This is a story about simplicity...

A compressed spring is heavier than an uncompressed spring. When you lay down on your mattress, the springs of the mattress are actually getting heavier. When you get in your car, the springs of the suspension are getting heavier. When you wind up a clockwork watch, it weighs more. Wait, what?

Yes, it's as simple as I just said. When you squash a spring, the spring gets heavier. Any questions?

Probably just one: whaaaaat?

Well, it's because of E = mc² you see.

Oh, boring. It's one of Nick's crazy rants about physics. Perhaps he's gone nuts again. Perhaps he's having another hypomanic episode. Well, in some ways you're right. But before anybody shouts "BANANA" at me [it's my 'safe' word] you should really read on a little further.

The reason why I race off on those hypomanic episodes is that most of the time, some evil passenger in my car keeps putting the handbrake on. People keep climbing on my back and making me carry them. People keep putting rocks in my pockets and getting me to drag their shit along for them. I'm basically frustrated as hell the whole time at the endless monotonous boredom and not being able to get on with my projects because of absolute bullshit. I just like to work on things and finish them, you see. If you tell me that you need something building, I'll get on and build it, and give you a completed project, instead of sitting around with my head up my butt. I don't really like sitting around with my head up my butt. I like getting on and building shit.

And so, I become a compressed spring. The more that I'm held back, the more that I become coiled and squashed and full of energy, ready to spring forwards when I'm released. The time windows are very short, but I build a lot of cool stuff very quickly. I built iPhone apps that reached #1 in the charts in a matter of weeks. I built a gigantic summerhouse in my garden in the space of a few days. I don't generally fuck about.

"But why do springs get heavier when they're compressed, Nick?" I hear you ask. It's really easy to explain.

Energy and mass are equivalent. Therefore, if you apply a weight to the top of a spring, and it squashes down, the energy that is stored up in that spring is stored as mass. More mass means the spring is more heavy. When you take the weight off the spring, allowing it to uncompress, the mass is converted back into energy, and the spring gets lighter again.

That's all that the equation E = mc² really says. It says energy equals mass [times the speed of light squared]. Energy-mass equivalence.

OK... the speed of light squared is a pretty big number, so the amount of mass is pretty tiny compared to the amount of energy. So tiny that there isn't a set of scales accurate enough in the whole world to measure just how much heavier our spring got, when we compressed it. The amount of mass that we created from energy, by compressing the spring, was teeny tiny.

Equally though, you don't need to turn much mass into energy to create lots of energy.

When people talk about splitting the atom and nuclear weapons, I'm not sure what your average person on the street imagines. Perhaps they think that atoms are actually being destroyed to create the explosion. When a chemical explosive is detonated, the chemicals are rapidly being turned into gas, which is many many times more voluminous than the size of the solid or liquid explosives. This is not what's happening during a nuclear reaction.

The nuclei of atoms are held together by the strong nuclear force. Think of it like a door latch. The door latch holds together particles with similar electrical charge. I'm sure you remember playing with magnets, and you know that like poles repel each other. So, when you put the red end of magnet towards the red end of another magnet, they don't want to touch each other. The strong nuclear force holds those two red ends together, stopping them from flying apart. This is much akin to our coiled spring.

When the nucleus of an atom is split by being bashed into by another particle, a bit like a wrecking ball smashing into a house, then the 'latch' of the strong nuclear force is broken, and the particles with the same charge repel each other. The different parts of the atom fly apart because of this repulsion. It's like those coiled springs are uncoiling.

This means that energy is being released. Lots more energy than it took to unlatch the strong nuclear force that held the nucleus together. It's a bit like a room full of mouse traps, all sprung-loaded and waiting to go off. It only takes one light little touch to cause one mouse trap to go off, and before you know it, they're all setting each other off in a great big chain reaction.

And that's how a self-sustaining nuclear reaction works. A small amount of input energy is required to start the chain reaction, but once it's started, there's plenty of energetic particles flying around to smash into other nuclei and cause them to break apart. Less energy input was required than the amount of total energy output, and only a very small amount of the mass is actually being released, by the strong nuclear force being overcome, allowing the subatomic parts of the nucleus to fly apart.

The same cascade reaction is used in a nuclear power plant as was used in the atomic bombs that blew up Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It's called nuclear fission.

So, how does this relate to anything? Well, whether it's reading a stack of books about nuclear physics (this, by the way, was only the most basic introduction I'm afraid) or writing hundreds of thousands of words, I'm kinda a bit like that coiled spring, ready to unleash my energy on whatever I can when I'm given my chance, and I'm unlatched.

I just need a small opening, a small opportunity, and I'll run headlong at it. I'm so desperately bored by having to go at snails pace because of the limitations of the world around me. I live with constant frustration that I can't go at a natural pace, and so I go twice as quick as I should do when I'm finally given the opportunity to get on with something.

Had I ever gotten the chance to study theoretical physics at university, I would have read half as much in twice the time. Had I ever gotten to write at my own pace, with enough money behind me to keep a roof over my head, I would have taken twice as long and written half as much.

I'm now wrestling with the problem that I'm pretty much working two jobs, and in one of them I'm trying too hard at to compensate for the lack of fulfilment in the other. My day job doesn't challenge me. My day job gives me zero job satisfaction. And so when I get home in the evenings, I write and I write and I write. I've even taken to rattling off a couple of short stories every day while I'm at work. The one I wrote this morning was 6,000 words. That's right. I just rattled off 6,000 words because I'm so damn frustrated and bored, but I'm still working a full time job as well as producing some 14,000 words a day. It's too damn much and I'm going to burn out, but my day job is utter bullshit. My life is utter bullshit.

It's such a fucking rush, a hurry. It's such a fucking struggle. Trying to put up with enough boring bullshit that I've got a lump of money behind me to allow me to take a break and work on something I love and I'm passionate about. Either that, or I just take the tiny windows of opportunity where I find them, and work as hard as I can and as fast as I can, before the bullshit catches up with me again.

I honestly thought to myself that prison wouldn't be so bad. So much time to read and write, and ponder stuff. Really, I'm a fucking prisoner at the moment. I can't exactly get an interesting book out at my desk. Even when I'm writing, I'm doing it while looking over my shoulder. I've got to keep one eye on the boss, and be on my game in case I get asked to do something or somebody has a question for me. It's so fucking tense you know? It's compressing me. It's squashing me. It's making me dense and dark and heavy.

I fantasise about living in a tent, unencumbered by having to make rent payments and keep the electric and gas switched on. What would I really need, in this day and age? You can do so much on a smartphone.

I'm coming full circle. In a little over a month I will have been writing every day for a year. This whole thing started with me writing about some research I did on a public bench at a railway station. I think how different my life was then, and somehow I had much better quality of life, even though I was destitute.

Do I want this? This life? This life of commuting on the morning train, and office chit-chat and the daily grind, and of looking busy at my desk and saying clever shit to impress the boss, and hiding in the toilets browsing the Internet, and writing short stories in a really small font to disguise what I'm doing, just to pass the endless boring hours, and watching the clock, counting down, counting down, down, down. Down to what? My premature death from the stress and anxiety of it all?

Plenty of research has now proven that working a boring shitty office job is more unhealthy and lifespan shortening than smoking. Famously, people are suing their employers for the mind-numbingly dumb work they're asked to do. It's almost physically agonising. I'm being squashed. My very life force, my energy, my dignity, my passion, my personality... it's all being squeezed out of me like I'm a tube of cheap toothpaste.

I feel so sick and anxious. I don't know how to continue. I know that fiscally it makes perfect sense to continue. It's easy money, but it doesn't look that easy when it seems to be the root cause of my mood instability. People either ask me to work too hard for too long, so I burn out, or they bore the shit out of me, so I eventually explode with frustration. The pyramid scheme of corporate life is destroying lives. My life is being destroyed.

Oh God I want to throw up. This isn't just a job you fuckers. This is literally fucking me up. I can't do it much longer. I'm going to have a motherfucking breakdown. I can't cope and I'm waving the white flag in surrender but yet the gunfire does not seem to pause.

"Everybody needs to work"

"You have a great job"

"You're so well paid"

"People would love to have your opportunities"

"Count your blessings"

"Just another few decades and you'll be rich beyond your wildest dreams"

"Not long now"

"C'mon it can't be that hard"

"You should try my job"

"You've got things easy"

"I'd love it if I was bored all the time"

"You spoiled bratty bastard"

"You earn 6 or 7 times as much as I do"

"Why don't you follow your dreams"

"You've got nothing to complain about"

FUCK OFF, FUCK OFF, FUCK OFF

Argh! I can't deny my feelings any longer. I fucking well did what I have to, to get out from a fucked up situation, and I got somewhat out of the way of the oncoming collision, but it's been at great personal expense. I can't express how much it's killed me to put myself in a position where I might as well put my brain in a pickle jar and wheel my cryogenically frozen body into position at my desk.

Imagine if I picked fruit and vegetables for a living, and I slept in a barn on the farm where I worked. I could keep some of the fruit and vegetables that I picked, and eat them. My labour would provide my contribution for my space in the barn, as well as enough beans, rice, pulses and meat to keep my protein and carbohydrate intake at a healthy level. I would be able to see, quite literally, the fruits of my labour each day.

I live a life that could not be more opposite. I will never meet the people who use my software, and I don't even create the software anymore. I manage a bunch of people to create software for me. And I don't even see the people I manage face to face. They live thousands of miles away in some developing world country. I don't even know what management is. I pretty much just say "you're doing a great job. Keep going!" over and over again, to these poorly paid people who toil away, on the other side of the planet. Then some money is digitally credited to my bank balance, and I digitally credit it somewhere else to pay my rent. I never see actual physical money. I don't ever carry cash. Coins are just an antique novelty to me.

Modern life is making me unwell, I can sense it.

I have embraced technology and science, and I understand it better than 99% of people. In abstract terms, I'm doing really well, and it looks insane to be dissatisfied with my lot in life, but how do I really define my existence? Can I define myself as a father and enjoy family life, when I have no children? Can I define myself as a builder or a soldier, when what I do is so ethereal and intangible? Can I define myself as a farmer or a gardener, when what I do is so unnatural?

I'm a spring. That's what I am: a rusty spring.

I'm coiled up and compressed, ready to unspring, ready to bounce and boing.

It's fucking awful, let me tell you, being so unable to apply yourself to some useful mission, project or productive endeavour. It's fucking awful, feeling so trapped and imprisoned. That's why my thoughts turn dark and brooding so often. That's why suicide is so often on my mind.

Tags: #physics #writing #suicide #bipolar #career

This is a story about dream jobs...

Why aren't nurses who work in geriatric care the best paid people on the planet? When humans are old and shrivelled up, senile, incontinent and are simply an inconvenience, getting in the way of children receiving their inheritance, geriatric nurses are there mopping up the poop and vomit, and generally trying to ease the suffering and discomfort of the age-ravaged creatures who are long past their sell-by date. On the face of it, palliative care seems a thankless task, and the low pay would certainly back that up.

But what about nursery nurses and nannies? These people also mop up the shit and puke of those who can't look after themselves, but the tiny tots that they care for are all cute and brand new. People who work in childcare are similarly badly paid, but maybe that's because it's supposedly fun and rewarding, playing with children all day.

How can this be? How can it be the case that somebody who looks after those who are dying gets paid badly, but then so is a person who looks after those who have their whole lives ahead of them?

Perhaps it's the case that anybody who deals with human waste is badly paid. Certainly when we examine the remuneration of garbage collectors and cleaners, we find that these people who scrub human stains from the world, are very badly paid. The people who unblock sewers and those who work in sanitation are hardly big earners, and might in fact be in a similar pay bracket to the people who look after children and old people.

You would have thought that having to deal with dirt, grime, death and bodily fluids would carry a pay premium that would see the people I just mentioned, amongst the highest paid there are, but this is not the case at all.

Hang on though! What about musicians, poets and writers? Sure, there are a handful of successful individuals who are paid mind-bogglingly humongous sums for the art that they create, but the very vast majority of people who have chosen music and wordcraft as their profession, will find themselves very poor indeed. Think how many struggling writers there are. Think how many people there are who play in bands, but barely earn a single cent for their trouble. How many people reciting wonderful poetry are able to call it a well paid profession?

So if writers and musicians are badly paid too, but they don't have to deal with bodily fluids and rotting trash, then what exactly is the common link?

Do you think it's time spent studying? Do you think it's qualifications? Well, many musicians will have spent tens, if not hundreds of thousands of hours mastering their instruments. Music theory is not trivial. Music theory and harmonics are governed by discrete mathematical rules. Can you really say that a corporate lawyer or accountant is more qualified than somebody who has dedicated their life to music? Of course not.

So what is it? What is the rule that decides whether you will be well paid, or you will struggle to make ends meet?

Well, my theory is that the more alien and dehumanising your job is, the more you will be paid. Humans have caring and nurturing instincts built into them. We will naturally feel sympathy for those in discomfort and pain, and we will want to help if we can. Humans have a dislike for waste and mess, and we will want to keep things clean and ordered. We have evolved the instinct to not live in piles of our own filth. We have even evolved the social instinct to create art that binds us together. Whether it's trancelike-state inducing beats and chants, paintings on cave walls, or the telling of stories that are our very earliest form of preserving our history, myths and legends. It's human to want to perform, to sing, to entertain.

What innocent young child really can imagine that they would want to grow up and get a job massaging numbers in spreadsheets or editing the minutiæ of legal contracts? What the fuck does your bullshit job even entail? What the fuck is it going to say on your motherfucking gravestone? How the fuck would you even go about explaining what you do to your grandmother?

And so, we now have an army of the living dead who are, in the words of David Bolchover, switched off, zoned out. This is the shocking truth about office life. Nobody gives two fucks about their job or their employer. There is no job satisfaction. The jobs are alien, dehumanising.

What do these armies of disillusioned people do all day? Well, they read and they listen to music. Some of the most cultured art patrons that we are lucky enough to have in the world, are just bored people sat at their desks with glazed eyes, wondering what they're going to have for lunch.

But then what? What happens next?

Well, these people start dreaming about becoming musicians, writers, artists, poets and pursuing all manner of things that will connect them with the aesthetic and creative elements that their bullshit daily humdrum gives them precisely fuck all of.

What even is a journalist? Well, the clue's in the name: journalist. As in day. As in somebody who writes a journal every day. That's all it is. That's all it takes to be a writer. You don't have to be qualified to be a writer. Just write. Every day.

There's a myth that you can't do anything without studying, that has been perpetuated by the professions. It's true that you can't become a lawyer or an accountant without studying, but those are bullshit jobs with bullshit professional bodies whose job it is to limit how many people enter the profession every year, in order to maintain false scarcity and prop up their salaries.

It's utter bullshit. We don't need any lawyers & accountants. Without builders, there are no houses. Without farmers and fishermen, there is no food. Without weavers and seamstresses there are no clothes. Without lumberjacks and miners, there is no wood and coal to keep ourselves warm and to cook our meals. Everything else is just intellectual masturbation. Unnecessary bullshit made up jobs that add nothing of value.

So, as people are realising that the fact that they didn't go to an Oxbridge university to study English, or at least attend a creative writing course, but yet they can still write a blog and entertain their friends and family on Facebook and Twitter, the value of journalists has been completely eroded.

Yes, it's a shame that The Guardian and The Observer newspapers are going down the shitter, whether they add a paywall or not. Yes it's a shame that a lot of friends and people who I know, who are extremely talented and have dedicated their whole lives to the pursuit of journalism and writing careers, are finding that there's just no way that they're ever going to earn a decent salary doing what they love.

And that's just it. That's the kicker. That's the real kick in the teeth. As soon as you do something you love, you'll find there's no money in it. We all want to be footballers, singers, food critics, cinema critics, writers, journalists, poets and every other job where you fuck about doing nothing more than entertaining, informing, educating, inspiring.

We all love the thrill of the limelight. We all love dressing up. We all love exotic locations. We all love to seek new sensations. We all love to meet interesting people. We all love to talk and write about what we're passionate about. We all love to make art that expresses our deeply felt human emotions that can't be articulated using the blunt instruments of words.

If you do what you love and it's necessary, like nursing, then you'll be paid just enough to survive. If you do what you love and it's unnecessary, like art, then you'll not be paid anything at all. It's a race to the bottom. We can all stick a paintbrush on a piece of paper and produce something passably artistic.

The arts used to be the preserve of the aristocracy, but with the democratisation of the arts through the digital medium, my crude drawing of a penis can be reproduced infinitely many times across every computer screen on the planet. I can write a library full of books, and they're all immediately in print and available to be read by anybody, at any time, for free, because of the limitless power of the digital printing press that is the internet. Why the fuck would anybody pay anything for art anymore?

Of course, scarcity still has value, and a few super-high profile artists will continue to produce original artworks in the form of paint on canvas, art installations and live performances. These artists are the courtiers in the entourage of the plutocracy. You have about as much chance of becoming one of these people as you have of being struck by an asteroid, twice.

As the global recession deepens, the amount of people who are able to just about scrape a living as a freelance writer or a busker will drop away to nothing, and the arts will once again be the preserve of the sons & daughters of the very wealthiest, who have the monetary means to pursue things which society largely deems worthless.

The Huffington Post has shown the future for journalism, where an army of bloggers are leveraged to provide the same kind of re-hashed reporting of the stories that are churned out by a handful of news agencies who are still able to have people on the ground. Your dreams of being a war correspondent are over. Even your dreams of being a lifestyle blogger are looking pretty hopeless.

There is a vast oversupply of opinion and wordcraft and music and art and everything else that's fun to create. There is no longer any room to do something you love. As soon as you derive any kind of job satisfaction, that's going to be the last pay rise you ever get.

Don't you get it? It's a race to the bottom. See you there!

Tags: #writing #socialmedia #capitalism #career

This is a story about getting rich quick...

Don't get high on your own supply, they say. It's good advice, because weed seems to dull the wits of my friends, and to curb their enthusiasm for anything more than the getting of more weed, and the consumption of shit food and crap TV.

When I meet young people who feel like they're part of a counter-culture revolution, because they smoke a bit of marijuana, I think how easily they have been duped. How foolish you are, to think that you're fighting the establishment, through your choice of intoxicant.

Governments and the police are mightily pleased to have a stoned population, who are too doped up to be bothered to get off their arses and do anything about social issues, or involve themselves in politics. Chuckling at low-brow humour that is designed to appeal to the stoner brain, is never going to change the world.

The energy and passion of youth has been quashed by the dreaded weed. You're not cool or "fighting the power" by smoking dope. You're actually playing into the hands of the establishment. The cannabis leaf - that ubiquitous emblem - sells tons of merchandise. Camden Market is London's second most popular tourist attraction, and it's mostly because of drug culture.

But what hopes have young people got? They're never going to be able to afford a house, pay for a wedding and be able to support a family, without topping up their income somehow. For those kids with wealthy parents, they might be able to go with their begging bowl to Mum & Dad, but it's hardly the independent self-sufficient life that we should all be entitled to live, is it?

You bust your balls all through school, get some grades, and now what? You can get a massive student loan that will only cover your tuition fees, and you still have to figure out how to pay for accommodation, food & books for your 3 years of undergraduate studies.

Maybe you can save up money before you go to University, but under-18s will be paid £3.87 per hour. Do you think a 17 year old is less capable of stacking a supermarket's shelves than a 64 year old? Why on earth should a young person be paid just 54% of what an old person earns, for doing the same job?

While you're at University, you'll be paid slightly more for your bar work, waitressing or whatever part-time job you can get. You'll get a whopping £5.30. That's still 26% less than somebody with arthritic joints and early-onset dementia. Who would you want working behind a bar? The young attractive, energetic student, or the miserable old codger who shuffles around?

So, what do the most enterprising individuals do, to cope with the crippling debt burden that they face, with little hope of elevating themselves from a position of poverty? Well, some of them will sell their bodies, and sell drugs.

If you deny people a legal route to pay for a quality of life that they're entitled to, they will turn to a life of 'crime'.

The two bestselling commodities, in the history of humanity, are sex & drugs. Ugly people need to fuck, and people want to get high and forget about their shitty lives. The drive to get intoxicated is not even a uniquely human thing. There are plenty of examples from the animal kingdom of non-human species that get off their faces, using various substances.

You might think that demanding plenty of interest on your life savings and wanting a nice fat pension, is OK, because you're entitled to a cushy retirement. However, your young, beautiful and fresh faced daughter or grand-daughter might have few options to live independently, other than being a stripper, escort or 'flatmate with benefits'.

If you browse the London property adverts, you will see a shocking number of offers of free accommodation in return for sex. This is the society that has been created, by structuring everything around the pension funds, instead of investing in young people.

Can't get the job without the experience, can't get the experience without the job. That's the Catch 22 that entraps most young people into minimum wage jobs and living in shared rooms in atrocious quality housing in big cities. It's no fucking picnic being young at the moment, and weed is probably the only thing that allows people to forget the hopelessness of their situation.

A pint of beer in London is £5 or more. That means I can buy two pints for £10. For the same amount of money, I can buy a gram of super-strong skunk weed, and get dribblingly intoxicated for at least a day. Two pints would make me slightly tipsy, and because I'm well-off, I could then easily afford to have 3 or 4 more pints and get violent, abusive and urinate and vomit in the street. However, it's more economical - as a young person - to get stoned out of your mind and not do anything.

The girls who have sugar daddies, hustle for tips as waitresses and strippers or even sell their bodies - these aren't fallen angels, forced to prostitute themselves because they have a drug habit. Often times, the drug habit is a result of having to use what mother nature gave them, as a means to make money. These girls have a plan. They're smart. They've figured out that no amount of shelf stacking for a supermarket will allow them to ever escape poverty.

Our prettiest daughters and grand-daughters are living in luxury apartments in the city centre, taking taxis, eating in expensive restaurants and ordering cocktails at the bar... but how is that lifestyle funded? Every gorgeous pouting selfie you see on Facebook or Instagram... doesn't that say something about the sexualisation of an entire generation, through economic necessity, to you?

The boys will grow weed, or cut coke. The girls will strip or fuck. This is what we've wished for. The olds sit idle in their big empty houses, while their sons, daughters and grandchildren have no option but to pursue the most economically profitable path they can: drugs & prostitution.

I'm painting a bleak picture, but I don't think it's inaccurate.

"It's only a bit of harmless dope" right? Wrong. Can't you see that people's eyes are dulled. The fire has gone out of people's hearts when they're just sitting around stoned. Where is the energy and enthusiasm to change society for the better?

Tags: #drugs #addiction #society #politics #capitalism #sex #police

This is a story about the final countdown...

My target was 300,000 words in less than a year, and I'm almost there. There is certainly quantity, but the quality has been hit & miss.

Why would I continue to write, when the number of readers I have has dwindled? I descended into ranting insanity during a rocky start to 2016, and then the ever-unpopular topic of politics.

Well, at some point you're going to make a breakthrough, turn a corner.

Because Google has indexed all of my 292,000 words for search, people are finding this website from all over the world, and they're able to explore the inner-workings of my mind, on a range of different topics: mental illness, addiction, banking, IT, childhood, and of course the running theme of a person who writes candidly, without self-censorship.

I'm going to write more extensively on the topic of 'open sourcing' the contents of your mind. You might think that I'm narcissistic, self-obsessed, but in actual fact it takes time & effort to sit down every day, compose your thoughts, and attempt to convey your feelings, the inner-workings of your own brain.

Imagine if anybody ever wanted to create a 'bot' version of me. How would you 'download' my brain into a computer system, so that my mind could be simulated? There is no technology in existence today that can create a facsimile copy of my entire neural network, and no technology is likely to be possible in any immediate future, given the trillions upon trillions of nerve cell connections in your brain.

However, the more you write, the more data there is for a machine to analyse. The technology for parsing natural language is very advanced. Also, how would you want to interact with me? Today, most of my friends communicate with me via text chat. If I had already created a bot version of myself, would any of my friends even know?

My friends: how are you, Nick?

My bot: I want to die. Every day is pain and suffering.

You see... it wouldn't be that hard.

My friend Ben created a bot that can do certain tasks, like a Siri-style personal assistant, but wouldn't it be so much cooler if you could interact with a virtual version of me that encapsulated my personality, my values, my unique thought patterns and writing style?

Alan Turing famously came up with the Turing Test, where a computer attempts to convince a human that it is also human. As yet, no computer system has managed to pass the test.

Instead of thinking about complex algorithms that can analyse a question, and formulate an appropriate response, shouldn't we start by thinking about how we can capture a human mind, in digital form?

Sure, we could take all your emails and Facebook status updates, and attempt to reconstruct your personality from data like that, but aren't we constrained by social protocols and expectations? Besides, the computer system would be fooled by the fake image you wish to project.

So far as Facebook thinks right now, the human race is full of happy smiling people who love their kids, never have arguments, and whose lives revolve around a culture of trite soundbites, quotes. So far as Twitter thinks, the human race revolves around clipped, concise 140 character retweetbait. Are we really a race defined by short witticisms?

And so, this long-form verbose version of myself, where my heart and soul gets poured out onto these pages is hopefully highly representative of who I am, what makes me tick. I've tried to leave no stone unturned, no hidden characteristic and shameful secret undocumented.

I still have a time-based objective - to write for at least 1 year - to complete, but I really feel like that's not going to be hard. Writing has slipped seamlessly into my life, and I now depend on it to be able to manage my emotional state. Writing is like the best counsellor that money could buy, because the pages of this website are always here, ready to listen to me, as I pour my little heart out.

Maybe I should STFU, but why? I'm not hurting anybody. This is a legacy. An insurance policy. If anybody's ever standing around wondering "why?" it's probably documented somewhere right here. The smoking gun is undeniably here for all to see.

I know from public speaking, that the more you tell an anecdote or a story, the better storyteller you become, and the more engaging and entertaining you get. For sure, it's addictive, putting yourself out there, once you get over the initial fear of embarrassment. However, how would you feel, if faced with the prospect of writing the equivalent of 5 novels in the space of a year?

How should I feel about the vast quantity of white noise I have pushed out onto an overcrowded Internet? Should I feel embarrassed, ashamed, to have not contributed something more pre-planned and better executed? Am I simply polluting the world of words, with my own contribution that doesn't come with a seal of approval from an institution? Where is my peer review? Where is my commercial or academic backer, to lend authority to my case?

Perhaps we should all go on creative writing courses or get degrees in English Literature from University, before we are allowed to be let loose on a keyboard?

No. Writing is democratic. Writing is human. Writing captures the very essence of who and what you are.

I like my little time capsule.

Tags: #writing #socialmedia

This is a story about respecting your elders...

Who's the responsible one round here? Who's got to carry the can, at the end of the day? Who's got to live with the consequences of bad decisions, and clean up other people's mess?

There isn't a class war going on. There's a generation war.

The baby boomers drove around in gas-guzzling cars, burnt dolphins to stay warm, dynamited the glaciers, blew up nuclear weapons under the polar ice caps, and generally whizzed around the globe spraying deadly chemicals on everything and saying "FUCK YOU GRANDCHILDREN, HA! HA! HA!".

I remember at school, when I was 10 or 11 years old, me and my friend Ben used to write long rhymes about saving the environment, and read them out at school events. We basically urged a modicum of control over the unmitigated climate disaster we saw all around us.

Growing up in the Thames Valley, huge numbers of my friends were asthmatic. Particulate emissions from internal combustion engines, gathered in the river valley, and in central Oxford the percentage of kids suffering from respiratory conditions was at the highest level in the country.

My friend Ben's parents had responsibly given up smoking for the health of their children, but mine would not listen to my pleas to stop wasting a significant proportion of the family income on something that was destructive to the health of us all. It was selfishness, plain and simple.

I still vividly remember one time when I begged my Dad to stop taking drugs. "Do you expect me to be a boring old fart?" he asked, incredulously. The tragic thing is, that I didn't need him to take drugs to look 'cool'. It was his own insecurity and pathetic attempt to impress young family members like my cousin Sue, that meant that he thought he was some kind of counter-culture hero, just because he took addictive drugs.

My Dad was adamant that I should not get to go to University, nor my sister, even though him and my Mum both enjoyed a free University eduction. My sister and I were both educated in state schools, even though my parents enjoyed the option of private/selective schooling.

My parents had substantial financial help from my grandparents to purchase their first home. No such help has been forthcoming from our parents, and indeed I bought my house without any financial support from my parents, as well as paying for my wedding & honeymoon out of my own pocket. My sister has - as a percentage of her income - possibly been even more financially independent than me.

As kids and adults, my sister and I have certainly been very economical, responsible, mature, in ways that my parents don't even come close to. We've paid our own way in life. We've grafted harder than my parents could possibly imagine.

And for what? So that my parents' generation can tell us that we're profligate, reckless with money, irresponsible, lazy? My parents' generation tell us we should save money for a rainy day, when the pensions that they draw bear no relation to the actual amount of money that they've saved up. The baby boomers are hoping to have hefty final salary pensions that far outstrip the amount of money they've paid into the schemes, to the point of causing a massive black hole in the nation's finances.

The upper-class Victorians used to say "children should be seen and not heard" but those children were reared by wet-nurses, nannies and au pairs, plus all the other servants. If you don't have servants to rear your children, you don't get to say such obnoxious things, because you're the only person in your child's life.

Infant mortality used to be very high, so ordinary Victorians cherished their children. Having a healthy child was a blessing, and something to be celebrated. There wasn't this strange culture of worshipping people with old-fashioned ideas, who sat idle for 30, 40 years, just criticising everything. Yes, we'd all like to retire and just sit around in our favourite chair reading shit newspapers and being mean to everybody, but the retirement age was always supposed to be just 1 year more than the average life expectancy.

Our economy is structured around the 'grey pound'. After the banks, the most powerful institutions in the country are the pension funds. These massive piles of money, managed by asset managers and institutional investors, for the benefit of their pension-drawing clients, decide everything about how this country is run. When we talk about things being run for the benefit of shareholders, those shareholders are mostly pension funds.

If anybody ever says to me "what have you given back to your parents?" or  "be grateful your parents gave you the gift of life" I'm going to struggle not to scream in their face with rage.

My whole life has been generating value for shareholders. Every penny and pound of profit that I have generated for my masters has gone into dividends and higher stock prices, to inflate the asset value of a pension fund somewhere. My whole life has been toiling to allow the baby boomers to have a life of idle luxury, not that they're fucking grateful.

But you know what? Things have gone way too far.

The older generation has fucked up the environment, fucked up the economy and demanded that young people suffer austerity, University tuition fees, job insecurity, wage stagnation, eye-watering rent, impossibly over-inflated house prices and listen to a sneering arrogant bunch of lazy grey-haired cunts telling them they're lazy and stupid the whole fucking time.

They say you should be nice to your kids because they'll choose your nursing home. Damn fucking straight, but you don't get to have 20 years of idle luxury before you go so damn senile that you have to be put in a home, so that your hard-pressed children can continue working all hours to pay for your profligacy, laziness and arrogance.

Yes, it's true that a huge proportion of wealth has been diverted into the hands of a few eye-wateringly rich families. However, WHO THE FUCK WAS ASLEEP ON THE JOB WHEN THAT HAPPENED?

Why the hell is it me who has to go on political marches, to demand that wealth is more fairly redistributed? My parents were too busy sat on their fucking arse taking drugs and reading books and newspapers to actually get off their lazy backsides and engage in the political process, for the good of the country and the good of us kids and grandkids.

Don't pretend like voting to leave the EU is somehow in the best interests of the country and future generations. One lazy pencil cross in a box doesn't make up for the idle years spent enjoying a free University education, job security, high pay, reckless drug taking, low cost of living, great housing, foreign holidays, new cars, superb pension and lots and lots of disposable income. YOU HAD IT FUCKING EASY, YOU STUPID OLD CUNTS.

As you can tell, this is a fairly calm and measured response to being sold down the river, and having my future destroyed by a bunch of people who won't be around to suffer the global warming and economic depression.

Literally, almost everybody I know my age or younger suffers from depression and/or anxiety. What a legacy!

We used to sing "he's got the whole world in his hands" but where is your fucking God now?

Tags: #parents #childhood #oxford #family #politics #capitalism

This is a story about being price insensitive...

There is a desperation, a lack of ideas, a disillusionment with politics, the status quo, the instruments of government and civilised society, when people vote to bite the hand that feeds them.

However, we can't ignore the obvious message: people are pissed off.

Voting to leave the EU is clearly an own goal, an act of spite, made out of petulant frustration, a temper tantrum because people are not getting their own way. However, isn't the country supposed to be run for the benefit of the majority of the population? Doesn't this act of madness seem predictable, when clearly the powers that are supposed to represent the common person, actually represent the moneyed elite?

With no ability to vote a party into power who represent your interests, and with no ability to be able to influence policymaking to actually improve your day-to-day life, why wouldn't you seek to exercise whatever control you can, to express your distress, your unhappiness, your frustration?

We ask people to work longer hours, accept pay cuts in real terms, have less job security, no pension, no chance of buying their own home, no chance for their kids to go to University or better themselves... no hope. And for what? So that there can be another quarter of profit increase, just as the City analysts expect? So that some number on a spreadsheet can continue to grow... no matter how arbitrary.

80% of our economy is in the service sector, but over 60% of people are unhappy in their jobs, even though the working conditions look fantastic, compared with manual labour in a polluted industrial town, with its brick terraces caked in soot. Why on earth would people hanker after an era when we died younger, due to hard, physical work?

Well, those who run the economic engine of the country have completely misread the mood of the public. Highly remunerated professionals in London think nothing of spunking £6 for a pint of strong European beer and £30 going to a 'secret' cinema screening, where there's some gimmick like sitting in a hot tub on a rooftop.

There is a huge insular community of well-spoken, privately educated, fresh-faced young people, working in law, accountancy, management consultancy, finance, insurance, politics. These people are the entourage for a group of portly ruddy-faced men, who live in large houses in the London commuter belt. Between them, the lives of every single citizen of the United Kingdom are ruled, except they're completely clueless as to how ordinary people live.

Economists talk about how price insensitive people are. I literally don't care whether my coffee is £2.50 or £4.90. I just tap my contactless payment card, and walk out of the cafe with my hipster flat white. I literally don't care whether my lunch costs £5 or £10. I just go to whichever vendor I fancy on a particular day. I literally don't care that it costs more to travel on the Underground than on the bus. I just tap my card on the ticket barrier, and don't even look at my balance.

Everybody who decides how your daily life is improved, or worsened, is more concerned about where they're going skiing this year with their other young professional chums, than whether somebody on some shitty council estate can afford a box of fags.

Yes, Londoners think of themselves as cultured, urbane, sophisticated. Sadly, they also think they're somewhat in touch with the working classes, because they rub shoulders with people from all walks of life, as they travel into the city to clean toilets and wait tables. However, sharing the same streets does not equate to co-existence.

I used to live on a street in Islington, where the grand Georgian houses were worth many millions on pounds. One street away, there was a lot of social housing. You'd think that this is an example of an integrated society, but you'd be amazed at how people living in such close quarters are so successfully able to avoid each other.

While I used to dine in the restaurants of Upper Street, mixing with other City Boys, my fellow residents would head the other way, towards Hackney, where there were cheaper places to buy food, and the kinds of places I would never dream of entering: betting shops, pawnshops, low-quality takeaways.

Today is the starkest warning of where our society is headed: a two-tier system, where the 'haves' are living in a different world from the 'have nots'.

While those who wish to divide and rule have cleverly manipulated people's fears for political ends, this ignores the fact that the wealthy are busy stuffing the mattress with the working class' hard-earned cash.

When people realise they've been conned, there's going to be hell to pay.

Tags: #politics #europe #london #banking

This is a story about dirty tricks...

The Government and affluent Londoners have completely misread the public mood. There is a complete disjoint between the media, politics, and the concerns and struggles of the general population.

Youth unemployment, ballooning student debt, a lower minumum wage for people aged 18 to 24, unaffordable house prices, ridiculous cost of living... these things don't just affect young people, but also their parents. Parents are waking up to the fact that their kids aren't lazy & stupid, but in fact millennials are far better behaved than any previous generation. You just have to look at falling alcohol consumption, smoking and teenage pregnancy rates, to see that today's young people are far more responsible than their parents and grandparents ever were.

Meanwhile, there's a population bubble that is coming up to retirement age and hoping to collect a final salary pension - an income that is not at all linked to how much they have paid in and asset values - that is causing a massive deficit that nobody is talking about.

Everybody's dug into their trenches.

Students quite rightly demand the same standard of education that their parents received, but must get themselves tens of thousands of pounds into debt, and there isn't even the guarantee of a good job at the end of an expensive education.

Pensioners quite rightly demand the same retirement age as their parents, but are going to live much longer, healthier, lives in their retirement, and expect to continue an extremely high standard of living: 3 foreign holidays a year, new cars and large empty houses, with expensive luxury kitchens & bathrooms, lavishly decorated.

Parents quite rightly expect their kids to move out, live independently, get married, have some grandkids. But that's not going to happen unless parents share some of their wealth, and many parents are already worried about whether they have enough money to maintain their high standard of living. So, the reality is kids never leave home, never become financially independent, are never able to escape the demeanment of being dependent on their parents.

Driving this drop in living standards is the fact that the West has been exporting its inflation for years. The postwar boom years were achieved by abandoning the gold standard and printing money. The only way that the value of the Pound, Dollar, Euro and Yen have been propped up is by an agreement called Bretton Woods, which defined a basket of so-called "hard" currencies.

Now, the people of the developing nations are demanding payback. These people have worked far harder and saved far more money, than the arrogant West. These people are quite rightly dissatisfied with being economically enslaved by a culture that broadcasts its profligacy to the world. If Hollywood is to be believed, we all live in mansions, drive supercars, fly helicopters and know the President of the United States of America, personally.

People want everything they were promised, but reality is a real let-down.

Even in London, where the streets are paved with gold, we live in tiny damp flats, with paper-thin walls where you can hear every little noise your neighbours make and the din from passing traffic is incessant. We are like sweaty sardines on a dangerously overcrowded public transportation network, working the longest hours in Europe, in the hope of affording some ludicrously overpriced piece of real estate. Pollution and crime is all around us. Yet, we are high-brow Guardian newspaper readers, who deign to patronise the ordinary working people outside the M25.

Nobody in the provinces gives a shit about a few malnourished brown people. They just want the cushy life their parents had: with a free University education, a seat on an uncrowded train, a 9 to 5 job that has a big enough salary for one parent to work, buy a house, pay the bills and raise some kids. However, that dream is never going to come to fruition.

People have been disengaged with politics for years. The disillusionment with the instruments that maintain the status quo, has reached crisis point. The wealthy elite have been too greedy for too long, and they have completely misread the public mood, the will of the people.

We're going to have problems when even the middle classes become squeezed, because their kids are a massive drain on their finances. The middle classes are the ones who still wield some political clout, and can even become somewhat radicalised.

Finger-pointing at immigrants will fool some simple-minded folks who didn't pay attention at school and who fail to see the spine-chilling parallels with the rise of far-right fascism in 1930s and 1940s Europe. However, it's only going to buy a very small amount of time, before the UK descends into all out chaos and destruction.

While one generation goes on strike, to demand that their final salary pensions aren't touched, and the protection of jobs that have become unnecessary due to technological advancements, another generation will have their lives made ever more miserable. Young people have to suffer train strikes, on services that are already overcrowded and cost a significant proportion of their income, in order to get to a job where they're paid less simply because they're young, and their money disappears into the black hole of the pensions deficit, with no hope of ever owning a home and having the luxury of going on strike themselves, for fear of losing their job.

We are being turned against one another, and against minority groups like immigrants and Muslims, when the real culprits for our suffering are the public-schooled wealthy elite, who become career politicians and rule over us. The real culprits are those who take out more than they've paid in. The real culprits are those who expect us to work harder than they would work themselves.

The enemy here is inequality, not immigration. The thing that we should be correcting is the rich:poor divide, not dismantling the safety net of social welfare, and blaming people who suffer long-term disability, or immigrants.

We have been manipulated by the media and politicians into voting against our self-interests. We have elected politicians who have massively increased national debt, while at the same time making people more insecure in their jobs, less financially well-off.

Now, the politically inactive class have become radicalised, in voting for right-wing policies, and for relinquishing politically progressive ideals, which had given us greater protection for ordinary working people.

A vote to leave the EU is further playing into the hands of wealthy property owners, who want to see the clock rolled back to a time when there were no labour unions, worker rights and there was no job security or opportunity to better yourself. Brexit is vote to increase the power of a bunch of Eton-educated toffs, who have never done a hard day's work in their lives.

Yes, things need to change, and things need to change quickly, if we are not going to suffer a terrible rebellion by a hard-pressed working public, that could sweep away most of the advancements that our society has made, at great expense.

However, reversing the result of a referendum that was already held once before, is not the way forward. The House of Commons should be just that: representative of the common person. Getting rid of EU gravy-trainers simply hands more power to the wealthy elite, who have presided over a shameful decline in the British public's standard of living, for far too long.

Voting Brexit sends completely the wrong message to the elite, and to nasty bigots, like UKIP's Nigel Farage. Voting Brexit emboldens those who wish to divide and rule us.

Tags: #politics #capitalism

This is a story about jobs for the boys...

Do you feel like you earn your salary? What is it that makes you think you're worth your wages? How do you value your contribution?

If you work a physical job, you're likely to feel pretty exhausted at the end of the day. Maybe your feet hurt, your back, your muscles. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how much energy you've expended. Perhaps your job involves standing up, walking around, even running around. Perhaps your job involves lifting, stacking, moving, shifting. Can your value therefore be considered a function of how many things you physically move? For example: boxes of stuff from the storeroom, products on shelves, patients from beds, or children from perilous situations.

Maybe you work an academic job, or something you have to be highly qualified for. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how hard you worked in the past. You maybe had to really concentrate at school and do all your homework. Perhaps you had to go to University and at least turn up for some of the lectures. You're probably pretty pleased with yourself that you beat the competition to those limited places, and got the necessary grades. Can your value be considered a function of how stressful your exams were, and how hard it was to write your disseration, your thesis?

Maybe you work a high pressure job, something you really have to concentrate on. Perhaps you have no time to judge your day, because you're just so busy that you don't have time to think about it. You maybe have to take sales calls all day long to meet your targets. You're always talking to people. Or maybe you have to watch a computer screen all day, like a stock-market trader or an air-traffic controller. Can your value be considered a function of your ability to concentrate, and keep busy with the task in hand for the whole working day?

Maybe you work a caring job, or something that delivers service directly to people. Perhaps you judge your working day based on how many people you deliver satisfactory outcomes for. Perhaps you have had to work on a caring bedside manner. Perhaps you have had to develop diplomatic skills for dealing with people. Can your value be considered to be a function of how many smiles you get each day, how many thank yous?

Maybe you work a repetitive job, or something that requires very little problem solving. Perhaps you have plenty of time to think and it's quite clear what needs to be done, but there are only a limited number of hours in the day. Perhaps you enter data in spreadsheets. Perhaps you type the answers that are written down on forms. Perhaps you work on a factory production line. Perhaps you deliver widgets. Can your value be considered a function of how many of these repetitive functions you can perform in a fixed period of time? Do you take pride in the tiny efficiency gains you can make in a job that has been easily mastered?

Maybe your job is to educate, inform, inspire, entertain. Your job is to titillate the attentions of other people. Your job is to spoon feed culture to the masses. Perhaps you had wide-eyed ambitions about bringing song and dance to the people. Perhaps you thought you were going to be a war journalist. Perhaps you thought you were going to set the minds of young people alight. Can your value be considered a function of your reach, your influence? Do you know how many followers you have? How many viewers? How many readers? How many listeners?

But what happens when your purpose is cloudy, unclear? What happens when you can't see what difference you're making, either to other people or to yourself?

Why do you do what you do? Is it possible to work a job, just because it puts food on the table and shoes on the children? Is it possible to work a job just because?

Everybody needs to work, right? But what if your job is makework? What if your job is made up, just to justify the salary of your manager, who has to have a certain headcount in order to get their promotion? What if your whole industry can't justify its existence? What if everything that your company does, and companies like it, is completely superfluous to human existence?

What do we need? Food, water, shelter, warmth, social bonds. Where does insurance fit in that world? Where does a law firm fit? Where does a bank fit? Where do technology companies fit?

If you woke up tomorrow, and your company didn't exist, and neither did any of its competitors, would the human race keel over and die? If you work for an agricultural business, then quite possibly. We need grains, we need vegetables. If you work for an accountancy firm, I think we'll all be just fine.

I've got nothing against the people who work in the service sector per se but should we value those industries more than, say, fishing, farming, building & caring?

Do you think I give a shit about the protection of intellectual property rights of a wealthy corporation? Do you think that I respect the instruments of capitalism as an efficient means to do more with less?

Fundamentally, how many people are living miserably? We might point to increases in life expectancy as an indicator of progress, but what if those lives are filled with stress, anxiety, depression? What if those lives are miserable and isolated, unfulfilled, unhappy?

Official statistics say that more than 1 in 4 of us are battling mental health problems. In truth, the real number must be much higher, because there are so many people who have undiagnosed problems. We know from suicide rates and prescriptions of psychiatric medications - such as antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs - that problems are growing at an alarming rate.

There's a direct correlation between my lack of job satisfaction, and my poor mental health. When I've been happy in my job, I've been overworked. When I've stopped to think about what I've been doing, I've realised that I've been building systems that perpetuate human misery.

It's said that for every 1% that unemployment increases, over 40,000 people will commit suicide. I built a system for JPMorgan that processed the equivalent of $163,000 for every man, woman and child on the planet, in Credit Default Swaps. You think that money is better off locked up in the banking system rather than being in people's pockets?

If I'm building banking systems that process $37 million a second, why the hell are people living in poverty? Why the hell has the National Health Service got to be left underfunded? Why the hell is science underfunded? Why the hell have I got to work a crappy job that I hate, in order to make thousands of people redundant?

Rational self-interest, and the philosophy of Ayn Rand has led us down a very dark path. It's actually in our rational self-interest to smash the systems that take us on a race to the bottom.

Perhaps it's time to throw our clogs into the loom?

You think that you want an A-list celebrity life, with all the trimmings and bling. However, collectively wanting this is leading us all down a path that makes humanity miserable, depressed, stressed, anxious, lonely and isolated.

Tags: #depression #mentalhealth #suicide #career #banking #capitalism

This is a story about imitation and flattery...

What's through that door? Well, probably my entire career and every golden opportunity that will ever be presented to me, throughout my adult life.

That North Oxford house, if I've identified it correctly, used to be the headquarters of Daily Information. It was here that on one midweek night, computer games ceased to be a solitary bedroom activity, and instead became an opportunity to socialise.

So important was this place in my childhood, that I can still remember the code for the door behind the front door, that would lead up to my friend's parents' office, which was above the offices of Daily Info.

The main office itself was a fascinating place. There were zillions of flyers and posters pinned up on the wall, as examples of the desktop publishing and reprographics business, which also produces a popular "What's On?" guide for the Oxford area. There were also instructions on how to operate the many pieces of equipment and notices for the staff who worked there. It was a complex ecosystem, so unlike a home stuffed full of static ornaments and pictures.

There were piles of photocopier paper, and cardboard sheets in all colours and sizes. Printer cartridges, ink ribbons, toner, and daisy-wheel heads were piled up on shelves, or stacked nearby the cream-plastic machines that they served. Half-finished print jobs lay on the tops of every available flat surface.

But, the main event, and the thing that a group of geeky and otherwise introverted kids, had gathered there for, were the many computers. There seemed to be screens and keyboards everywhere. There were PCs and there were Macs, and they all had mice and colour screens, which was a big deal back in the 1990's, when people still used to do word processing on green-screen terminals that couldn't play games.

Yes, it was the computer games that we were there for, and between my friend, his mum, and a few willing staff members, they had always managed to coerce all the computers into playing amazing computer games. It was like the most fantastic treasure trove of an amusement arcade, with unlimited tokens to play again and again.

There were single-player games, like Shufflepuck, where you had to play air-hockey against a whole host of fascinating characters of increasing difficulty and deviousness. This was an interesting use of the computer mouse, which mirrored your hand's movements with the on-screen mallet, to try and send an air-hockey puck sliding into your opponent's goal.

However, the thing that I enjoyed the most, was co-operating with other kids to try to solve puzzle games. These were mainly of the point-and-click variety, where you guided an animated character through a world that you could interact with, using a number of verbs, like "push", "pull", "open", "close", "pick up", "walk to" and "use". These delightful creations included such titles as The Secret of Money Island and several Indiana Jones inspired games.

We would would pair up, with one of us operating the mouse, while the other pressed keyboard shortcuts to choose the different operations, while you tried to figure out how to solve the puzzles, which generally involved walking around, opening doors and boxes, picking up items, and then figuring out what to use the items on, or how to combine them together to make some new kind of object.

I idolised this friend who ran the event on a midweek evening, and tried desperately to imitate all the things he seemed to do so effortlessly. I read the same books. I tried to write and contribute articles to a school magazine that he had founded. I tried to learn how to become a programmer, and to create music using a MIDI keyboard, plugged into a computer. I wanted to play all the computer games he liked, which were often the Lucasarts point-and-click adventures, rather than 'shoot-em-ups'.

The bitterness that is so evident at times in my writing, could have ended up repressed and perhaps revealing itself in even more ugly forms, had computing not become a social experience for me, as well as a creative outlet.

Writing has never been my strong suit. When I was about 13 years old, I wrote an article about a computer game that I'd never played, in a desktop publishing program that I was learning to get to grips with. It got horribly mangled as paragraphs got moved around. "Were you on drugs when you wrote that?" my friend asked me, having reviewed it with another friend of his who I never met, on account of him going to a different school. I was put in my place, although not maliciously.

Everything I ever did was a pale imitation of what my childhood friend did, however, it was still immensely fortuitous that I had this role model in my life.

By writing computer programs nearly every day throughout my teens, I gained enough experienced to get a job as a junior programmer, some 3 years ahead of my peers. A few years later, there was a skills shortage because of the Y2K millennium bug, and I was able to get a very lucrative contract. Having held a graduate position for a prestigious corporation, and also been an IT contractor before the age of 21, I was then able to break into financial services and banking, which is normally off-limits to anybody without a good degree from one of the top Universities.

It should be remembered that there are many talented geeks, plugging away at code in their bedrooms. The difference between those who are 'tame' and able to play nice with others, is whether they have had adequate social contact. I was certainly rather removed from healthy social bonds by too much screen time, spent in isolation in a darkened bedroom, hunched over a keyboard.

Through people like the friend I idolise, the joy of computing became a joy of using technology to have a shared experience, to use computers as a mechanism for social bonding. Even though I had to move away from Oxford because my parents relocated the family, I was able to reproduce a little of the magic I learned at Daily Information and the social group that clustered around this one charismatic friend.

I learned how to connect computers together using coaxial cable, and I used to have groups of friends get driven over to the family home, with their PCs. We used our paper rounds and washing-up jobs, in order to buy the equipment necessary to allow our computers to 'speak' to each other, and so we were able to play co-operative games, with each of us operating our own computer.

As a bunch of 14/15 year old spotty nerds, having these early "LAN" (network) parties was amazing, even if we were cooped up indoors for whole weekends, waging virtual warfare against each other. Games like Doom were popular with us, where we just attempted to kill each other, but the pecking order was soon established, and the one-on-one combat soon grew tiresome.

We moved onto games like Command and Conquer where we could have two teams, each in their own "war room" connected by an extra-long cable that I had bought for the specific purpose of separating us, so that we couldn't hear each other's tactical discussions. A game would last over 12 hours, with us playing right through the night.

Because of the inspiration to write and to publish, plus the few social skills I had developed and the exposure to the reprographics and 'typesetting' industry, as a teenager I was confidently able to get a Saturday job for a little company that was like a smaller version of Daily Information, in Lyme Regis, called Lymteligence (yes, it had one 'l' missing, which wasn't very intelligent).

I had used money from my washing-up job at a local hotel to purchase my first modem and get connected to the World Wide Web (Internet) after a rather crappy old modem had completely failed to give a connection to my friend back in Oxford, who I was desperate to stay in contact with. For hours, my friend had patiently allowed his phone line to be tied up, while I tried to coerce some antique piece of hardware that I had bought at a car boot sale, into connecting with my distant friend's computer, but alas, he finally convinced me to give up.

At Lymteligence I learned how to author websites, writing the code by hand. I created a website for The United Kingdom Men's Movement. I remember feeling ethically challenged, as I typed up some of the bitter words of men who had suffered painful divorces. Thinking about it now, I feel that I myself could have been driven into the arms of this movement, had I not had a healthy social outlet for my technological skills.

Although it's shameful to admit, and a little creepy, I would try to keep tabs on my friends I had left behind in Oxford, by being a bit of a lurker on the rapidly developing Internet. However, by doing this, in a way I was able to stay abreast of advancements and trends that would otherwise have passed me by.

"Social media" means Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, today, and perhaps Snapchat and Vine. In fact, there is probably a movement that's already begun that's going to kill these technology giants, that I'm not even aware of yet. I've always been a bit behind the curve.

However, back in the day, social media meant bulletin boards, forums and websites like Friends Reunited. I have no idea how I managed to maintain a toe-hold of social connection with old friends, throughout the disruption of moving away and then our adult lives, but the Internet always provided a way.

It used to be the case that the search engines, of which Google didn't feature prominently until surprisingly recently, used to be very good at digging out which particular corner of the Internet your friends were hiding in, provided they were using their real name, and that name is quite uncommon... and my role model friend is blessed with quite a unique name.

Now that we tend to do most of our Internet social activities on Facebook, you'd be surprised to learn that your privacy is actually very well protected, and you have a reasonable level of control over what people can and can not find out about what's going on in your world.

In 1999/2000 I was living in Winchester in Hampshire, UK. Things were going well with my career, but I was struggling socially. Through a housemate, we ended up in the NUS (student) bar at Winchester University. I was leaning up against the table football table, when somebody behind me challenged me to a game. I turned around and realised that it was one of my fellow Daily Information computer club friends, and a guy who I went to school with since about the age of 5.

Reconnecting with an old schoolfriend was great. I had been back to Oxford, in order to show off my company car and boast about how well my career was going, but it was crushing inadequacy and a sense of loneliness that had driven me to go back there. I had even been quite evil and immature, and had wanted to exclude certain friends and monopolise other friends' time, in order to try to salve my insecurity. I was still a deeply troubled, lonely person, expressing that in very unhealthy ways.

Shortly after that chance meeting, I picked up a local newspaper and read that somebody had been electrocuted, while trying to take a short-cut underneath some parked railroad carriages, in order to get back to his University halls of residence. It was our childhood friend. Killed, through a momentary lapse of judgement, while under the influence of alcohol and the excitement of a fun night out in town. Tragic.

This put me - the lurker - in a really strange position, in terms of grieving. I later discovered through the Internet that my friends were attending the funeral, but because of the sense of distance and the shame of admitting that I had been somewhat jealously following our old social group from afar, like a stalker, I didn't know what to do. I procrastinated until it was too late, and the funeral was over.

There used to be so much stigma associated with using the Internet as a means of human connection. Admitting that you met your partner through Internet dating was likely to instigate stifled sniggers and snide remarks about axe-murderers and weirdos. I guess I am a weirdo though.

I don't know whether it's a British thing, or perhaps a function of a lonely childhood and being a needy, oversensitive person, but I'm kinda always struggling to articulate my needs and ask for what I want. I don't even admit to myself, what my fears and unmet needs are.

Writing this blog has been a journey for me, but it's taken me further than I would have ever expected. One leg of the journey was 5,351 miles, and took me to the hometown of a bunch of my idols and role models.

Is it creepy, is it weird, is it an unpleasant amount of pressure, knowing that in some sense, a friend is looking to you for guidance and direction? It must be, a little. Why the hell do I never seem to have grown up and gotten over childhood infatuations?

For me and at least one other friend, our mutual friend has provided at least some of the inspiration for our careers. In a way, I at least owe this friend a debt of gratitude for my financial security and the fact that a lot of doors are open to me, for career opportunities. I know that he shared with me at least a twinge of regret for having perhaps nudged one of our friends down one particular technology path.

Who knows what are going to be the knock-on effects of the connections we make with one another. Who could have foreseen that I would have taken the wealth that I generated so effortlessly in the highly paid tech sector, and use it to implode so spectacularly in my mid-thirties.

Of course this is not about blame, but instead, I feel this great sense of responsibility. I feel that there are certain individuals who I am crippled with shame, to imagine reading my sorry tale and thinking "what kind of monster has this guy turned into". I imagine their disappointment, and it slays me.

Where do we look for guidance and inspiration from in the world? Our parents? Well what if your parents don't provide it? In fact, what if your parents provide a cautionary tale for how not to live your life? I don't want to go into the details again, of why I don't want to follow in the footsteps of either of my parents, but suffice to say, I've always been looking to people outside of my family, to provide feedback and inspiration in my life.

So, I'm fessing up. That's what this whole blog has been about. I'm playing up like a kid and wanting to test my boundaries. When is some parent-like figure going to stand up and say "stop that!" so that I know I've gone too far? When is some authority figure going to step in, and tell me that I'm out of line, and give me some guidance on how I should think, act, speak?

Being given stacks of cash, relatively few responsibilities and no social structure around you, to tell you when you're taking things too far, when you're getting yourself into trouble, when you're wandering too far from the flock, when your ideas are getting too outlandish, when unpleasantness is rearing its ugly head. You probably take it for granted, the checks and balances that exist around you.

So, I'm making an appeal, to people from every period in my life, from every stage in my development: from childhood to adulthood, from Oxford, to Dorset, to London, to Cambridge, to San Francisco, to Prague, to France, to Brazil, to New Zealand. I'll travel round the world a million times, if somebody can just reach out and give me some kind of reality check.

I'm pouring my heart and soul out into the chasm of the Internet, hoping to make a connection with people, hoping to trigger some kind of response. I have no idea how I'm received. I have no idea how I'm perceived.

Yes, it's needy and yes, it's kinda pressuring people to say something where it seems impolite to even ask for feedback. We have lots of phrases that kinda shame people into keeping their mouths shut, like "emotional blackmail" and "attention seeking". If somebody even came out and accused me of such things, at least I'd have something to reflect on.

Everytime I ask somebody a direct question, they seem to think that the kindest thing to do is to spare my blushes, but I don't know whether to trust my own instincts, or actual concrete feedback that I've received.

For example, I was living with some friends, and it was only over dinner one night, when I had moved out of their house, that my friend finally let me know what he really thought and felt. The fact that the truth was suddenly unleashed was brutal. There was real pent-up frustration and having it all released all at once was too much to bear.

I just contradicted myself, didn't I? What an awful, needy, demanding person. I want honest feedback, but I want it little and often. I'm asking for people to give me a reality check, but I'm also admitting that the last time that a close friend fired both barrels at me, I nearly committed suicide. Who wants that kind of responsibility?

But, you know, the takeaway from this is that I didn't commit suicide, and even though that friendship was really badly damaged, at least it moved things along. I was in limbo before... really unsure of what was real, what I'd overheard, what was being said behind my back. It's an impossible way to live, like that.

I'm adrift in a vast ocean, with no tether to any fixed objects. I have no point of reference. I couldn't tell you which direction is which, and where I'm travelling from or to. I'm rather lost.

A friend got in contact earlier in the week, and offered their impression of something I wrote - noting that I had become bitter again - as well as some advice. I can't stress enough how this was like gold dust to me.

I'm not sure you realise how disconnected from the world I've become. I don't have any normal healthy friendships anymore, or regularly see people who I've had a long-term relationship with, knowing me for years, so they can comment on how I've changed. So many people have become just another 'like' on Facebook.

As a friend who I chatted to via Facebook messenger today said, we know what all our Facebook friends position on Britain leaving the EU is, but we don't know what's going on in the lives of those who are not sharing anything personal, except political opinions. There's a vast difference between the occasional reminder that somebody is still alive, because they're active on social media, and actually looking somebody in the eye, when they give you the British knee-jerk reaction of "I'm fine" when you ask how they are.

I appreciate I've written a lot, and huge amounts of it is virtually unreadable. Also, long bitter rants are not exactly pleasant reading, nor do they paint myself in a particularly favourable light. Who wants to know that angry venomous twisted person, hunched over their keyboard, blindly firing resentful and blame-filled missives into the void.

If you've persevered this far, I'm ashamed of myself. I think about all the stuff you must've read, and what you must think about me, but of course this is conjecture. I admit, I am trying to cajole you into giving me some feedback.

You know, I often think about how immature and childish I am. I often think that everybody is in the same boat, and we're always going to be left wondering how other people perceive us, and what people really think about us, to some extent.

It's easy to dismiss a lot of what I'm wrestling with, as just a standard part of the human condition. I'm also reflexively programmed to offer up neutralising statements, as standard, such as "I don't think I'm special and different" and "I know that my life is no more stressful and turbulent than yours".

The engine that drives this verbal diarrhoea is the fact that I do feel insignificant and worthless. I'm driven to try to anchor myself back into the world of the living, given that I have been hospitalised so many times with suicidal and self-harming behaviour. In a lot of ways, I feel justified in telling people who want to guilt-trip me into suffering in silence to shove their "you're not special, shut up" statements up their arses.

How does one go about fixing the very real and practical things, such as figuring out how to live amongst your friends once again? Sure, I can reconnect with people, but if they don't like who I am and what I say, what hope is there of there being any lasting relationship?

Anyway, this stuff is always cringeworthy and difficult to read, so I'm going to leave it there, as an open letter to my friends and acquaintances. An appeal to human connection, and the feedback that is essential for social bonds.

It's mighty cold when you're out in the thin atmosphere of the outsider, frozen and clinging onto life.

Tags: #friends #childhood #oxford #career #computing #socialmedia #suicide #depression

This is a story about the descent into darkness...

The first time I couldn't work due to depression, it came out of the blue. I had started a new job, and it was actually really interesting. I was quite enthusiastic about what I was doing, and empowered to grow into a new role. Spring was turning into summer, and so I had the seasons in my favour. What happened next was a surprise to everybody, including me.

One morning, I couldn't get out of bed. I'd had problems getting up early for work, but this was different... I couldn't face the day. As soon as I'd admitted defeat - that I definitely wasn't going to make it into the office that day - I was somehow a changed person. It was like a dam burst. This problem that I had been barely coping with was suddenly unleashed, after 11 years of steady 9 to 5 grind and reliable service in the name of the corporations I worked for.

People talk about nervous breakdowns, and I guess that's what had happened. All of a sudden, and with little warning, I was sick... but this was an invisible sickness. I felt it, and I couldn't overcome it, but I didn't believe it was real. I thought that it was fake. I felt like a fraud.

In the UK you can take up to 3 days off work without a doctor's note. After 3 days, I knew deep down that there was no way that I could possibly go back to work, but what was wrong with me? This was highly unusual for the dependable grey-suited regular 9 to 5, Monday to Friday office Joe Bloggs, that I was. 11 years of full time work and 13 years of full time education. All I knew was getting up and going to a dictated place, on the treadmill, in the rat race, following orders.

To summon the effort to go and see my doctor took the whole of those 3 days. I knew the problem was more severe than just not feeling very well. I knew it was more severe than a day off work was going to cure. I knew that something was seriously wrong, but I couldn't express it... I had no language to explain the brick wall that I'd hit.

It was so unlike me to be lacking in energy, in purpose, in motivation and to neglect my duties, my responsibilities. It was so unlike me to not do the work. I'd had a nearly 100% attendance record at work and at school and college. Bunking off wasn't in my vocabulary. Not doing things I didn't like wasn't something I ever considered as an alternative.

I went to the doctor. I sat down and explained that I was tired. I was more tired than I'd ever been in my life. I couldn't cope. I couldn't turn the pedals of the cycle anymore. I couldn't do what I'd always managed to do, which was to drag myself out of bed, and go to school, college or work, no matter what. It hadn't mattered whether the bullying was unbearable, or the stress was intolerable, the pressure relentless... I had been that guy, that perfect student or dream employee, who always turned up and did their work, like a good little boy.

Within a couple of minutes of me explaining my unexpected interruption in my perfect attendance record, and inexplicable fatigue, my doctor said "have you heard of Fluoxetine?". I had heard of Fluoxetine: it's the generic name for Prozac, which is an anti-depressant. Fluoxetine is a Specific Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor (SSRI) which was supposed to increase levels of Serotonin in the brain, or so Eli Lilly - the manufacturer - thought, and told the world that depressed people had unnaturally low serotonin levels in their brain. They were wrong.

The theory that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance in the brain, is ubiquitous. We are comforted to know that there is a medical problem with us, that can be corrected with medication. It's a neat little theory: depressed people don't have enough serotonin in their brain, and with medicine it can be topped up to 'normal' levels. Sadly, it's just not correct.

Measurements of the amount of serotonin metabolites in spinal fluid of depressed people who take Fluoxetine or other SSRIs are actually lower than supposedly healthy people. The theory was proven to be bunkum, but doctors and mental health professionals still share research that's 30+ years old and has been disproven. The theory was just too popular, as well as the SSRI medication, which millions of people had flocked to as their salvation.

I had read extensively in the field of psychopharmacology and had received unconditional offers of a University place at several prestigious institutions, to study psychology, pharmacology and psychiatry. I was probably better informed than my doctor.

I knew that SSRIs were associated with emotional blunting, anorgasmia (not being able to cum) and increased suicidal ideation (thinking about killing yourself). I knew that the long-term outcomes were actually worse than placebo, in several studies. I knew that an SSRI would take 6 weeks to take effect anyway, and that was no use to me. I needed to get back to work!

So, I declined the medication that was offered to me, within just a few minutes of talking to my doctor. I was shocked by how quickly I had been offered psychiatric medication from a general physician, which would take at least 6 weeks to take effect, and I could end up taking for a long time. I felt a little failed by the health services.

My doctor signed me off for a week, and I felt a little relieved to have some time to allow my body to hopefully revert to homeostasis, and I could hopefully get back to work. I felt like a real failure, and I started to feel anxious about the impression that my bosses and colleagues would have of me. Would I be seen as unreliable? Would my name be tainted?

The fatigue and lack of motivation, purpose, persisted and I spent a week in bed, sleeping for 16+ hours. I hardly ate. I didn't open the curtains. I turned my phone off and just curled up under the duvet. Where had this tiredness come from? I had always been in good physical shape and my body had never failed me like this before. I had always had plenty of energy.

I went back to the doctor after a week, and I was getting pretty desperate for an answer. I was looking for a diagnosis, a cure. I wanted the trusted men in white coats to make everything better again.

We did tests: blood tests, urine tests, thyroid function, kidney and liver function. We even did an AIDS test, as my doctor was at a loss to explain why I was so fatigued all the time. One week turned into three weeks. There was seemingly no end to my exhaustion and inability to cope with the thought of going back to work. There was no way I could face the day, for some reason. I had been housebound with the curtains closed, except for trips around the corner to the doctor's surgery.

My doctors remained convinced that I was suffering with Clinical Depression, and urged me to try an SSRI, but I still refused on the grounds that I didn't want another 6 weeks off work, while I waited for the medication to kick in. 9 weeks off work seemed ridiculous to me, and the side effects sounded unacceptable.

So I stopped going to the doctors. I stopped getting sick notes. I switched my phone off and went to bed, and I just tried to ignore the fact that I was going to lose my job. I didn't care because I couldn't care. There was no way I could go back to work, feeling so exhausted, so drained, so fatigued and unable to cope with even preparing food, getting dressed, having a shower. I just lay in my bed and slept two thirds of every day, and lay half-asleep, anxious about a knock at the door, with the curtains closed, for the rest of the time.

Everything seemed impossible, insurmountable. The idea of going to the shop seemed as insane as the idea of going on an expedition to the South Pole without any warm clothes or supplies. Clearly there was something wrong with me if I was misjudging the effort involved in things, but I also knew that I couldn't keep just doing the same shit, the same crappy 9 to 5 routine, and the same formula of working a job.

As the summer wore on, I started to get interested in the idea of doing some iPhone development work, and slowly I ventured outside into the sunshine in the afternoons, to learn how to develop software on the Apple platform. It seemed like a nice confidence-building exercise, as I had started to doubt that I'd ever be able to work again. I had started to feel like I'd be invalided out of the workforce for the rest of my days.

The more I worked, the more obsessed I became. My energy came back. Slowly at first. I would work for an afternoon, then an afternoon and an evening, and then soon I was doing full days of work again. But it didn't stop there.

By the time July had given way to August, I was working an 18 hour day. I was irritable and single-minded. Eating was a chore that would slow me down and get in the way of me working. I didn't want to waste time with my partner, my friends, my family. Nobody understood what I was working on and how important it was. Explaining anything to anybody was painfully slow and angered me to have to take time out from my work to even answer the simplest of questions.

I started to speak faster, in a rush to get the words out and not waste precious time speaking to people. I viewed other people as obstacles, standing in the way of my single goal, and as dimwitted fools who were sent to irritate and frustrate me. My thoughts raced, but I could follow them, but speaking was never fast enough to verbalise what was going on in my brain, so my speech was pressured... trying to will my tongue to be fast enough to keep pace with my thread of thought.

My work rang me up and insisted that we meet up. I saw my boss, and we agreed that I should give my notice. There was no way I was going back to that job. They were cool about things, but I didn't really have any explanation about what was going on with me.

I was free from the confines of the 9 to 5, Monday to Friday office routine. I was free from dimwitted bosses who had been promoted into positions of incompetence. I was free from bureaucracy and red tape and corporate bullshit. I just worked, and worked, and worked. I worked 7 days a week. I worked until I was falling asleep, and then I would start again as soon as I woke up.

At some point during this flurry of activity, I managed to get a couple of iPhone Apps to number one in the charts. Naturally, this brought in a lot of cash. I had done it. I had proven my point. I had unwittingly become a successful entrepreneur, off the back of becoming unwell and losing my job.

However, I failed to see it like that. What I saw instead was that office work wasn't good for me. I felt like office work had made me sick, and that I needed to find a new profession... well, a trade actually.

I decided to quit IT and software - the thing that I was really good at - and retrain as an electrician. I decided that the most important things to me were being self employed and working in a non-office environment. It took a couple of years before I finally realised I was wrong.

The same thing happened to me, except this time it was much, much faster.

The pressure on a small businessman, and a tradesman is immense. An electrician is responsible for the safety of everybody in the homes that you have installed an electrical system into. If anybody is electrocuted because of your shoddy workmanship, it's your fault. That's a lot of responsibility. Also, the public expect you to work for peanuts.

The sense of exhaustion and inability to cope with the pressure anymore, had hit me really hard in my cushy desk job. Now I had angry customers ringing me up because I had gotten sick. This was much, much worse, because they were ordinary people who I'd met and built a relationship with. Ordinary people were counting on me to wire up their homes, and I was personally failing them.

This depression was much deeper and darker, because I'd really run out of ideas. I felt completely useless, and that as a well known local tradesman, I'd ruined my reputation in my community. This was awful. I was actually afraid to leave the house, in case I bumped into somebody I knew, somebody who I'd let down.

I felt like I couldn't go backwards, and I couldn't go forwards. I was really trapped. How would people take me seriously as an IT professional if I'd previously been a lowly electrician? How would I ever work again as an independent businessman, when I had actually crashed a business due to my ill health? How could I ever be trusted again?

I started to think about suicide very seriously. I saw no way out of this cycle of depressions and failure. I couldn't see a way to earn money anymore, to work again. I couldn't imagine going back to my profession, or starting another business. Everything looked doomed to fail again and again and again.

I tried the medical route again, and finally got referred to a psychiatrist. It took a very long time before I actually met with the consultant, and the options were the same: SSRIs, SNRIs and NaSSAs. All serotonergic drugs. All with horrible side effects. All taking 6+ weeks to kick in.

I begged my psychiatrist to let me try Bupropion (sold as Zyban and Wellbutrin) which is very popular in France and is fast acting. He refused on the grounds that it was an off-label prescription in the UK and he'd have to get special permission from the NHS trust. It was more than his job was worth.

So, I resorted to self-medication.

Self medication worked... in the short term. I felt better, I could function. However, it took me down a path that led to the Dark Web, which led to drug window-shopping, and later to experimentation with just about every highly addictive hard drug known to man, including Heroin, Crack Cocaine and Crystal Methamphetamine.

Drugs don't work. The brain gets used to them, and then you have to increase the dose or switch to a more powerful drug. You can't artificially induce an organ that's designed to be balanced - homeostatically self-regulating - to be forced into an unnatural state.

What's the reason why those people who were taking SSRIs had lower serotonin levels in their spinal fluid? Well, it's because the brain realises that something is artificially out of kilter, and so it releases less serotonin to compensate, and puts you right back where you started.

In the words of The Verve: "the drugs don't work, they just make it worse".

Why do you think drugs from your doctor are good, and drugs from a drug dealer or the Dark Web are bad? Do you think your brain knows the difference? Of course it doesn't. Most of the drugs that are abused were developed by pharmaceutical companies originally, and used to be prescribed before newer 'safer' medications were developed. By 'safer' we tend to mean weaker and with such horrible side effects that taking bigger doses becomes unpleasant. In actual fact, the so-called 'drugs of abuse' have far less side effects than their 'safe' counterparts, at therapeutic doses. Anything becomes poisonous at high enough doses.

Does that mean I'm pro-drugs then? Am I soft on drugs, and one of these decriminalisation nuts?

Well, no, not really. Drugs are bad. They put your brain into an unnatural state and it's hard for your brain to achieve homeostasis when you are poking and prodding at it with the blunt instruments that are the chemicals that cross the blood-brain barrier.

Drugs can 'reset' your brain, in a similar way to electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) which is also known as 'shock' therapy.

Medicine of the brain is very early in its development. Psychiatry has only really been a medical field since the 1950's and the true mechanism of action of medications is only very poorly understood, especially as the true nature of mental illness has not yet been revealed.

My personal view is that the destruction of families, clans and villages in favour of ridiculously long working hours in an isolated urban setting, has destroyed everything we need as humans in terms of our relationships with other human beings. Mental illness is a perfectly sane response to modern life. It's a sane response to an insane world.

The thing that's been most beneficial to my mental health has been connecting with a group of friends, while being homeless. Being relieved of the isolated silence of the commuter train, and the pressure of horrible work and job insecurity, coupled with the financial pressures of paying ridiculous rent and unattainable material goals... it was sweet, sweet relief. Living in a kind of commune, with other people who were living in close quarters with each other, sounds unbearable, but it was actually nice. It was humanising. It felt natural, and a sense of calm, relaxation and connection with the world, flooded back into me. I felt a warmth within me that I'd never felt, except maybe with Heroin.

The question now on my lips is: how do I get that again? How do I recreate the sense of community I had, either with tons of kitesurfing friends, or with tons of similarly dispossessed and dislocated homeless people, all thrust together out of necessity to stick together?

The need to belong to a tribe, a group, a commune... it's undeniable, now that I've experienced it. I place an importance on it above financial security, because without it I just feel suicidal, so it's actually essential for life in a way that money just isn't.

Human connection is the answer to the riddle of depression, suicide and addiction.

I'm halfway betwixt and between. Half in the dark, and half in the light. My brain doesn't know whether to be suicidally depressed or hypomanically fixated on a single goal.

Tags: #suicide #depression #mentalhealth #bipolar #addiction #drugs #career