A Speccy Man Has A Breakdown - day 19

Hear me read this

<< Day 16 (I skipped day 17 and day 18.)

I keep switching between two thoughts as I go through my material for this book.

Yes, include that.

No, that’s awful.

The problem is, the stuff that feels most awful is often the stuff that has the greatest impact. So what do I do with it?

I press on. That’s why I’m doing this in public, in real time. It’s the only way I can get it done.

Sticking my head back into that difficult time does two things to me: it can reinfect me very quickly, but it also shows me how different I am now – so much better able to sit with a wide range of feelings, with a clearer sense of my own worth.

Just in case.

I drew this picture to capture something about what it felt like to leave hospital – the sense that ordinary life, entirely normal life, was something I might need to protect myself from.

It makes me smile now, because the solemn, anxious expression and the ridiculous helmet are kind of absurd.

It wasn’t absurd at the time. I remember getting on the Tube in London and closing my eyes the whole journey. Which is odd, when I think about it – surely closing your eyes makes you more vulnerable, not less. But it wasn’t other people I feared: I couldn’t cope with the sensory overload. The sheer noise and changing light and movement.

I just shut it out.

It’s not only emotional complexity I’m navigating out loud here, as I share this not-quite-daily work in progress.

Yesterday evening I spent hours setting up payments. My original plan – ask you to email me your address, then I’d send bank details – created unnecessary friction. To simplify things, I’ve switched to Stripe, the secure payment system behind many web payments.

Inside Stripe’s dashboard I created a single product, then three separate prices, because shipping to the UK is one thing but everywhere else varies. I’ve settled on an average for Europe and another for the rest of the world. In some cases I’ll make a loss on postage. In others I might just come out ahead.

Anyway. Here are the links:

Thank you for being here while I work this out.

One more thing. I make these recordings because a voice carries something that words on a screen don’t – hesitation, the places where I nearly laugh, actual humanity. While I was recording this one, I was interrupted by a notification from the BBC News app on my phone. I kept it in, because why not.

I have no idea how many people listen. The download numbers on my website are high enough to make me wonder if they’re real listeners, bots, or some kind of glitch. If you’ve never clicked the audio link at the top of these emails, today might be the day.

At the time of writing, there are only (ha!) 222 copies of this book available. If you know someone who might want one, or just find this project interesting, feel free to pass this along.

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👉 For a change, today: if you or someone you know is struggling please call a crisis line, and / or take a look at Reasons To Stay.

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Start from the beginning here.