Echo (echo)...

 I have a weird problem.

I have a 5Tb hard drive that I keep all of my bullshit on. Old pictures, abandoned musical projects, budgets from 2006... so many things.

I also have an identical drive that I back up all that information on. Despite trying my best to be careful about the whole thing, somehow one drive has 26Gb less available storage than the other one, and I can't see why.

I know, I know. You don't care about this nerdy shit- you came here to get off, and believe me, that's normal. When I was combing through the minutiae of this hard drive in question, I found something. It was an old text document from 15 years ago, containing my FETLIFE bio.

For those of you who can't get an erection or are suffering through menopause, FetLife is a social networking website that serves people interested in BDSM, fetishism, and kink. It distinguishes itself from competitors by emphasizing itself as a social network rather than a dating site.^[3]

Every blue-haired girl with a split tongue you have ever seen at the supermarket is on there, demanding you pay her money to piss on you, so of course the appeal was beyond magnetic. Actually, I wonder if there are any women on there now that OnlyFans exists? I don't know. I don't care enough to go look.

I'm gonna be honest here (which strikes me as something one would say if they weren't being honest before), but I have been single for 15 years now. I did date two people in that time. The first was the Penthouse Pet of the Year, who I met at the strip club I used to work at over 13 years ago. She had amazing taste in music, was very pretty, and had a body that made my brain make the Windows 95 shut down noise every time I saw it. But she was very conceited and not very nice as a person, and I don't like that. So I got out of there in under 2 weeks, and ignored every text message she subsequently sent me. She still has my Star Wars tee shirt she wore when she'd sleep over, but I figure that's a small price to pay for my sanity and self respect.

The second was some kind of administrator for a medical company who pounced on me at a dive bar I should never have gone to last year. I took her on one date, and she immediately declared her undying love for me. But the vibes were off. She was... inconsistent. It's hard to explain, but when I was messaging one of the bar staff on Instagram after I'd moved on, they told me everyone there thought she was loco crazy, and had for a very long time. I'm a magnet for all the wrong things, and it scares me to contemplate what that says about me.

Anyway, I'm going through this hard drive, and I found this Fet Life bio, from when I put myself out there over a decade ago. I had gone through so many changes, and didn't want to go down the usual dating site route. I got off Tinder after a couple of weeks because the whole concept terrified me, and now it's 2026 and we can see the fallout from what happens when you attempt to monetise peoples sexuality, and the breakdown in the culture that spread out from that cultural moment in time. Reading this bio, being the person I've become, I just laughed and laughed at this big dumb idiot and his thoughts and his (at that time) undiagnosed AUDHD, BPD, DID, CPTSD, and a whole fucking galaxy of trauma-initiated personality disorders. I think it's important to be honest about when we've been big dumb idiots, so I'm flying that flag here. I'm going to post it, which is extra funny because it's very much like reading your entire 300 page manifesto in a loud and confident voice in an empty room after the apocalypse when there's no one left to hear you. People don't read blogs any more. Maybe that's for the best.

There were a few of my (in my opinion) more entertaining posts from this blog in that drive too, and reading them made me miss typing out my thoughts and feelings. Made me want to come back here and drop this bio, because it seems to be the perfect place for it. It's cringe, and it's earnest, and the tone veers wildly from earnest to condescending and back, and it so perfectly illustrates what a colossal moron I am, and the mistakes I have historically made in public.

Here we go. My FetLife bio from 2012, by knifey from the internet:

I'm going to write this as if you're like me, as if you already know my deal, like you're from my planet...

I wrote "Daddy" in my bio because being a Daddy is fun and rewarding and intimate in its own peculiar way, but not because it's the be-all and end-all of who I am. But you get that, I know. And I say "peculiar", as a substitute for particular, because particular denotes a singularity of purpose, and we've already established I'm not one thing. No-one really is, we just say we are.

So why am I here, what do I want?

I'm looking for someone who is peculiar and not singular too. Someone who may identify as a thing, but who is open to, dare I say, even *craves* to fluidly transition from that thing into other things, and only after it's happened, for them to say "Wow,I had no idea that was in me." No maps.

A lot of people (but not you, I know) see this place as a catalogue of fetish categories, and while some are microscopically specific about their wants, and can email you a phone book of things they desire/wish for/demand; I'm not that. I don't want to read a book when I know the ending.

I'm excited at the prospect of two strangers who sense each other in a subconscious way, who have magnetism, pheremones that can stream through the internet; and what they can discover about each other and themselves when given a space to let go of all pretense, and be who they really are. Someone who actively wants to destroy their artifice. Someone who is excited at the prospect of being known, of ignoring their fears, and the rewards that come with that. 

Someone who will let another human care for them- that care being undefined, but discovered together. I want to make something more than sweat or a bruise. Collectively giving birth to trust is an incredible aphrodisiac. Sex is easy, connection is hard. Letting go, being known, daring to be vulnerable- those things take guts, and just because society sees us a perverts or weird, or everything they wish they could openly be; none of those labels preclude us from feelings or reality or love.

Love has many forms, but then you know that too.

I have taken a few years off from people, until very recently. I wanted to know me, and I couldn't do that while I was being interrupted by others. I am happy alone, I don't need people for anything. But I have enjoyed some people in the past, and the time has come to see if anyone has what it takes to ignite that in me again.

I don't have a map, I don't want a map. I want to enter a room with someone I have never met and see something new and honest. And if it's new enough and honest enough, I may very well want to do it again, and see how far we can push it. See what we can make. See how real it gets.

Hello.

______________________________________________________________________

So in the spirit of fairness, I thought it may be prudent to talk a little about things that I'm not into, as a lot of nice people write to me on here, and I don't want to waste anyone's time. I understand I'm not an oil painting myself (although Bosch painted in oils, didn't he?), so I'm not trying to be conceited. Just honest.

1. I don't have time for bratty girls. I understand everyone has their kinks, and I respect that and don't judge, however it's not on my list, and it's an instant turn off for me. I don't reward bratty behaviour, I walk away from it. I've dated so many centrefolds and models in my life, who assumed incorrectly that their looks guaranteed my attention. It didn't, and I refuse to starve my intellect or morals again.

2. FinDom really strains my desire to not judge, both subs and doms involved. I just can't respect it in an age where we should all be striving for equality. And while there will be some who will wish to point out the power balance in FinDom does equal some kind of equality, to that I say "Nope." It's prostitution, (which is fine, because it's honest). Just be real about what you're doing.

3. If you are in a relationship of any kind that isn't open, please don't message me. If you can't be honest with your partner about being here, I don't want to encourage you to stay. Also, if you are in an open relationship, please don't write to me thinking I will fill in all of the gaps where your partner doesn't. I've noticed there is a never ending waterfall of attractive women who are in unsatisfactory relationships, who think FetLife is their own personal boredom-buster. I don't exist to entertain you. And I'm definitely not your shoulder to cry on, or ear to listen to you, when your partner should be those things. If you're here because you're bored, please don't infect me with your boredom. Have a think about what you have to offer, and find someone who offers things that you in turn would love. Doesn't that sound nice?

4. Lipstick. This will preclude me from pretty much every imaginable interaction with a female, and I'm good with that. It contains cancer causing chemicals, can kill unborn children, is responsible for massive deforestation and environmental destruction (leading to the unnecessary deaths of countless species, including Orang Utang through the demand for Palm Oil), and is a throwback to a time when people thought smearing whale fat across their face was somehow new and interesting. People still continue this culture of lipstick through indoctrination by family members and advertising, passing it from older family members to younger, and propagating the myth that it equates to personal power or glamour. It's just pointless and disgusting, and if you've never thought about why you do it before, hopefully now you will. "What about sustainable/vegan lipstick?" I've been asked a thousand times. Other women who see you wearing it, and for whom you wearing it further normalizes and legitimizes the concept, will have no idea that it's ethical. They will just want to find that shade for themselves, and the cycle continues. Also, even if you do ethically source your lipstick, it's still ugly and pointless." Imagine back in antiquity if someone had decided it was glamorous to paint your ears red with the crushed bodies of ants. And over time, humanity found other ways to duplicate that colour and texture. And now, you have earstick marketed to you from birth, even by your own family members. It has become an accepted lie that is makes you powerful, like "diamonds are a girl's best friend." It's just marketing, and you've never asked yourself why you swallow it wholesale. The difference between lipstick and earstick is that in intimate situations, people are more likely to interact with your mouth, so smearing coloured grease across it works against you when you encounter people who don't share your pointless fascination with doing what they're told by people they have never met in order to enrich them for no good reason. It's just a proclamation that you are incapable of thinking for yourself, one of the least sexy traits I can imagine. I do understand that some people fetishise it, and I believe we don't choose our kinks, so if that's you, I'm not judging you for a thing you have no control over. But for me, it equals an instant deal breaker.

5. Smoking. Anything. Ever. Enough has been written about this already, but for me if someone chooses to partake in this, I see it as a billboard advertising their inabilty to think critically, to make healthy choices, to care for their fellow humans and the environment, or to stop and think that they not only make themselves smell and taste disgusting for no reason, but that they are inconveniencing others also. It's also the ultimate in pointless consumerism, as it offers no benefits whatsoever, but costs an enormous amount of money. Money is a disease. If that last sentence leaves you wondering how someone could say such a thing, thanks for reading this far, but it's time for you to go.

I keep seeing people writing about how they find intelligence attractive, but the truth is, people think they do, until they meet someone who actually thinks about consequences or analyses our reasons for doing things. Then, when it means they are held to a higher standard, it all becomes way too hard, and they invariably seek reintegration into the Matrix. I have never had a problem attracting beautiful, intelligent, and successful women, my problem has been finding someone who shares my level of focus and who believes the point of living is to use this whisper of time we have, slung between two eternities, to try to grow and understand the gift we have been given. Not to create pointless wealth to allow us to purchase unnecessary things (especially those with someone else's name on them), and to attempt to gain status over each other.

I have no faith the person I seek is out there to be honest, but if you are, isn't it high time we connected? It must be lonely as hell out there for you if you think like I do. 

*Fires flare* 

This blog is over.

I was on a tour, years ago, and we were on a ship traveling between two islands. 

The sea was rough. So rough, the bands I was traveling with, and everyone else on board was launched into the air as we crested each enormous wave. It was night time, which added to the sense of foreboding.

A rough crossing, as they say at the snack bar counter.

Of course I was out on deck, holding the rail, looking at the black water, feeling the whole ship shudder as the waves slammed into it. Powerful, unstoppable walls of water.

We were at the whim of the sea.

I wasn't sure if I was going to survive it, and me being me, I wasn't sure I wanted to.

I'm mentally ill.

I have been ever since I could talk. What used to be considered bad behaviour, hyperactivity, attention seeking; now have neat new names and entries in the DSM. When someone I know suddenly disgusts me beyond belief with no warning, it's just silly old borderline personality disorder. When I'm terrified at the prospect of doing something I do for fun, it's ADHD. When I can't see the point of living any more, and start planning my own death, that's...

...where I am right now.

Those dark waves are smashing into me again, and it's so dark out here I just can not see the point in trying. My whole life has gone by and instead of things getting better, they only get worse. I've been homeless since last year. I have no privacy, no security. No dignity.

I can't just work my way out of it because I'm still completely burned out from the last time I tried to do that. Believe me if I could, I would.

I can't just positive think my way out of this, because that's not reality.

I feel constantly guilty because I have special needs, but there is no framework to support people with my disability in this country. It's left up to families to take the weight, and I don't have one. And my friends are understandably tired, because they didn't sign up for this. They always disappear, and my current friends are in the process of doing just that. I can't blame them. This misery grinds everything to dust, even though I put on a smiling face for them. It's called masking. I'm pretending to be happy for you, please don't abandon me.

So this nihilism rises up and swallows me completely, and I'm too tired to fight it any more. I've been lonely for so many years, but I can't be vulnerable with another person again. And no one is upset about that... whatever I used to have that people found attractive is long gone. I've been invisible for over a decade.

There is no bright future. Things will just keep getting worse, and I can't even handle this much worse.

I went to a support group for people with BPD. Everyone had the same question- "How can I stop this constant hurting/guilt/confusion/loneliness/exhaustion/isolation?

And there is no answer. It was a waste of time. Everyone in that room was fucking doomed. People with BPD are 45 times more likely than non BPD people to commit suicide. 70% of people with BPD do it. Because there is no other way out.

It's all I can think about.

This blog is over.

The arc of a life attempted.

My first post on this platform was on the 22nd of September, 2004.

It was an innocent and exuberant avalanche of graffiti photos from a then recent trip to Sydney, entitled "Like, OMG! Did someone say GRAFFITI?!"

Over the subsequent years I posted about every topic that entered my at times vacuous head, and to read those posts now makes me cringe with embarrassment, which I like to hope signifies growth of some sort.

But something good I perceive from all of this is that it allows me an overview of how different things are. Not necessarily how far I've come, but... different.

In 2004 I was, I think it fair to say, pretty high on life. A shiny new relationship, I was playing guitar for people I had previously only heard on the radio (it's a box with a kind of Spotify in it, except someone else chooses the playlist for you, and you can't skip ads), I was in good physical health, and even though I was lonely all the time, it wasn't for lack of attention.

I got an email this morning from this site, the first in 6 years, advising me that my last post (in early 2017) had been hidden behind an age restriction warning. I honestly have no idea why. It's nowhere near as spicy as some of my past efforts, but it is pretty honest about mental health and the struggles I was having. So I thought I should have a look here again, and see what's going on.

Good grief, I used to live on here! I remember days where I'd spend hours and hours writing and re-writing a post, for the 50 or so daily readers I had at the height of my bloggy power. We used to chat in the comments, and after a while a lot of us met irl and had sex and fell out and I've never seen or heard of any of them since.

No topic was off limits, and that unfiltered honesty, that gonzo determination, that complete and naked idiocy landed me paid writing work with Monster Children, which I promptly detonated because I was, as we used to say at the time, a "hot mess".

This blog got archived by the National Archives, so survivors of some future nuclear dick measuring contest can see what self-obsessed narcissists thought back in the early 2000's, so that's nice.

But it's been 19 years since I first put finger to clacky mechanical keyboard, and I've got something to say about it.

Firstly, I'm not "back". At least I hope I'm not. No one reads this thing any more, so in essence it's like writing out my thoughts, wrapping them around a rock and dropping it into the Mariana Trench (which is easily in my top 5 trenches). I'm approaching this as a consequence-free environment. Cross your fingers.

Those of us who survived the Friendster/MySpaceV1/Facebook/MySpacev2 and now Twitter and Instagram years know a dead platform when we see one.

Second, I know that it's really hip nowadays to view everything as a cry for help. This is not that. One of the milestone epiphanies I had in my relationship career with women, was when I realised quite often they just want to talk about their problems, 'have a bitch' if you will, and that my input was not only unnecessary, but actively unwelcome. So view this post that way. I'm not pleading for rescue, I just want to type out my experience. I just want to vent. 

The last time I posted here, I had just started out making guitars again. You can see them here, and watch them being made here. 

I was so optimistic. I thought "Here we go!" and "This is it!", and other silly thoughts that people with no idea love to think. In no time at all I had customers all over the planet of Earth, and made some guitars, and pushed the design envelope, and streamlined the manufacturing process, and educated a whole new generation of luthiers, and got critically exhausted.

And then I gave it all up. I'd invested tens of thousands of hard earned dollars into Temple Guitars, and in the end I sold everything for cents on the dollar.

But I have snatched victory from the jaws of that defeat, because it finally taught me a lesson about myself that I had heretofore neglected to discern. The whole enterprise was purely performative.

I worked my absolute ass off for years to become a world-class guitar builder, for one reason- attention. Sure, I love guitars. They've been a huge part of my life since I was 13 years old. But the expense, effort, and attention it takes to make them necessitates a stronger person than I, or at least, a markedly less stressed out and perpetually exhausted one. I made guitars for the same reason I used to be in bands, or why I started making choppers, or had a store full of shiny bikes- to say "LOOK AT MEEEE!" and "I exist!" and "Please be impressed by my misdirected efforts to make you think I'm worth a damn". It's ok to just play my guitar, I don't have to make them for everyone else.

Side note- I've been dead now more times than I can remember. 

Every year or two, sometimes more, I lose control and any fondness for life I manage to hold onto suddenly drops out the floor like bombs from a plane. I wake up in an ambulance or the hospital a day or two later, intubated and delirious, wondering where I was when complete strangers touched my genitals to insert a catheter. My chest usually hurts from the broken ribs I got when being resuscitated, but I don't remember any of it. The way I've been discovered in some of these situations reads like fantasy. I shouldn't have been found, but I was. And I type this to you today.

I'm ashamed to admit this has happened a couple of times since I last posted. But again, each time I learn something. I can't promise I won't do it again. The psychiatrists and psychologists treating me are all convinced I will, and one of these days, it will be forever. I don't have control in those situations, so I guess we will all find out together. 

This fluid relationship between my being alive, and my being dead brings insight I would otherwise lack. So I'm grateful, in a strange and broken manner of speaking. My body has been absolutely hammered by all of this self abuse. I've lost 50% of my eyesight and am dealing with massive organ and nerve damage from overdoses. It all adds up, I guess.

But being in those situations puts you at the front of the line for psychiatric services, so you can skip the 11 month wait, and avoid the $800 per session costs. And by doing this, I finally received the diagnosis that made everything up to now make sense. I've talked about diagnoses and the weight they can lift off your shoulders before, but this was a whole new thing.

I have complex PTSD, Dysthymia, Chronic Depression, Anxiety, Dissociative Identity Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Avoidant Personality Disorder, and ADHD, with "persistent high levels of suicidal ideation that will not be mitigated by forced hospitalisation". I'm mentally disabled, by definition.

Fun, right?

Of course each issue doesn't exist in a vacuum- they all cross over and affect each other in exciting and confidence-shattering ways. I stay for weeks at a time in my apartment, and only leave to occasionally help out a band as a tech, go to the doctor, or buy food. I have one friend, and boy am I thankful for him. I have no social life, and I'm glad, because being around people fills me with absolute dread. I just can't do it any more. Goblin mode, as the kids say.

Again though- insights.

I realise just how much of my life I have wasted running around doing things in the hope people would be my lover or my friend, as opposed to doing things I wanted to do, that didn't necessitate an audience. I don't need more friends, and I never want to have a lover again. After 12 years of being single, I have peacefully realised that I'm asexual. And that I always was. If you knew me, that may sound crazy, but I was just following the path I thought I was expected to follow; not living purely from my own desires.

There is so much pressure on young men to have sex, to date the hottest girls, to be a stud. It's ridiculous. I wish I saw through it when I was young and stupid, but I didn't. I ate up my indoctrination and begged for more. And it was only through turning my back on dating and focusing on becoming a better person, did I realise the only reason I pursued relationships was because I thought it was expected of me. Yes, sex feels good. Yes, my equipment works fine. But my heart just cannot connect to the experience, to the extent that the last few times I had sex, it felt AWFUL. The more I realised who I really am, and what I want, my whole body felt completely numb, and I only stayed to satisfy the person I was with, just for politeness sake. I felt disgusting afterward. Absolutely disgusting. I hoped the next time would be different, but it wasn't. It was worse. After the fourth time I knew I had to set up boundaries, and stop sleeping with people just to make them happy. Knowing now that I can just be, be a person without having to fuck anyone else is so freeing. The expectations of others are like infra red light- I just don't see them, I can live my life without them. And the space that opens up just defies description. I'm so thankful I found out.

Again, performative.

Getting back to mental health though. Having (what I hope to be) a full diagnosis meant I could finally see the reasons for why I am the way that I am. And that allowed me to connect with the hidden communities of people who are just like me. And through those communities, I saw a world full of people in goblin mode, invisible from the nightlife and glossy social media posts we get crammed down our throats. They were damaged, but they still found humour in their realities, still found community with each other, and still kept living when living hurt incredibly.

Suddenly all of these things that isolated me weren't unusual. There are hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people that all relate to my experience, who see the world through the same lens I do. That blows my mind- I thought I was alone out here my whole life.

Even though I won't meet these people, I'm so glad to know they're out there. That helped me a lot.

But still life's realities keep piling up. My lease ends in October, and because the cost of living has risen so dramatically here in Australia, even though I have a solid rental history for the past 13 years since I lived in Dubai, I'm going to be homeless by then. I have no idea what I'm going to do, because prices aren't coming down again, and the disability pension doesn't look like it's going up. At least I have 6 months to try and come up with a plan.

I have to say, that's not how I pictured things when I was younger. I had this idiotic expectation that if I just kept trying, I'd keep going up and up endlessly. Whereas the reality is, I was at my highest point, the day I started this blog.

There's your arc, right there.

                                                                                2023.

So... How you doin?

My name is (redacted), and it's been almost a year since my last blog post.

I'm still here, which would no doubt shock a lot of people. It shocks me, to be honest.

I've been getting my life together, which is one of those things people say when they're on a journey, but have no idea how it all ends.

I do know I got to a point where I became aware of how much the things that were surrounding me were killing me. Social media, biased propagandistic fourth estate, utterly corrupt political class, uncaring corporate 'wealth for wealth's sake' money addicts, regular people I knew who never stopped to think how the way they conduct themselves might affect other people- pretty much the whole thing.

I withdrew (it's my super power). I stayed at home and didn't leave for weeks at a time. I got all my groceries delivered, I only left to go to the doctor or the hospital. More on that later. I stopped dating, to the extent that it's been 3 or 4 years since I've felt the touch of a woman. I'm not complaining- for the first time since I was a teenager I've been gifted the clarity of vision and experience without distortion through the lens of sex and the desire to attract women. And the more I moved away from caring what women think, or how to impress them, the better I've felt. Now if I do meet a woman, instead of putting them on a pedestal, I just see all the bullshit and delusion, all of the swallowed-wholesale indoctrination, the utter contempt for critical thinking or self knowledge.

Not all women, you understand. I'm sure there are some great and inspirational ones. But I'm not likely to meet them.

And so my independence has been fully realized, and I think it's safe to say I'm going through the rest of my life as a solo person, without sex or relationships. And as much as that used to terrify me, the reality is it's so freeing.

I had to go to hospital last year for an abdominal tear. I got the operation, then had to go back with complications. I ended up having a few metres of my digestive tract removed, which is worse than having my dick removed, as I actually use my digestive tract.

I don't have any vices, so eating lots of delicious food was my big joy in life. But part of my 'being honest with myself' deal, is being honest even when it's inconvenient to me. So I finally grew the courage to be honest with myself about my relationship to food, and decided to make my own mind up about what I ate, when, and how much. For the last 10 years or so I've been well into the obese category of the BMI for my height, which is 6'2". I guess it was easy to be in denial about it for so long, because up until about 3 years ago, I still had sexual attention from a lot of attractive women. But I noticed I was breathing heavy, and generally feeling awful, as well as the constant guilt after I'd eat a kilo of food or more. I had been drinking about 1.25 litres of cola every day for years, and I was disgusted with myself about it.

So I stuck to strict portion sizes, ate only healthy food, cut out sugar completely in all of its forms, and exercised my ass off (literally). I lost 35 kilograms in the second half of 2016, and now I weigh a very normal and healthy 78 kilograms, down from over 113. I feel a lot better physically, I wish I could do the same for my aching mind though.


All of that isolation, coupled with my increased awareness of all the bad things happening socially and politically here in Australia made me deeply sad. I'm already diagnosed bipolar, with PTSD, and suffer agonising anxiety problems, panic attacks, and massive social phobia. But my body decided all the stress was too much, and now it simply shuts down a lot. I have 3 types of epilepsy-type behaviour

-Loss of attention/loss of time, but still technically conscious. I 'go blank'.

-Loss of consciousness with seizures.

-Half in/half out, where if I'm walking I will just walk into traffic or into a wall, and keep standing in auto pilot, shuffling like a zombie, but in no way am I conscious of what's happening. Afterwards I feel like I do when I am returning from being totally unconscious.

It was too much to handle, because these were happening several times a day, and the exhaustion that resulted was completely debilitating. I went to my doctor and he sent me straight to the accident and emergency department of the hospital. It had been so long since I had communicated with anyone I didn't already know, that it really hit me how bad I had become.

I couldn't speak freely any more, my speech was halting and I stuttered uncontrollably. Some of you have met me in real life, so you can see what a stark contrast that is with who you have experienced. I felt like I was on thorazine, only the pain didn't go away.

A nurse came in to tell me a doctor would come see me as soon as one was free, and to "Hang in there, we're going to look after you." She put her hand on my shoulder, and I started crying, the first time in years. I hadn't been touched by another human being in so long, I'd forgotten what it was like, and the energy of her empathy streaming through her touch overwhelmed me entirely.

Pretty off the rails.

I was kept there overnight, meeting waves of doctors, and psych staff. They let me leave on the condition I saw their Crisis Assessment and Treatment Team every day. They were worried about my level of suicidal ideation, which surprised me, because that was my base level. I was told that's not normal, and I guess that made sense.

I saw a psychologist a few times a week for a few months, and found absolutely no solace or help in it. They're like telemarketers- they have a script with responses to whatever you say, and that's it. If you don't buy into 'living in denial about real issues in order to have a better (ignorant) quality of life', then they simply have nothing to offer. Making someone else rich while they give me nothing in return seems empty, so I stopped.

Previous to working as a security contractor/bodyguard, I used to make guitars for one of Australia's two biggest guitar companies. I went back for two weeks at the beginning of 2016, then had to quit as I was hospitalized for my abdominal problems. While I was there, it couldn't help but hit me in the face how much the place had changed in the 14 years since I first worked there- as one of the original 9 employees. It had become this soulless machine, existing not for making quality beautiful instruments, but money only.

People were taken advantage of, then discarded. The working conditions were terrible, no one was appreciated, and ideas were discouraged. It was a true factory, making high quality, soulless guitars.

That's not right.

And I determined as a way to improve my mental health, to start making my own guitars, completely independently for the first time. Sure, I've knocked out a few by myself before, but nothing with commercial aspirations.

It was really important to me to have a relationship with each piece of wood that I crafted- not to ram it through a bunch of uninspired workers and slap it together like they do.

The first thing I noticed as I started doing it was how incredibly hard it is. People have no idea how much goes into the making of a guitar by hand. And even though I technically knew, the real-world physical implementation of all of that knowledge still blew my mind.

Still being bipolar depressive, getting the motivation to start every day was intensely hard, and some days I had to just admit that 'Today is not the day", put the tools down, and try again tomorrow. Some days that fog wouldn't lift for a week. But I stayed with it.

Still suffering from crushing anxiety every day, the fear was something I did not expect, and was not ready for. Every upcoming process, like making a scarf joint for a neck for example, or hand making a custom pickup, left me feeling more scared than any human person has ever made me feel. I would get shut down by the fear, unable to find a way past it to simply start the process.

Someone I really enjoy is Mr Adam Savage, who you might now from the show Mythbusters. He has a YouTube channel and website called Tested.com, where you get to see behind the scenes with him in his world. He makes all types of things, from all types of materials, and his knowledge of manufacturing/maker processes is staggering. So in short, he's a guy who knows his onions, and produces world-class work.

I had an epiphany watching Adam, because he would run into problems pretty regularly, and he'd do things that I never thought he would do- make huge mistakes. And instead of feeling suicidal, he would go home early, have a hot shower and a cup of tea or something, and just try again tomorrow. To see someone I looked up to so much was going through some of the same things as I did was so validating, and it changed my life.

So I forced myself to work through my fears, to forgive me mistakes, and more than anything- to just keep on truckin'. And the result is here (opens in a new window).

I have decided to call my business Temple Guitars, and have been in talks with guys from some amazing bands from Europe and the States who are into endorsing my guitars internationally.

I'm still struggling with being a person, living in this fucked up time in history, with all this baggage I carry. But I'm putting one foot in front of the other, and trying to find support in my friends (and to nurture those relationships, and give them regular time and effort), and seeking out the beauty in the world, to balance out all the hateful static.

This is me, January 2017-

 

I hope you're doing ok.

We are all ants.

So here's the thing.

In each of us, I feel like there should be a concept of an ideal person. Who in our heart of hearts we want to be. Not the person we fantasize about- the one that everybody likes, or who does amazing and noteworthy things.

I mean the person you get when you strip away the artifice. The pure being, the meat and potatoes. The person peering out blinking into the light after years of being naked in the dark of your mind; covered in celebrity gossip, conspiracies, and useless trivia like what a tompion is.

The person you'd be if you were able to be completely honest with yourself, the one unencumbered by ego. The ideal, I guess.

That person, you'd imagine, would be open and compassionate. They'd want to listen, and not judge. They would be generous and calm, warm, patient. Available.

But as I've gotten to know myself, and more importantly, other people; I've discovered my pure internal person isn't anything like that. I've been called all of those things in the past, and I admit I used to cling to them quite tenaciously, because they were nice things to hear. Like they were little trophies you get in the friendship Olympics. But friendship is just a lie. It's code for "I'm insecure and need the validation of others." It means you lack the character or strength to see the world and the people in it for what they are- self interested, weak, brainless.

People really wear me down. More and more I've felt like I'm drowning in an endless ocean of stupidity. And just when I think the worst might be behind me, I realise it's just another strain of stupid, and I didn't recognise it in time. 

I guess that makes me the most stupid of all.

I don't mind racists or bigots. They're scared of something, they have their reasons. It doesn't make them right, but I view them as single-celled organisms of a sort. They can't really change unless something amazing and life changing helps them to, and I'm not that thing.

I don't mind rich people/politicians. People who have more money then they could ever spend. They have a sickness, and they need help. I won't help them, to be honest I wouldn't piss on them if they were on fire, but I don't mind them. They're just blinded by the fear of not having everything. What an odd thing to be scared of, in a world where most people just hope for something.

The people that make me despair are the hopeful ones. The optimists. The ones who think "Maybe if I vote for another millionaire, this one will be different and will care about my issues." The people who write "No bad vibes" on their social media, and think it's a magical talisman to ward off anyone who might say something honest and critical about their vacuous and conceited excuse for an existence. The ones who campaign for animal rights, while looking for their palm-oil loaded lip balm in a sweatshop hand bag. The vegans who smoke. Anyone religious.

I swear things used to be different. I swear I used to meet people who weren't obsessed and utterly delighted with themselves. People who understood the concept of  'consequences'. People who would do what they said they'd do, who respected others as a default setting. People who could think.  People who didn't treat their lives like an advertising campaign.

 There was a time before you were born, I call it precomposition. It's the opposite of decomposition, and I use it for a reason. Before you were born, you were dead. You didn't exist, your atoms were scattered across existence. You didn't exist, and it was this for an infinite eternity stretching backwards. When you grow old and die, your body decomposes, and those disparate elements that collectively form you are cast back out into the Universe, and that death lasts an infinite eternity stretching into the future, forever.

And in between, in this tenuous breath of existence, we live- slung between two vast eternities full of death. And that makes life precious. A plant is maraculous, your penis is a flower, we are all ants.

When I started this blog 56,500 page views ago, I was a different person. I started writing because it was like a splinter I needed to get out. I needed to express myself, I needed to articulate my way through this mystery I'm in, I needed a part of me to come above ground, to be known.

And through the years people have come and gone through here. Words were left, connections made, we've had some fights- good things.

But I don't want to be known any more. 

I used to curate my profile on the internet, I was everywhere. Forums, Soundcloud, Reverb Nation, Myspace, G+, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, The Guardian, Turntable.fm, Instagram, here... Now only Instagram and this are left, and this is about to die as well. My Instagram is private, and I'm not accepting anyone new. (Edit- I deleted that Instragram, so now I can't see it either.)

I used to believe people were worth reaching out to, that somewhere in these vast oceans of self congratulatory idiocy and comment section pack mentality there would be someone who understood the potential of what we are, who held themselves to a moral and ethical standard just because it was the right thing to do, someone who didn't give a fuck about fads or competitive social media consumerism. Someone you could climb a tree with and talk and listen to the music of the breeze through the leaves, and who wouldn't need to post their location online every three minutes or ignore you while they text a million other people without saying anything that would ever matter. Someone who wasn't completely fake. Someone who understood that the most beautiful things in the world can't be seen with your eyes.

I've given up in increments.

I've been single for almost half a decade. And by single I mean, I dated someone for a fortnight, and didn't sleep with them. And I've defended my independence completely. I came to a point a long time ago where it doesn't matter how good you look, if you have nothing to say, then neither do I. If in a world of infinite possibilities, the only thing you can think of is Instagramming is pictures of yourself, then you're a human black hole. Like, post a picture of a dog just once. Dogs are amazing.

I've had so many conversations with girls who say they want to know me better, to involve themselves romantically, but all they have been able to offer in return are games that aren't fun. And they get so upset when I say no, they can't compute why a guy wouldn't want to bend over backwards, spend all his money and attention on them, or trust them; just because they look cute. They get upset, and then immediately forget they were upset as they throw themselves into something with someone else, showing me, proving to me that they were never an option anyway. Like I needed proof.

I hate every guy that's out there begging for pussy. Every guy that right now is listening to a girl talk about nothing, or is just watching her while she texts her friends or one of the other guys she's fucking. And he doesn't just get up and walk out, because he wants to fuck. There's a word for that, and it's 'simp'. If you stopped enabling horrendous women, they'd cease to exist. If you stopped valuing their physical being over the real them, all of this ho-ass/trap queen/bad bitch/ behaviour would evaporate overnight. They do it because you let them. Like politicians. If women had to start thinking critically for a change, and we all managed to stop trading sex for financial security, maybe then women could reach their true potential. But they fuck for money, and men let them. Kill me.

I hate every person who thinks it's fine to discriminate against LGBTQI+ people, as if they chose to be L,G,B,T,Q,I, or +. As if their sexuality is an option, and they don't deserve human rights because of who they love. Homophobia is hilarious- two people love each other, so we must ostracise and limit them? Pass laws to stop them from uniting publicly in marriage? What the fuck are these people so afraid of? Love?

I hate every third and fourth wave feminist who did a women's studies course at University and then bitches about how they can't get a job in a stem field. I can't either, because I was an arts major. That's how it works! Every stupid girl who thinks logic and evidence aren't necessary, all you need is a belief in 'the patriarchy'.  I'm a white male- and I've been waiting for my privilege all my life. Every retarded Jessica Valenti/Clementine Ford clone from the most entitled class of people on planet earth, who fills Tumblr and The Guardian with endless vomit about how oppressed they are, while making house payments with Patreon money from people they ignore if they meet them socially.

Idiots who support the Catholic Church, and believe it will all be better now. The aspirationally wealthy. The editors at The Guardian. People who think Hillary Clinton isn't a Wall Street shill. Money is a sickness. Humanity is obsessed with stacking paper, but will fight viciously against learning skills that will help them survive because it distracts them from what Drake is wearing. People who think smoking is/was/ever will be ok. The list could go on forever.

So I give up. I've tried to love you all. I've tried to be optimistic too. I've tried to wait it out in the hope some real people would appear one day and we could all celebrate the fact we're not alone. But I'm alone,. I've always been alone. I'm not even upset, to be honest. I haven't cried in years. But I'm internally stripped. I just don't have feels for you any more. I don't care who lives, who dies. I'm done with meaningless words, with trust, with hope.

This is how it is, I've lived long enough to feel supremely confident things are only getting worse, and so if you're one of the people who still reads this and asks me when I'll be posting next, the answer is "When hell freezes over."

In the past I used to think about all the people I was once close to, and how on a long enough timeline, everyone drifts away. I think of all the effort I put into staying in touch and communicating with people, and how through it all, I still ended up alone. And a strange thing happened, instead of viewing being alone as an anomaly, as something uncomfortable and strange; I got used to it. It became normal, and I realised all of this 'trying to be a part of the human group' was just conditioning. 

We don't need each other. And people have proven to me that they don't have anything I want. It's a con. An anachronism. We don't need each other. We never did. Our ancestors, sure. But not us. We're easier to manipulate in groups. Well, you are.  And if we all believe in love, then we all buy things to be more loveable. Women demand you have a nice car, that costs money. Women don't need a nice car because of double standards. Men let women become the gatekeepers of sexuality, and it was all downhill from there. 

We are absolutely manipulated and indoctrinated from the day we're born- from the fairy tales and baby songs we hear, to advertising, and our pointless desire to conform and fit in. And even when people want to rebel against conformity, they do it in predictable ways that legions of others did before them. They validate their individuality by following trends. It's pathetic. 

I was in a Malaysian Airlines flight a while back, just after two of its planes dropped out of the sky, and it dropped what felt like a very long way in a very short amount of time. People screamed, faces white with panic. Some women cried. The rain was slamming against the fuselage, and there wasn't a person among us who didn't believe we were all about to die. When the lights came back on, and we evened out, I realised I was grinning from ear to ear. I was starving for nonexistence.

We're just slightly hairy mammals running around trying to fuck each other, win the most tokens, and stay young forever; and it's stupid.

So have fun with it, but I'm not playing.








 

I think I get it now.

When people I've loved killed themselves, I'd heard others describe it as "a cry for help".

But how do you cry for help and not die?

And who wants to help?

And what could they possibly do to pry away the rust of years and years of loneliness, self-hatred, feelings of failure, of feeling like you don't matter? How could anyone possibly help with that?

Doesn't all of that presuppose some kind of Utopian ideal? That life is somehow beautiful and filled with wonder if you can just stop feeling tired and sad all the time?

I thought life was packed to the gunnels with dissappointing people who are just fucking hateful, who act like they're the only thing that matters, that you're an inconvenience or an embarrassment. Who think they're amazing and yet they have never done anything of note in their entire lives. Never even tried. People who think going to Bali from Australia makes them a world traveller. People who think George Ezra writes good songs, that leftist progressives aren't destroying Europe, or that the right aren't absolutely fascists-in-waiting.

People who all tell you one thing to your face and something else when your back is turned. In Turkey they have a special name for that, but I can't remember what it is.  

People who will fuck you over for money without a second thought.

People who will use you for everything you have, but when you need something you're suddenly all by yourself.

I don't know, you guys.

I think I've run out of steam.

Is that a cry for help?

It's dusk. And if you strain your eyes...

I never had a Father.

I don’t say that for sympathy, more by way of explanation.

I would imagine that having a Father, being in that situation, he would share his knowledge. Impart wisdom, if you will.

“Here is how you shave, son.”

Or, “You have to save for retirement, because the world is uncertain.”

A Father could show you how to… Well, I’ve run out of words, because I don’t know. Like I said before, I never had a Father.

I do wonder how it would have felt, to have him touch my head and tell me I did well at something. Or if he said he was proud of me. I wonder how I might have felt as a person, if I didn't have absentee parents? If, when I was growing up, I had parents that wanted to be around me. 

A Father that didn't treat me like a sock he came in, back in the early 70's.

I did meet him once, when I was 36.

I was working in the shop I owned, selling bicycles, of all things. A boy came in with his girlfriend, he was High School age. And there was something about him I couldn't leave alone. He was my brother, of course, but neither of us knew it at the time.

And as we talked, somehow questions were asked, and the truth was revealed. He told our Father, and our Father invited me for dinner.

When I arrived it was just him, alone in his house. I guess I was hoping for a family reunion- to meet the sister and brothers I’d never met.

But it was just him in the house. He drove us to a bistro, we ate a roast, prepared by some other people I’d never met. He may have known them, that information is unclear.

And he offered me only one piece of advice. I’d learned to shave, you see. I had a superannuation account. I worked out these things on my own, through trial and error.

He told me that “All women are crazy.”

I left him there, to dine with his prejudices, and we never met again.

He was quite useless, ultimately.

I never got any warning. I saw the signs, but didn’t speak the language yet. But if I did, I would have learned about now before I arrived.

You turn a corner, you see.

In life, we turn a lot of corners, mostly banal. But once in a while you turn a corner that matters, and the thing about it is you don’t know it matters until years later, when you rue the day or celebrate it.

I turned a corner, and walked down a hallway, and at the time it just felt like 'more life', but in reality it was like that ramp onto a plane. Once you walk down it, the powers that be won't let you come back through.

 And when that plane lands, you're suddenly 44 years old. And where before, you used to walk into rooms and be noticed, now you're invisible. You are irrelevant. And if people do notice you it's only with annoyance, because you're standing in front of something they want to look at. Something that isn't ugly.

Young people lack foresight. Lack an overview. We all feel invincible, don’t we? At least, as invincible as one can feel when you’re crippled by self doubt, by unfulfilled ambition, by fear, by suicidal thoughts.

But one day you realise your best years are behind you. Far behind you. And you wasted them being scared and caring about the wrong people. Trying to fit into a world where you never fit in, instead of just standing on top of a mountain and letting the world speak to you directly.

You realise you’re ugly now. You have a smell about you that you can’t wash off. Like old people have a smell, and maybe they don’t know it either.

You realise you’ve spent your whole life waiting for the feeling of sadness to end, and you realise that it never will. You’ll be alone on your deathbed, a tear running down your cheek as you realise your sadness was your best friend through everything you’ve been through. The only thing that never left you for something better.
 
You were the best in the world at cultivating sadness.

And it occurs to me that it would have been nice to have a Father to explain all of that. To sit me down and tell me right to my face that your body will fall apart and get fat and disgust people. And you will be too sad, bereft of energy to change.

That you will lie on your bed in a kind of shock for four years and counting, and if people do see you running an errand they have no idea, that you're not really there at all. You're exploring the past in your memories, trying to find a flight back to mattering.

And you will know it’s pointless anyway, because you could carve a new body for yourself but you’ll still be dead inside. You've seen too much now.

There is more to a man than the physical, of course. I’ve met some women who for reasons that remain unknown to me, felt that I had something to offer.

And they have tried to touch my body, and there was a time I would have loved them to. But my body now is a thing I hide. And the thought of lying with a woman fills me with revulsion, not for the act, but for what they would see.

And I’m not mature enough, I lack the humanity to understand that they might not care about that. Making them laugh, feel special, understanding and listening- all of these things can, in the right person, engender affections.

All I can think about in those moments before I reject them and make them hurt and angry is the horror of what I’ve become under my clothing. And all of the distance between my heart and anything that exists on this planet.

I don’t know what self love is, I never did.

And I don’t know how to describe the feelings I have now, because I’m feeling them too much. Sure, I can name them, but further analysis requires understanding and distance. And right now they blanket me. They appear as skin does. They’re me, and I am them.

If I survive them, I may give them names, but I won’t survive them. That skin will just grow thicker until it becomes the soil in my grave.

The truth is, the only time I feel anything approaching happiness, is when I exist in denial regarding the fact I am slowly falling apart.

I know this is not the end, but I can see it from here.

I can see it from here.

Are you a retard? The answer may surprise you.

This will probably come off mad Tumblr-y.

I don't know if it's the world, or just my interpretation of it, but it feels like almost every time I encounter another human lately, the exchange is so dementing and fucked up it leaves me desperate to just read a book alone or something.

Do you feel like that?

I deleted my Twitter, which probably won't seem like a big deal, but to me it was a big deal. It was where I went to leave my thoughts, and this blog suffered as a result (from lack of content, not from any measure of genius or anything.) I'm not trying to say there was anything worth your time on there, but it felt good to have a place to post my thoughts. Until it didn't. So after many years and tens of thousands of posts, it's gone.

It got to the point where it felt like no one was seeing it except for me. And that's ok, I'm not sad about that. But there didn't seem like any point maintaining it if it was just for me. My thoughts are in me- I don't need an app for that.

On eBay I keep having people buy all the stuff I'm selling (I'm into minimalism now), but not paying for any of it. It's a thing. Now that there are no real penalties for buying things and never paying or answering emails, a class of scummy people out there have sort of invaded the site and maybe that's their way of trolling. How bored would you have to be though? It's frustrating, it makes me hate them quite passionately. 

Or there are other people who buy items but consistently dick me around on when they will pick them up. Are they trolling too? Do they love the thought of another human being waiting outside their apartment block in the cold for 45 minutes? Do they love not showing up at all? They sure love leaving negative feedback on my carefully curated eBay profile if you cancel a transaction because weeks later they still haven't showed up despite several appointments being made. eBay sucks now, I think it's been pretty heavily documented, but there's my 5 cents. 

I made the stupid mistake of creating a profile on The Guardian site. Most of the time it goes pretty smoothly, but there are inevitably people who just cannot understand simple logic. They accuse me of saying things I never said, or they get the wrong end of something simple and twist it into nonsense, then try to make me answer for it. Are people really that bad at thinking? Or are they getting some kind of kick out of just being weird and illogical for no apparent reason? What kind of payoff is there in writing weird uninteresting factually-bereft bullshit on a forum? How damaged are people?

Meanwhile, IRL, simple things like "I'll meet you at 7" turn into mind-bending situations where the other person leaves before 7 and then harasses me for not turning up.

How does that work?

It feels like every promise someone makes is hot air. What are people getting out of all of this weird deceptive fucking around? Is it fun to do?

And the thing is, I'm quite delighted and happy with my life when I'm by myself. It's only other people that frustrate me and make me angry/murderous.

I made friends with a really attractive young woman completely by chance, and because I learned a few years ago that relationships are just poison, I didn't try to seduce her. She eventually asked me if I wanted to be with her, and I told her that someone her age (her 20's) should be with a guy her age. Not my age (44). I could literally be her Dad. The maths check out.

She stormed out furiously and never got in touch again, so I guess I can't even have friends now. I did her a favour, but ok. I'm an asshole.

I've deleted so much of myself off the web in increments. Every now and then I think about deleting this blog. It might happen eventually. No real reason not to. Do you know my will just says to cremate me, and then throw me in the bin? You do now.

All of the physical things I built up around myself have been sold off one by one. I had over 35 decent and collectible guitars in my collection, more than 25 are gone and I'm working on the rest. And with every treasured possession I sell, comes a sense of release and freedom. It's hard to explain, and I hate to quote Fight Club, but the things you own really do end up owning you.

I've donated or sold all of my furniture, gadgets. I want to take up less space. I am building a camper van. I feel like human origami.

And maybe it's all a reaction to the fact that when most people get older they are considered socially irrelevant. I don't know, I think social things are irrelevant, so to be irrelevant to irrelevant people and situations is a mark of distinction. But this is coming from the guy who deleted his Twitter due to lack of interest.

I like older people's stories. I like the wisdom some of them accumulate. I think young people are boring to be honest. Things that look great but have no substance just kill me to death from boredom. Anything that is solely based around looks is so anti-intellectual and shallow, and I find I just can't wring any enjoyment out of that.  

I've passed that high water mark where you can't be around people in their twenties any more without clearly seeing and feeling the generation gap. A few years ago if there were people in their twenties around, we'd just hang out and it was situation normal. But now I'd rather chainsaw my dick off. The shit they say/think/do. Nope, I don't want it.

So what do single people in their forties do? Just slowly disappear socially until you're just a guy in someone else's anecdote from days gone by that no one gives a fuck about any more? I'm ok with it, I'm just wondering what the play is here.

Do we all just crawl off to die, and in the meantime we holiday in Morocco, learn how to speak another language (Esperanto), and feed the ducks? 

Were people always so thoroughly disappointing, but I had to reach this point to see it? Are most people on Earth really that stupid and self-centred and illogical and all the other dumb things they go to great amounts of effort to be?

If you could preview life from the womb like a track on iTunes, I'd have clicked no.






 

Yeah, wow.

No one reads this any more.

And it's that fact that gives me the balls to admit what I'm about to... Like I can whisper my secret to the internet, then turn off my computer and the poison is transmuted out of me and into a server somewhere in downtown San Francisco, and just quarantined there forever.

Ever since I can remember I/we have been bombarded with ads on TV and in print of people in love. (I turned off the TV years ago, but humour me here...) This subconscious signal that is constantly reinforced every time we go to the movies. Like it's the purpose of life- to meet someone and fall hopelessly for them, breed, and grow old together.

But wait a minute... Who the fuck said that's the purpose of life?

And why should we listen to them?

I'm a romantic at heart, I have always loved the concept of love. I could fall in love so easily (and in reality never fall in love at all). I pined for it when I didn't have it. Drugs.

Love is drugs in your head that your body makes, in this thing called life which is a dream you have between deaths.

It's chemicals and electrical impulses. It's natures way to say to you "Make babies so you can evolve into whatever I have planned for your species in 465 billion years." It's your ego saying "The world needs little half-you's running around. It's CRUCIAL." It's a hunger pang for your balls.

That's all.

I've been single about 4 years now. Dated one person for two weeks. Otherwise, just me.

The thought of this terrified me for so long. Every new day was proof-positive that I was a loser, unloveable, impossible to want, ugly. At the time of writing, there are 11,856,727 females in this country...

... And not one of them wants me.

And my whole sense of self was based around that. If I needed proof that I was just awful all I had to do was wake up alone again. Women had this all-consuming power over me, through their approval (or lack of it), which is really just a terrible responsibility to place on people you've largely never met, and that no one really wants. It wasn't their fault I wanted them, it wasn't their responsibility to be anything to me at all.

Eventually after a few years went by I realised that this situation was likely to not only not change, but it was pretty much guaranteed to get worse with each passing birthday and family size pizza.

And after I struggled with denial and all manner of other Kübler-Ross style symptoms, the inevitable happened... I accepted it. I accepted that the love I had always dreamed about was never, ever going to happen. And after a year or so of that, a strange thing happened.

I realised I love being single. I prefer it. I realised it wouldn't matter who came along and said they cared about me- I don't want it. I don't want it, and I never wanted it. But I thought I wanted it, because it is part of our shared programming to believe we want it.

Right now you're probably freaking out at the 'shared programming' bit and thinking I've utterly lost my mind. But if you think about it, advertising is mental manipulation of you by others with the goal of making money from you. If you couple up and have children, it opens up a million opportunities for businesses and products to sell you things you'd never buy if you were single. So the broadcast narrative in ads (and TV shows that are basically opportunities to be long ads with product placement) is to tell you to fall into this thing called love; and to glamourise it like they do with every other product they want you to buy, and to make you feel like a loser if you don't have it.

So, through all of this freeing realisation, and the understanding that I was going to be single for the rest of my life and die alone, came acceptance. And from that acceptance grew the realisation that not only was this new state of affairs fine, it was preferable to me. And the second it became preferable to me, all of a sudden I was in charge of my own life and direction, and my agency and self-esteem weren't held hostage by all of the women in the world who never wanted that responsibility in the first place.

Being single is my choice, and no one else has a say in it. I don't rely on anyone else to be single. No one can take it from me. And most importantly, it's not contingent upon the approval of people outside of myself.

Talk about liberating! I wish I had the capacity to come to this decision 20 years ago.

But that never would have happened, because 20 years ago my biggest problem when it came to women was trying to get a night to myself. When you are spoiled for choice, your instinct is to choose carefully, as opposed to choosing nothing at all.

And of course (because this always happens) the second I had changed my mind and celebrated my single life, the drought ended and I was propositioned for sex like it was the eve of the apocalypse. So many girls who I had always thought of as just friends or acquaintances suddenly felt a burning need to tell me they had wanted me for a long time, but only had the courage now to tell me.

And even the thought of having sex again didn't sway me, because (here's something gross) I can satisfy myself sexually.

But I still delight in women.

I still love the little things they do, the things they say, idiosyncratic personal things. Style, poise, the music of their voices.

And I appreciate those things the same way I appreciate someone else's Lamborghini- it sure is pretty, but I don't want that responsibility. I can love it without owning it. And I seek nothing in return.

Something I have been thinking about for the last few years was, what would the defining thread of the next chapter of my life be? I feel like I have found it.

I have plans, things I want to achieve, things I want to see, do, experience. And they are all personal, solo things. Just nature and I. Just the planet and little me. I like feeling small in the face of nature's utter majesty.

For the first time in my life, I'm happy.

I'm happy.