Prologue

Day One. It's a grey Sunday afternoon in London and in the distance I can hear a blackbird tweeting. Wherever I am, I try to listen for the sound of birdsong, because when I hear the birds it reminds me that I am not alone. All around us, there are these flying, winged creatures tweeting happily who have no care for time, money, smartphones, Kim Kardashian, climate change, Donald Trump, Brexit or plastic consumption. Birds allow themselves to just 'be' and enjoy the wind in their wings, the gift of flight and their mellifluous voices that they let ring out – even in the busiest cities in the world.

I hear you, Mr. Bird.

As I type, I am coming down from some severe panic attacks I had both on Friday and Saturday. For the ultimate fear has come again to haunt me – the fear of death. My own mortality. It is a cruel joke of life that the one thing we can be certain of is death. Everything else is a gamble, everything else is right time, right place. It's a craps shoot, but death – you can rely on that. And no one can change the rules – the clock is set and so it goes.

I think of the birds, who have no care for this. They fly around and live until they die with no thought of their own egos or self. It is a matter of course for them and they can be fully present for the few years they are here, accomplishing their goal of nesting or breeding, or vainly trying to escape the hands of domestic cats.

Recently, I have begun meditating every day and to try to clear my mind I listen for the birds. They remind me that life is all around us and life is a shared experience between many organisms. If only somehow we could connect with one another and share the fragility and preciousness of it all. If there was a way to comprehend the sense and the senselessness, the purpose and the purposelessness.

In an attempt to rationalise what is, in my opinion, a completely rational fear, I have come up with a few reasons as to why I am blindly panicking about death. The first is that I am now 35 years old – soon to be 36 in the next two and a half months – and I have lived my life somewhat deterministically, thinking that fate or destiny would somehow blow me in the right direction and guide me. This has left me with something I am not entirely happy with. Reflecting on my 20s and early part of my 30s, I feel very sad and very sorry for who I used to be: I worked my way through a series of jobs in media for 12 years. Starting off at The Sun Online, I worked 7 day nights on a 10 day work pattern that cut through my social and love life for almost two years. Then I went on to a bar and restaurant magazine called Theme for 2 years as Web Editor and Staff Writer. I basically did nothing but procrastinate all day – I would stare at a computer screen and browse eBay and various shopping sites until 5.30 came and I would clock off. For 2 years. The most productive part of that two years was my masters degree in Contemporary Performance – that is a whole other story. Then I spent two years as a feature writer for a magazine called Area – produced for an estate agent, it was empty work. Writing things all day that no one cared about or looked at. I decided to leave that job after another two years and spent 6 months unemployed, where I had 'zen-like' insights that I will attach as an appendix when I print these journal entries in book form.

To cut a long story short I then spent 5 and a half years doing my PhD, during which I got a part-time job as a feature writer at Immediate Media writing advertorials for a range of nationwide magazines, then I became a lecturer at UEL teaching advertising – which isn't even my home discipline – for 2 years (more background on this in other journals). My last stint in industry was as Head of Content at Time Inc UK, where I was in charge of a team of six copywriters, but emotionally I was a wreck. During that time I had my viva for my PhD and received major corrections, which was a shock to my whole supervision team, and I also decided to come off of antidepressants. I started taking those because the crippling anxiety of my PhD could lock me in my bed, staring at my ceiling frozen in fear about what to do with the day. This continued for about a year – from November 2015 through to September 2017 when I finally handed in my PhD. Which I half-assed by the way so that it was 'good enough' for examination.

When the chance came to be made redundant at Time Inc, I exited gracefully. I was terrible at my job: I was very angry and emotive all the time and in such a corporate setting, it was not welcome. I, of course, thought I was bolshy and sticking up for my team. Some days, I would go to the Tate Modern, which was opposite the Blue Fin Building where Time Inc was based and I would stand in the Turbine Hall and cry for my whole lunch hour. I was an emotional wreck.

So from March 2018 to September 2018, I basically stayed on my couch all day every day, watching true crime programmes and not really doing much except picking up my unemployment cheque every two weeks and applying to jobs in a cursory manner. I did manage to finish my PhD corrections, though, and my shitty examiners allowed me to have my PhD the day before my 35th birthday – 25th May 2018. When I finished my PhD, I resolved to myself that I would never put myself in a position where someone could give me something or have the ability to take it away – for example, my PhD could be conferred or removed by those examiners. But more than that our happiness can be taken away by lovers when they leave us, by employers when they sack us or by friends when they deceive us. I resolved I would never allow myself to be at the mercy of someone else's whims.

The rest of the time, I was too emotionally exhausted from the toll of my PhD and the dismal failure of returning to the media industry and so I checked out. I checked out of my life and I let it go by, because I was too exhausted to do anything else. I would drink a bottle of wine five times a week and although I tried to exercise (running 8k 4 times a week) I wasn't losing weight because of the disproportionate amount of booze I was drinking.

One important thing that did happen during that hot summer of 2018 in between the countless true crime documentaries I watched and seasons one through seven of American Horror Story (and many many many many many many more pointless TV shows and films) is that I had an idea. At first, it started out as a very simple idea, which I provisionally called 'The Atelier'. Now, the Atelier was initially supposed to be a live-work space for me so I could start taking photographs and making videos for social media. I think during July in one of my more energetic spurts I tried – and failed – to put a makeshift studio space in my bedroom and bathroom, and I didn't want to say goodbye to my creative work entirely, but it was getting harder to make creative projects.

So I toyed around with this idea, looked online at a couple of spaces that could work, excitedly told lots of people about it and then – because I was unemployed – I parked it and went back to Netflix and focused my efforts on another opportunity. The possibility of going back to UEL came up, which I was eternally grateful for because I felt very comfortable in that role and I needed time to relax and plan a new direction and a new course of action. So I pursued that with full force from July through to September, until I got a contract on the 17th September 2018 – Dr. Allan Taylor, Senior Lecturer in Media at the University of East London.

What's even more funny is that the jobs that I was so apathetic about and half-assed for 12 years had become the avenues through which I would make my way into academia. My home discipline is actually performance and visual culture, but because I had not pursued my performance career with full force, because I had resigned myself to 'making a living' with a 'proper career' that ultimately had me living in a sub-depressive state for over a decade of my life, that is what I had become. A 'media practitioner'. A former feature writer.

Returning to UEL, I fell into old habits. Old habits being throwing myself at things full force and wavering in and out of states of stress and anxiety that ultimately made me unhappy. It was in November 2018 when something hit the light-switch in my brain, illuminating something I had never considered before. It was a particularly stressful week at work and I was behaving in an erratic and emotional way, staring into the abyss of anxiety when I took a step back. None of it matters. I could lose my job – it wouldn't matter. I'd figure it out somehow. I don't have to bow to this pressure. This job is not a matter of life and death. It does not matter. Paying the rent does not matter. Having the latest iPhone does not particularly matter.

But this is more than a realisation about materialism. I realised the only person I have is me. And I'd treated myself pretty badly over the years. I'd punished myself, I'd criticised myself and I'd hated myself. I'd worried and worried and worried until it chewed me up and paralysed me, and the only consistent, reliable way I'd found of dealing with it was to drink. And by drinking, I could continue to treat myself badly while supplying my body and brain with a chemical that would make me feel temporarily 'okay'.

I realised that I matter. What I want matters. My dreams matter. The people I love matter. Creating connections with other human beings – that matters. But somehow the narrative in my head was that I was egotistical and selfish, that I didn't want to love anyone or be in a relationship because I deserved to be alone, that I needed to run away from my family and friends because they could not understand me or the burden I have. But now I see that my love and desire should have driven every choice and decision I've ever made, not fear or worry.

Suddenly I was sad. Not just because I had failed to enjoy so many different relationships, experiences and moments, but because I had lived my life as someone who was very scared, very anxious. And the only way I could stop being scared was to project myself as the effervescent party boy, full of life and confidence.

Anyone who has been in a relationship with me knows that façade slips very quickly as you start to get to know me. I had thrown out blame to other people and the world. Why me? Why did it have to be me?

Now I realise that it was me because I am one of very few people who could have endured so much and survived. I recognise that my intelligence is a great power that not everyone has and it needs to be channelled into a force for the greater good. I can see that I am not tortured – I have been a prisoner of my own mind.

As soon as this ball started to roll, I knew I had been doing myself a great injustice. But rather than punishing myself for what I was not doing, I decided to change my thinking:

I love my body because it is fully functioning. I can lose weight if I choose to – my body is a constant work in progress!

When I'm feeling anxious, it's because I need to do something about a certain situation. What choices can I make today that will make me feel I have done my part to make this situation right?

I am not a bad person. When people react to me in a certain way they are responsible for their own behaviour and cannot expect me to behave in the way they want. If I believe what I have done is right, I do not have to pander to their expectations

On Saturday 10th November 2018, I decided to stop drinking for 3 months. I spent Christmas sober and NYE of 2018 was one of the hardest days – trying to navigate my way back home through London. But I did it and I lost quite a bit of weight without exercising.

In late November, a live-work space came up in Forest Hill. I was so excited to see it. "This is it!" I thought... The Atelier. I went home at night and I started to dream about what the Atelier could be. What if I did interviews with artists on a chaise longue? What if those artists came to show small work-in-progress showings? What if it was an experiential and digital space? So many exciting possibilities – I started to think about how I might work on this project in the evening, how it might be branded, doing social media, the videos I would produce for it.

I remember the day I went to see the space and... It was not what I wanted. Too small. But what happened was that the idea of the Atelier was reinvigorated. It became 'the thing' that I wanted to work towards. It became 'the plan'. It seemed to flawlessly bring together everything about me: being the exuberant and audacious host of a contemporary arts space in London, the things I had learned about content strategy and branded content from my time in the media industry, the lessons in advertising I had learned from lecturing it at UEL.

The more I thought about it, the more perfect it was. I had created a job for myself. I had created a role in this world for myself. Instead of thinking I am an outsider who does not belong and can never belong in this world, my narrative changed to I am creating a place that is not just for me but for everyone. I am inviting people into my atelier, and the atelier is my world and something I have made for myself. If the world has not made a place for me, I will make it and people can be in my world. I open up my world to everyone else.

By December, I was galvanised – I had my image, my brand. I had the idea – I had, for once in my whole entire life, a plan. A plan about what I wanted to happen that I had decided for myself and I felt incredibly empowered. I had direction!

I started listening to You're A Badass by Jen Sincero and relating to all of it. It was time for me to show up in my own life and participate rather than wavering rather deterministically and asking for things to be given to me at the mercy of others

Then, of course, January came and I crumbled. The pressure of the new year fell in on me and I expected myself to 'deliver' in all regards. I wanted to be a genderqueer superhero and when I fell short of that (e.g. going to work without heels and make up on), I felt like I was failing to deliver on my 'brand promise'. Old anxieties returned and I crumpled – who did I think I was? There's no business model here? Why? But more than that, my old friend had returned. Thanataphobia – or fear of death. The one thing about this particular fear is it is the one thing we can rely on, making it all the more scary.

Over the past few weeks I've been having fairly severe panic attacks in which I want to scratch myself till I bleed, think about how the world will exist in a million years time and I won't be here to see it, fearing going to sleep because it makes me think of what death will be like etc etc...

Now, I thought these were rational and sane until the past few weeks where I have been phoning friends crying and distressed after falling into one of these black holes. Yesterday was the worst where I called two friends in floods of tears, not knowing what to do, spinning out of all control and feeling like I was actually cracking up and would have to go to a mental institution. That plus lack of sleep was sending me round the bend.

It hasn't all been merry hell though. In between I have been meditating, focusing on the Atelier, moving towards wealth-consciousness and thinking this could be my big breakthrough.

I think that before I break through, Anxiety is coming to give me one last shake down to the core to see if I can withstand the ultimate test. If there's a timeline on this baby, then I am coming back bigger, braver and bolder. Let's, for once, grab life and say actually I'm going to tell you what I want and I am going to make it work.

One way I am trying to cope is by writing this journal, so I can cling to all those thoughts and feelings. Maybe one day these journals will help someone else. Maybe they will become something I can refer back to and embed my memories. Either way, it brings the focus right back to what I'm doing right now and how I can get from one moment to the next moment without having the shadow of death anxiety hanging over me.

And so, as I write, I listen for the birds who tell me that they are alive, that they are in this journey with me too and that we have to enter the flow of life, this process. And then, when the keys stop for a short time, I hear them. Thank you, Oh universe, nature, creator of everything – whether you are scientific or miraculous in nature – thank you for the gift of those birds.