Scal Capone

You will eventually rule it out via the correct diagnostic tests. But, if my experience is anything to go by, it will morph and you will focus on other health related symptoms in the future. I've had this on and off for 17 years.

Thanks, mate. I finished it then bailed out. I have no idea what I want to do, which is obviously a massive obstacle to even exploring a future. I worked intensely during my PhD and, even though I completed it, I felt like it was a waste of time, and it took an incredible investment of time and effort to complete. I was ruined by the end of it and I became terrified of getting involved in anything high level afterwards because I was fearful of being a failure, of wasting my time, of wasting other people's time, of burning out, of never achieving what it is I want to achieve, even though I don't know what it is I want to achieve. It's all noise, like a maelstrom of cognitive noise weighing me down. I never enjoyed any of it: I graduated 1st class and received an academic award, and I didn't derive any satisfaction from it, none. I was immediately in the mindset of "what next?" and threw myself into my MSc, which I graduated from with distinction, and I took no satisfaction from that too, I couldn't even be arsed to go to the graduation for that one. I then threw myself into finding a PhD studentship, which I found, and we (me and my missus) moved down South for 3.5 years. I made some amazing friends during my PhD, and we loved living on the South coast, but I was crippled with self-doubt and this suffocating, perennial sense of working class inadequacy for the duration of my doctorate. I finished it and didn't feel a sense of accomplishment, I felt the opposite. It's bizarre.

This neatly captures the predicament I have found myself in, but with the added problem of having to deal with imposter syndrome, which is partly why I bailed out of academia after doing my PhD, and now find myself in a job I don't like. I worked myself into the ground in this job, probably as a way of escaping from the emptiness and the sense of failure i felt after finishing my doctorate.

Should have said VD, not VB! Heh!

Were they Mirtazapine VB? If so, they are to be taken at night, they put you to sleep but, at first, there's daytime drowsiness which lifts after about a week.

Kevin Richardson?

In the words of the the late Ray Wilkins 'My word!'

It's a time of year that has the capacity to be either spectacularly brilliant or shit, depending on various external factors (e.g. finances, health, whether it is spent alone, in good company or in bad company (though if it were spent with Bad Company, I think that would be dead boss), and other stressors)). But, if everything is smooth leading into it, I love Christmas; family, friends, food, footie, festivities, fan-fucking-tastic!

Man who gets paid hundreds of millions to repeatedly punch somebody in the face as hard as he can in not being a very nice person shocker....

John Martyn - Sweet Little Mystery

Thanks, mate, but I'm an irascible dick head really.

Bon Iver - I Can't Make You Love Me, live at AIR Studios

My interpretation is that Corbyn and Starmer are playing out a choreographed good cop bad cop routine with regards to Labour's Brexit position. And, let me be clear, I want to remain in the EU, although I am not ignorant of its failings. I'm broadly supportive of Varoufakis and Diem25 in relation to reforming the EU.

I wasn't convinced he could win an election, but the way he reduced the gap between the two parties in such a short time during last year's election indicates, to me at least, that if the starting point between the two parties is narrower at the commencement of the campaign, that he could win. Labour are much better organised from an activist perspective than they have been before, and their manifesto is much better than the Tory's was. Corbyn is simply a figurehead for a movement, but I suspect McDonnell is the real brains behind it all. It's like all this nonsense about Brexit, and the tedious screaming you hear from people about Corbyn's Brexit position; he's following the position that was established at conference. Labour are saying they want to renegotiate Brexit - it's obvious that would fail as the EU won't agree to it - but they can at least appease some Brexiteers by saying they tried their hardest to make it happen, and when that fails, they would seek a second referendum.