relationship. 

I stopped talking to my friends.

That was nearly fatal. Social media is the reason why I have maintained a toe-hold in life. Friends have reached out to me, when I'm clearly fumbling around without a bloody clue as to what the heck is happening to me, except that I'm loosing my grip on my will to live. That's made the difference. That's why I didn't chuck myself off the Golden Gate Bridge.

Thanks.

Jakub lent me the Apiry.io bike so I could cycle to Marin County, across the Golden Gate Bridge. Another thing ticked off the bucket list (Friday 30th October, 24 hours after making the video)

Tags: #suicide #depression #bipolar #startup #entrepreneur #parents #childhood #oxford #london #media #mentalhealth #friends

This is a story about the rise and rise of mental illness...

I used to be a Sea Scout. The motto of the Scouts is "Be Prepared".

When I suspected that I was becoming mentally unwell, I read every book, website, academic paper and journal that I could find that I felt related to my mental health and its potential treatment. I educated myself.

I'm an educated patient. Because I'm an educated patient, I avoided being medicated with a Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor (SSRI) which would have caused greater mood instability than I was already suffering with.

SSRIs are also linked to emotional blunting and the destruction of the sex lives and relationships of many couples. My relationship was already on the rocks, hence going to the doctor to see if there were some magic beans or a silver bullet, that could cure my ills.

Fundamentally, I believe that some mental health issues are risk not destiny. There don't seem to be any genes that are clearly faulty in individuals who suffer from Unipolar Depression and Bipolar Disorder. They are complex spectrum disorders. Some people are really dysfunctional when they are unwell, and others find ways of coping, sometimes to the point that people around them don't even know they are suffering.

However, out of desperation, I have tried the following medications, prescribed to me:

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Mirtazepine

This was well tolerated (no nasty side effects that made me want to stop taking it). It certainly seemed to reduce my stress levels and get some sleep. I think I might have rebounded though and started to go hypomanic fairly quickly.

Quetiapine

Unless you like weight gain, constipation, dry mouth and feeling like a drugged zombie for the few hours that you are awake, before your next dose knocks you out and you start the whole miserable 24 hour cycle all over again... I can't say this medication gives much quality of life beyond dribbling at daytime TV.

Aripiprazole

This is useful to see if your head is held straight. If your head is leaning to the left, then you will dribble out of the left side of your mouth. If your head is leaning to the right, then you will dribble out of the right side of your mouth. If you are holding your head perfectly straight, then you will dribble out of both sides of your mouth.

Lithium

This is hardcore. You need to have regular blood tests. It will shorten your life. Avoid if you can tolerate other meds or manage without.

Sodium Valproate & Depakote

Do you plan on working again? In an office? 9 to 5? Not really compatible with going back to work full time. If you're not completely manic (psychotic) then best avoided.

Lamotrogine

Just takes so damn long to get up to a therapeutic dose, you go through another hypomanic episode, decide that you're fine, and then stop taking your medication anyway. It's pretty subtle. Apparently it improves REM sleep. I dream a lot anyway. My sleep quality is more a function of good sleep hygiene.

Olanzapine

Fast acting. Good to calm you down if you're having an unmanageable moment. Makes you sleepy though... couldn't really work 9 to 5 on it.

Bupropion

Fast acting. Incredible antidepressant. It did give me a panic attack once though. Also stokes my hypomania pretty bad. Although it's a nicotinergic agonist, it actually shares many characteristics of stimulants like caffeine and amphetamine. Makes you pretty horny. Helps you quit smoking too (I don't smoke though).

Diazepam

Mother's little helpers (Valium). This powerful long-acting GABA agonist is an amazing anxiolytic. You could literally stand in the middle of a highway and not give a sh1t about the cars whizzing past you at 70mph. Super addictive. Horrible to taper off.

-----

Fundamentally, do any of these medications work? Well, I can vouch for Bupropion, Olanzapine, Mirtazepine and Diazepam for their short term efficacy. However, the body soon gets used to the effects and builds tolerance, which means you forever need to increase the dose to get the same therapeutic effect... welcome to homestasis, b1tches!

In my anecdotal experience, it's better to tough out the storm and not mess with the ridiculously complex organ that is a brain. When the psychopharmacologists imagined how Prozac (Fluoxetine) was having its antidepressant effect they expected to see higher serotonin levels in spinal fluids. They told the world that depressed people had "low serotonin". They just guessed and they guessed wrong.

Type I Bi-Polar Disorder was also known as Manic Depression. This is a serious illness that requires serious treatment. It's not my place to comment on whether medication plays a part in that. I'm no expert on Type I BPD.

Type II Bipolar means that you have hypomanic episodes, not fully blown mania. That means risk taking, spending money, hypersexuality, racing thoughts and pressured speech... amongst other symptoms, such as reduced need for sleep & food, and intolerance of slow-witted fools.

I'm Type II. I think it's a very important distinction. If I can control my mood disorder with good diet, good routine, good sleep and abstinence from alcohol & drugs (including prescribed drugs) then my brain has the best possible chance of finding homeostasis.

If I can remove unnecessary stress in my life, caused by complete ass-hats, and I'm empowered to just get the f**k on with my life, then my symptoms will abate. It's as simple as that.

This was the first time that Frankie had ever seen snow. His brain adapted to the change in environment (December 2010)

Tags: #bipolar #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #sex #drugs #frankie

This is a story about burnout...

Here I am, back in Cambridge, after 4 years of ups & downs. What happened?

Well, I got hit by a perfect storm. I could see the storm coming - I'm a sailor after all - but I couldn't sail fast enough to get out of the way. Part of the reason for the sudden breakdown was uncontrolled self-medication with the GABA agonist, ethanol, which had suppressed my natural anxiety response until things were literally unbearable. The other reason is a lack of support from my parents. In fact, they actually undermined me and lied about supporting me.

Life is stressful. My sister is a single mum on a low income, working 6 days a week, going through a horrible divorce. That's stressful. I was a startup founder, in conflict with my co-founder and my girlfriend, who were both pulling me in different directions and away from my investors in Cambridge and my customers and talent pool in London. That's stressful too.

Our parents are always looking for the easy way out. They are not good at taking any responsibility, but I don't blame them. Whatever it is that causes them to be so slippery at accepting that they have 2 children who need their support, I want to find out and help them. My sister is a supermum to her daugher, my niece.

Even though our parents don't realise or appreciate it, we have been working so damn hard all our careers to make sure we don't place any financial burden on them. My sister and I have suffered in our adult lives as a result.

Something had to give.

You should give your children enough to do something but not enough to do nothing. It's as simple as that. If you don't give enough to allow your kids to do something then you're not a good parent. Simples.

My sister gives my niece a brilliant life.

So, I want to help my parents with their alcoholism. I want to help them see that projecting their inadequacies onto their kids is over-pressuring them. I want them to see that their kids are nice people who care about family and want to look after their parents in the manner to which they have become accustomed, but we are living in an age when the government has bankrupted the country.

Life is hard as a young person.

Baby boomers had it unbelievably easy versus the prospects that a young person faces today. The chance of a young person being debt free, owning their car, buying a house... these are pie in the sky dreams that will never come to fruition unless your parents are able to comprehend that their dreams of being idle pensioners are of lower priority than miserable deprived grandchildren and stressed anxious children, who have become parents themselves.

We have known about contraception and family planning for long enough, that there is no excuse for not thinking about the wellbeing of any children you might spawn. Having a baby does not make you clever. It means that your body did something that it was evolved to do... just the same as a slug, a pig, a fish, a bird. Reproduction just means that you failed to use your higher brain function, and acted instead, no differently than a fly laying eggs in putrid meat. Well done.

There are a great number of barely educated and underprivileged kids who are bored on housing estates and have no hope of escaping these sink holes. They are incentivised to perpetuate generations of welfare dependent and economically inactive families. These people have been robbed of the things that would enable them to work their way out of poverty and deprivation.

My parents both went to University, so they have no excuse.

I delayed starting a family until I had done more research into the genetic factors in Type II Bipolar Disorder, and had verified whether I could consistently manage my own illness in a stressful environment. Only when I know that I'm not going to pass on bad genes and I'm not going to have another stress-related burnout, will I consider stopping using contraception.

Condoms are a good thing.

My parents enjoy looking after my cat, Frankie, until I'm ready to be a good human to him again (August 2012)

Tags: #university #career #divorce #parents #depression #suicide #alcohol #addiction #bipolar #youth #sex #politics

This is a story about the value of time...

I should have been at work today. Instead, I was trying to entertain and amuse my fellow patients in hospital. We put on our own rendition of There's a Hole in My Bucket. I must stress that this was a team effort. I co-wrote the script, helped make costumes and props and played the part of Liza. Everything is cool when you are part of a team. Everything is better when we stick together.

I might be a drama queen, but you don't have to attend the performance

We even tried to work in some plot lines for Black History Month but this was somewhat of an afterthought. We definitely challenged gender sterotypes though. Homophobes might also be somewhat disbelieving when I say that I'm mostly heterosexual, but I was able to have make-up applied to my face, wear an apron and play the part of a LAY-DEE, OOH!

Yes, this is a satirical critique of today's society (October 2015)

Tags: #NHS #mentalhealth #depression #suicide #LGBT #gender #leadership

This is a story about bridge burning...

How many of us are afraid to declare the causes we support, for fear of impacting our professional reputation. Does supporting mental health and homelessness charities make me look somehow less corporate, and consequently, make me less employable? Does the fact that I have even experienced these things first hand make me unemployable?

In fact, if my employment options became coincidentally curtailled at the same time as I have started blogging, despite a successful full-time career of some 18+ years, it would not take a brain of Britain to recognise that this must be because of institutional discrimination, which is probably illegal.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that I am any less able than any other candidate in the job market, and in fact, my history makes me more of a 'catch' to a potential employer: the man who has nothing has nothing to lose. Plus I have been 'stress tested' to the limit and beyond. I know exactly where those limits are, and I can empathise with my colleagues when they are under stress and pressure.

When 'sh1t goes bad' who do you really want in the bunker with you? People who have never been in that kind of situation before, and are therefore an unknown quantity, or people who know their personal breaking point.

I've been in some hair-raising situations, both through choice and by accident. Challenging yourself, and being challenged by things that are out of your control, teaches you how to handle stressful situations. A certain amount of training, discipline and drills will prepare your muscle memory to pull the "parachute rip-cord" to use a layman's term. But how do you deal with the long plane journey up to 13,000ft? How do you mentally prepare to throw yourself out of a perfectly servicable aeroplane?

Worse still, how do you prepare yourself for people yelling at you and telling you you're an idiot? People do this because they are scared and have lost faith in your leadership. People believe that pain and fear can be magically taken away by those in positions of authority.

Losing authority can be dangerous, especially if you are the leader in a dangerous place. Generally, most people don't know what to expect when they are entering an extreme environment: the mountains and the sea (the poles and the deserts too, but I don't know much about those places, yet).

Let me tell you about crampons. These are a spiked device that attach to your feet, so that you can move safely on ice. I always shake my head in disbelief at people who are blunting an expensive pair of crapons on rocks. If they do encounter any ice, they will certainly not be effective if they are not sharp.

Let me tell you about ropes. These long flexible cords are no use at arresting a fall unless they are attached to something solid. In order to attach a rope to a mountain, you will need a whole load of other heavy metal gear that will need to be secured to the rocks, and the rocks themselves will need to be large and heavy and generally immovable.

So, if you see climbing parties with crampons and ropes, moving on snow - in an area with no glaciers - then these things are only there as a confidence trick. The fact is, that there is very little stopping you from plunging to your death, even with ropes & crampons.

I personally, don't like to be weighed down with unnecessary gear. It's not about not being prepared. It's about recognising that I'd rather have saved the energy, so that I can use that surplus reserve of energy in order to scout ahead of my group for problems, or fetch assistance if necessary. The main thing though, is to stay within personal limits as a leader, so that when people are tired and cranky, and scared and their feet hurt and they are cold and hungry, you don't mind giving them your personal stash of candy bars, you don't mind them calling you names, you don't mind them questioning your leadership skills.

The main thing that qualifies a person as a leader is how they cope under crossfire.

The more I lead people in stressful situations, the more I learn about my personal weaknesses, the more I learn about my personal limits. Nobody should underestimate just how hard I had to be pushed before I cracked, but nobody should consider themselves such a 'rock' or a hard nut that will never crack under pressure.

My best friend and climbing partner sustained life-changing injuries in a 'freak' accident when the chockstone he was abseilling from shattered. I have only just started to deal with feelings surrounding this, so I'm not going to write any more about this today, but my thoughts always turn to him and how I have shyed away from post-accident involvement, as it was such a terrifying reminder of our mortality and fragility. I knew I couldn't do anything to turn back the hands of time. Accidents happen, and the first thing you learn in the mountains is that you can't control all the variables. It's still something that victims, survivors and those connected to them, have to come to terms with though.

Ropes have their place in sport rock climbing. Modern equipment is so good - the Petzl Grigri in this case - I don't even have to hold the rope to be honest, but old habits literally die hard (October 2012)

Addendum for climbing nerd trolls: no, I didn't leave the rope all over the place like that. I was asked to step in and belay only seconds (sic.) before the photo was taken. And, no, I'm not even standing on the rope even though it looks like I might be from the low-resolution image. Anybody who has climbed multi-pitch with me will tell you my ropework is above your nitpicking.

Tags: #climbing #leadership #homeless #career #london #banking #adventure #mentalhealth

This is a story of a red flag that gets raised before disaster strikes...

Why does a person sink? Why do they get swamped? Why do they collapse inwards, under the gravity of their own infinite stress, sadness, blackness? Why do they implode in a spectacular supernova? Can we ever understand and relate to depression so deep that it would drive a person to take their own life? Can we make a difference? Can we empathise, help and ever rehabilitate somebody who has the clinical diagnosis of depression, without pills and a padded cell?

From my personal point of view, I have always felt that making a mistake leaves a dark stain on me, a black mark. People seem to have a very long memory for the mistakes I have made, and enjoy bringing up things that embarrass and upset me. In my career, the people who I need to impress and to promote me are always very keen to know about my weaknesses and flaws, seemingly as an excuse that I should "know my place" and not challenge the status quo.

The world has organised itself into a Pyramid Scheme, where there are a handful of unbelievably filthy rich oligarchs, sheikhs, kings, queens and emperors and other scum, who sit in their palaces, while their people starve in squalor. The trickle-down effect is a lie, spun by the courtiers, the sycophants in the entourage of the super-rich.

This wealth-worship has created a totally fake society, where newspapers, TV and the media, exists only to tell the proletariat that they are 'special' and 'unique' while at the same time, getting them to buy mass produced products from factories in China.

The best example of which is Apple and Beats by Dr Dre. There is a standard line amongst the creative community, that only a MacBook will suffice, as a the workhorse for the output of recording artists, graphic designers, web developers and startup founders. This is backed with the celebrity endorsement of footballers, who are seen arriving at matches wearing their 'individual' choice of a pair of overpriced Beats headphones.

I have always said that it's the software packages that are important, not the Operating System (OS) or the hardware, provided that both of those things are adequately up to specification to run the software. It's true that Apple stuff "just works" but anybody who foolishly accepts a new software release too early also finds that Apple do a lot of their testing by relying totally on the loyalty of their Fanboys.

I have mixed feelings about the largest consumer electronics company in the world. I think they are more anticompetitive than Microsoft ever was in their heyday. When IBM's BIOS (Basic Input-Output System) was reverse engineered, which started the boom of IBM Personal Computer Compatible grey clones. This, along with Microsoft Disk Operating System (DOS) launched the home computer from the realm of labcoat wearing boffins, into the ubiquitous Internet-of-Things existance, where my car and my washing machine have an Application Programming Interface (API). This has been Bill Gates' vision for as long as I can remember.

I have always been fairly platform agnostic. I tend to go with whatever works, and ignore the marketing rhetoric and hyperbole.

That takes a lot of work and bravery, because at some point, people start to have vested interests. There are billions of dollars at stake in the tech industry. Apple majicked (sic.) a billion dollar App industry into existence more or less overnight. Who would have thought that paying 59 British pence for stupid little time-filling games (the developer used to keep 36 pence of that) would be so lucrative?

It also seems to take a lot of bravery to stick around and re-invest your cash in something worthy or pay the tax, because Apple seem to have precipitated a brain drain in the developed nations. I know far too many wealthy people who are hiding in tax havens, due to fear and greed. Why run away to South East Asia, taking your cash pile with you? What was wrong with paying tax or investing in somebody or something? What are you afraid of?

Perhaps I have little appreciation of risk? What's the worst that's going to happen to me though? The Conservative government will support me as a successful entrepreneur who invests in people, ideas, research & development. The Labour government will support me as a socialist who pays his taxes and does not try to evade them, recognising that the National Health Service, high quality schools and colleges, roads, libraries, street lighting, policing, fire service, trash collection, civic ameneties, community events, social services and the broad and rich spectrum of life in the United Kingdom is truly a model that every nation should aspire to emulate.

Feel the fear and do it anyway (Y2K)

Tags: #apple #computing #career #NHS #politics

This is a story of exploitation...

Bipolar II is risk, not destiny, but I have unwittingly utilised my diagnosed illness in order to achieve things which many can only dream of. There has been a price to pay, which might aptly be summed up as Nick in blue.

For the uninitiated, a chronic illness is something that you will suffer from your whole life, with little hope of a cure or doing anything beyond masking the symptoms. An acute illness is one that presents itself - an episode of an acute illness - but can go away, for days, weeks, months, years or even the rest of your life.

As the Bipolar propaganda proudly purports, many famous 'sufferers' are not really suffering at all in their hypomanic phases, if we consider the following: very few would give up those highs in favour of a normal range of moods, despite the savage depressive episodes which inevitably follow the hugely productive and energy-sapping explosion of activity, which tends to punctuate the cycle.

Why should anyone who is so applauded and revered by bosses, parents, society, for their 'achievements' - measured only on abstract scales such as school and University grades, income and other work-related nonsense such as promotions and job titles - think that they are unwell and seek treatment?

It's very hard to spot a person with Bipolar II in your organisation, your team. When they are hypomanic, they are also productive, but they are disruptive and argumentative. Essentially, they are totally unmanageable and unable to play nicely with plodders. Companies like plodders. Managers like plodders. They make up the numbers nicely and don't give you any surprises.

When your Bipolar II team member becomes depressed, their productivity drops to zero and so do their hours. They will arrive late at work, leave early and generally do very little. However, as a manager, you will be flooded with relief that your team member is now no longer being so disruptive and argumentative, and you will finally see that a hell of a lot of work has been achieved, and happily let the burnt-out wreck turn up and be miserable at their desk.

As a plodder however, you are only waiting for the sleeping beast to re-awaken. It keeps you awake at night. It stresses you out. You only know how to do the thing that you're totally mediocre at, and you absolutely hate change and are unable to deal with it, so the idea of getting away from the source of this stress is unthinkable. You stay and accept round after round of unintended abuse.

Organisations like productivity, and stressed plodders are even less productive than normal plodders, so when they speak up and say that they are tired (from all the lost sleep) and stressed and they can't plod as averagely as they had been plodding before, the management don't tend to be very sympathetic. Often times, it's the poor plodder who gets the shove rather than the primadonna Bipolar II golden boy or girl.

Now, if this sounds Sociopathic, Narcissistic and arrogant, you are mistaken. Our entire pyramid-scheme structure is rather adversarial, and when we set targets for our employees in these fake hierarchies, we do so in the full knowledge that there are more people competing for the next rung on the ladder than there are fake job titles at the next tranche in the pyramid. We are deliberately asking people to squabble with each other over those precious promotions.

The Narcissist believes he or she is special, and deserves special treatment, deserves the status that they have (or better normally!). I personally, always wonder why people are listening to me, why I am the one who seems to be making the decisions or getting the promotion, because I don't do the work that's asked of me, play politics or jump through the hoops and clap like a trained sea lion in a circus, which is what we are told will get us to the top of the tottering tree.

Believe me, I try to fit in as best as I can. I have literally been crying every morning for weeks and months on end, when I am nearly dead with depression, but yet I have to try and comply with somebody else's idea of ideal office hours. Likewise, I try and do what is asked of me by my bosses, but unless you know how to do it at plod pace, you have normally finished your work by lunchtime on Tuesday, and your boss is rather annoyed that he or she now has to give you some more... so you have actually failed to please your boss.

So, there are a few things I have found, which help to give me a little more stability: to cap and floor the moods, so to speak, and not have absolutely bat sh1t crazy hypomania, and dangerously low depression:

• Breakfast : this is absolutely crucial. The stomach is a key part of our circadian rhythm. Digesting that first meal tells your body clock that "this is the time to get up tomorrow". I never used to be a morning person until I started eating breakfast, and now I spring out of bed with no "snooze" button presses at 7am.
• Lunch : I think you can probably see where this is going. Yes, lunch is important, because it breaks the tendency to just work without a break. When a person gets going in a hypomanic phase, they can work for days almost without sleep or breaks
• Dinner : saying to yourself that you need to stop work so that you can eat and digest before winding down for the day is crucial. Eating before 9pm is mandatory, and eating before 8pm is preferred. Otherwise, you find yourself gorging on whatever you can find, just before collapsing after 18 straight hours with no food at all since waking up.
• Wind-down : almost impossible if you don't start early enough, but essential preparation for the next part of being an animal.
• Sleep : not something you always feel like doing. Your intuition can be totally wrong when you are hypomanic, and usually you are way more tired than you realise, even though you don't feel like sleeping and you most definitely can keep on working. You would not even believe how many nights of sleep I have skipped in a row. Sleep is essential for energy, mood and the immune system. You get really sick if you don't have 6 or 7 hours a night, at least. More than 9 is too many... you'll get lethargic, or perhaps you are exhausted and depressed and you don't even realise!

In addition to this, there are some other rules:

• No caffeine : because it's a Dopaminergic and Noradrenalinergic stimulant in the same class of chemicals as amphetamine. It's a potent wakefulness agent in the brain, and will mess you up. "Do stupid sh1t faster and with more energy" is accurate.
  
• No alcohol : because it's a GABA agonist, like Diazepam (Valium) and you will develop a physical dependency on it, requiring it to be able to sleep, especially if you have been drinking coffee. It's the same as mixing uppers & downers as any other kind of drug addict. Did you know you're a junkie? Think about that next time you're looking down your nose at somebody. Alcohol is also hydrophilic, which means that it draws water out of the cells in your body... you are actually less full of life-giving water, when you are full of booze.
• No psychoactive medicines or drugs : the brain and body are homeostatic. That means, they are designed to stay in equilibrium. You don't need to add anything apart from glucose, water and a few vitamin, mineral and amino acid trace amounts, which you can get from proteins. Fatty proteins should give you everything you need (yes, animal fat is good for you in its natural form).

And finally:

• Exercise the brain and the body equally : when the brain is tired and the body isn't, it doesn't have a frigging clue why you are not absolutely whacked out and ready for bed. In our modern sedentary society, where we do little more than scroll through emails and web pages, our brain is a lot more tired than our muscles. This is not natural, and leads to 'brain exhaustion' despite the rest of you being physically dormant.

Of course, this recipe for mood stability is what I aspire to perfect, but it takes practice. I'm still working on keeping the routine, and resisting the temptations of a cold beer or a glass of wine. Giving up tea and coffee was one of the hardest things I have ever done, and I still have my 'methadone' in the form of mint leaves in hot water.

By the way, anyone who tells you sugar is a drug is an idiot. What's next, Oxygen is a drug?

Sex can be addictive, but it's not unhealthy. However, an unsatiated libido is most definitely unhealthy and unnatural (March 2015)

Tags: #career #mentalhealth #bipolar #sex

This is a story of "greedy, lazy, incompetant people who got found out"...

Justice is a funny thing. So is Karma. Things will always catch up with you. "My name is Earl. I'm just trying to be a better person".

I might not particularly agree with the Patriot Act, but I agree with the punchy tagline that was used to sell a lie to the American people, who were still scared and reeling from the biggest terrorist attack on home soil: nothing to hide; nothing to fear

However, I have a job which I need to pay my rent, but someone who isn't me (Earl) was working with a colleague who had his/her contract terminated today. Here are some more words I heard from Earl:

"I had asked to be moved from one scrum team to another due to a difference in style and approach from the way I like to do things, which has always been quite successful for me. However, it's not in my remit to tell other people how to do their job, so I asked if I could work with the a person who seemed to be doing things more in line with my expectations.

There then followed a blissful two days of productivity. The business seemed happy. The product owner/CIO seemed happy. Us developers were overjoyed and we were high-fiving and walking around the office with big grins.

We decided to go out for lunch as a well bonded happy team, at the suggestion of our scrum master. But he/she never showed up. As we sat there at lunch, we all agreed what a great guy/girl he/she was, and that we wanted to support him/her from the inevevitable management pressure that was going to fall on his/her shoulders.

We were surprised that our colleague didn't join us for lunch, especially as it was his/her idea. We had left a note and tried phoning him/her.

Over lunch we discussed how 'damagement' (management) were not really interested in knowing the truth, and in fact didn't want to know it, as it would undermine plausible deniability.

I observed that a couple of people had been asked if they would like to consider other opportunities in light of the increasing and relentless pressure. I wondered whether I might have been guilty myself of precipitating one of the scrum masters' untimely departure. It was almost an open secret that I thought he/she was a micro-managing waste of space.

I had actually been one of the people who was asked to consider other opportunities. I nearly laughed in the face of the person asking me. The irony of it was beyond belief, given this person's dependence on me during the previous weeks. I stood my ground and asked him/her to resign instead.

This kind of brinksmanship must be going on all the time between these equally incompetant fools. Knowing that I was competant, it was not brinksmanship for me. Instead I felt confident that the project and the client needed me more than I needed the contract.

You can't bluff a poker player who is holding the nuts - the very best possible hand available from the cards that have been dealt. It's a simple matter of memorising the odds for all the possible hands, and then your play becomes automatic: you know almost immediately when you should fold.

When we got back from lunch, I went for a pooh. I sat on the toilet, looking at Facebook and taking my time. I was relaxed and enjoying my job again, for the first time in ages, after having been empowered to do my job and make things better.

I came back to my desk, and my team told me he/she was gone. Immediate effect. They had got rid of him/her while we were all at lunch, with that empty chair at the dining table.

We speculated during the afternoon that the reason for termination was a lack of fear. Our departed colleague was rumoured to have no mortgage. He/she was too honest. Too fearless. He/she wanted to do the right thing.

I liked him/her, even though many people didn't, seemingly for intangible reasons, unrelated to whether they could do their job well or not. His/her face didn't fit it seems."

Anyway, I'm not really able or willing to comment, given my position on a sensitive, high-profile project that I can't talk about, and would never talk about, given my professional duty to my client. I will say this though, of the attitude of me and my colleagues. We care very deeply about the needs of our client and customers, and we always put those needs first, often ahead of our families, our health. We are passionate and dedicated, and excel at our jobs, under the most intense pressure and stress.

We are all trying to be the very best we can possibly be. We need to be. The bank is "rotten as shit" as the Department of Justice will attest. $1.9bn fines don't get dished out every day. We are turning it around though. I really like the CIO. I really like my team. I really like my job. I really like trying to save hundreds of thousands of jobs. We don't get to do that in IT very often.

[Picture has been removed by IT Security]

Me in the office, wearing a rugby shirt, looking like I'm having a 'good time' despite having worked far too many 7-day weeks (September 2015)

Tags: #banking #career #london #leadership #agile #scrum #capitalism