The self-censorship machine has been at work again and I removed my last post, as too self-indulgent and irrelevant. ( - For anyone wondering about the rabbit, it did return after 4 days and is alive and well :))

I am in fact thinking of moving all my previous blog posts into some kind of archive that is still accessible, but will not be the main blog.

I used to have aspirations to have a technical blog. I don't think it will ever be that, but I don't want it to be a personal diary either, and in the past it did sometimes look like that.

I will still write personal things, it is difficult for me not to. I am glad to see quite personal writing styles in professional writers, too (e.g. Laurie Penny, also Robert Sapolsky in his book Behave). I think it is something like a character trait.

There is a lot going on at the moment both in my personal life, and - I don't think anybody would disagree here - in the UK, Europe, the world. Crossroads everywhere.

I think a lot about what one could call collective mental health. I used to think mine was a bit precarious, but it is not just me, not at all! It is such a widespread problem. And so many people are feeling insecure these days.

It is a bit like when women read Betty Friedan and realised that they were not the only ones feeling so unhappy, that it was not them but the the structures they were living in that made them unhappy.

These days it's not just the women, but many men too. And I just hope we all wake up to it and manage to create something better.

I was reminded of this post from 2014 recently. I had mentioned it on my blog twice before! I had forgotten how good it is. 4 and a half years on, and we are still dealing with the fallout from all he's describing, though I have a feeling things are changing now. But in which direction?

This is exactly what I feel like: "I feel like I need to figure this out, like figuring all of this out and finding new ways to live has become the most important thing I could possibly do, not just for myself and the people I love but for the entire human race."

Than he carries on:

"I don't mean me alone — I'm far too self-loathing to have a messiah complex — but I feel like, for me, this is the best use of my time. Because the world is making me crazy and sad and wanting to just put a gun in my mouth, and it's doing the same thing to a lot of people who shouldn't have to feel this way.

I don't believe anymore that the answer lies in more or better tech, or even awareness. I think the only thing that can save us is us. I think we need to find ways to tribe up again, to find each other and put our arms around each other and make that charm against the dark. I don't mean in any hateful or exclusionary way, of course. But I think like minds need to pull together and pool our resources and rage against the dying of the light. And I do think rage is a component that's necessary here: a final fundamental fed-up-ness with the bullshit and an unwillingness to give any more ground to the things that are doing us in. To stop being reasonable. To stop being well-behaved. Not to hate those who are hurting us with their greed and psychopathic self-interest, but to simply stop letting them do it. The best way to defeat an enemy is not to destroy them, but to make them irrelevant."

Making the charm against the dark, that's what I want to help doing. And figuring out new ways to live.

This is where I am starting from.