It is okay for me to be confident. I am likeable. Lovable even. It is okay for me to be here.

I can say no and still be worthy of love.

The best thing I did this year was record a podcast I won’t ever publish. Four of my friends spoke to me and in their words I found permission to be myself.

I go into the new year with the ease and audacity of an exceptional white man.

Merry Christmas

When I was seven or eight, my ears started to swell. My mother diagnosed me with an allergy to non-precious metals and bought me a pair of eighteen-carat gold studs.

The allergy was short-lived. My love for fine jewelry endures.

The same mother, as I have but one, began trading in gold in my early teens. I grew up wearing teddy bear pendants, charm bracelets, and earrings, all gold. Between selling some to repair my Blackberry and losing others, none of those original pieces remain.

Still, my love for fine jewelry endures.

In 2022, I bought a pair of gold studs. I love and wear them still. Earlier this year, I got a bracelet. It was Edo woman loud and did not suit my aesthetics. I gifted it to my mother.

And had an epiphany. I may love them, but I do not think of gold jewelry as investments.

They are, to me, a tool for conscious consumption and a signal of taste. That is, because they are expensive, I buy less. And they must look good, as I shall not abide ugly jewelry, no matter how precious.

As stores of value instead, I like hunks of gold, as pure as possible. Bars and coins.

At the time of writing, a one-kilo gold bar from the Royal Mint costs £105,000. I am now a collector of much much much smaller bars.

This is everything I know about buying gold:

1. Spot price != bullion price: The price per gram of pure gold (24 carat) is always less than the price per gram a gold bar is sold for. Today gold is £103 per gram. A one-gram gold bar from the mint is £139. This covers the price of mining, processing, packaging, and cost of sale.

2. Buying in bulk is cheaper: A five-gram bar costs £590, which is £118 per gram of gold. A fifty-gram bar is £110 per gram. A five-hundred-gram bar is £106 per gram. Aka, being poor is expensive.

3. Sovereigns are the most tax efficient gold instrument: No value-added tax is paid on the purchase of either bars or sovereigns (gold coins). But you’ll pay capital gains tax, tax on any interest you make when you sell your investment, in this case your gold, on bars. Sovereigns are exempt as they qualify as legal tender. The tax agency treats your gold bar as investment, but treats your gold coin as official currency of the country. However there is less pure gold content in coins than in bars. Nine hundred sixteen vs ninety-nine point nine.

4. Where to buy: If buying Britannia bars or UK sovereigns, buy from the Royal Mint. It’s slightly cheaper as it’s direct from source, but it ships in three to seven working days. If buying other brands, buy from Bullion by Post, or Atkinsons Bullion or BullionVault. They offer next day delivery.

5. Best value gold: is pre owned. Slightly cheaper, same quality. The seller just decides what brand of bar or year of sovereign to give you. As a personal preference I like newly minted bars, and best value sovereigns.

6. Storing your gold: The Royal Mint has vaults where you can store your gold for a fee. Or you can keep it at home in a safe (= higher insurance premiums). If storing at home, tell no one. Gold is small, valuable, and easy to steal.

7. Don’t want physical gold?: Buy gold stock through Trading212, eToro, etc. These let you invest in gold exchange-traded funds or ETFs, which track the price of gold without you ever touching a bar. The downside is you’re buying paper that represents gold, not the actual metal. In a proper crisis, paper promises mean nothing. But for tax efficiency, ease of trading, and avoiding the hassle of physical storage, gold ETFs are perfectly adequate. You can buy and sell instantly, and most platforms have low fees.

That’s all I know.

I like that I have a hobby now. Collecting gold genuinely makes me happy. It’s pretty, shiny, a good store of value, and often heavy or pointy, so it works as a weapon when in a bind.

I cleared out all of my non-precious metal jewelry last week.

And aim to buy one earring pair and bracelet in the new year, and hopefully many, many bars and sovereigns.

I enjoyed writing this. This is not financial advice. (Collect some gold.) Bye babies.

The difference between a serious person, one who has on average made good decisions, doesn’t show at 22. You can start to see it quite clearly at 29.

I often think to myself, I have wasted my life.

But that’s an unhelpful generalisation that leaves me stuck in a negative loop of faux self-awareness, with no actual action carried out.

What I really mean is I have little to show for compounding.

Maladaptive responses to anxiety and depression have eaten my time. My truly deep work, my truly meaningful connections have only been sustained in short bursts. Starts and stops.

Every ghosting or major depressive episode cuts off a road that was leading somewhere, so that when you come to, you are starting from scratch. The connection is frayed. Those who choose to move forward with you do so tentatively. Understandably.

This is expensive.

A common excuse for me, in the context of careers, is that I have a non-linear career. I have proof this isn’t true in the form of a friend. Around the same age. Similar career paths. Wildly different outcomes. Instead of closed, disconnected loops, his pivots have been bridges so that over time, ascension becomes possible.

Luckily, whenever you wake up is your morning.

Good morning.

Compounding moving forward

Prevent time sinks: Understanding the anxiety and depression triggers, rewiring the brain for non-maladaptive responses.

Don’t leave often: Destination syndrome, catastrophising the current situation, assuming the next will be perfect. Yet, wherever you go, there you are. Most of my exits have been unnecessary or premature.

Leave well: When you must, leave bridges, not closed loops.

So that at 40, when I suspect the difference between those who compound and those who do not will be even more stark, I fall into the former.

I end this by saying to myself: I let go of regret over the wasted decade. I reframe it not as waste but as education. And I focus on compounding, starting now.

Since

I can remember - my memory starts at six - I have been in a tightly wound, firmly closed loop of negative self-talk. So when people who know me say bad things, I hear it as them seeing me clearly, as I see myself.

Positive feedback does nothing for me. Filed as obligatory blindness. The fluff people say before saying what they mean, or instead of. Recently, I have excused this as a plus. Jensen Huang, founder of Nvidia, whom I love, has a well-documented hatred of self as well. My brain rationalises it as necessary for the kind of success I aspire to.

That is fucking nonsense. The facts:

• I am not rich

• I should be rich

• I could have been rich

• The only reason I am not rich is me

• This gluttony for pain is unsustainable

• The self-hatred makes me less resilient. It is not working.

• I am not rich

• I should be rich

A

physical manifestation of the cognitive self-hatred loop is that for nearly two decades - since I turned thirteen - I have tried to kill myself, tried to recover from trying to kill myself, reveled in a blaze of productivity (always short-lived), crashed, tried to kill myself, tried to recover from trying to kill myself, on and on.

I cannot die.

One, I’m not very good at it. Two, my dying would severely negatively impact my siblings. Three, the latter is inordinately more painful than whatever ails me.

The result of these two loops - cognitive self-hatred, physical suicide fixation - is this twenty-nine-year-old might be. With enough talent, wit, drive, insight to be rich. Without the staying power to finish things.

This

August I spent a lot of time with the NHS crisis team. Some resulting epiphanies:

• I am exhausted from being in these loops

• This self-hatred is not based on facts

• It feels objectively true that I am worthless, but it isn’t.

• And even if I am, it is inefficient to continue to think that

• The suicide loop is pointless. I care more about my family being happy than the pain ending

• Enough

This

guy, Paul Gilbert, says we switch between three systems to manage our emotions. Threat, Drive, Soothe. Often, one of these systems dominates.

Threat prepares you to run away from danger. Feelings of fear, anxiety, disgust, live here. Drive motivates and rewards. Feelings of want, focus, excitement, na here them day. Soothe does exactly that. Feelings of contentment, safety, trust.

I live, bound to the ground in chains wound round my wrists, ankles, tittles, teeth, in Threat. Half my elbow is in Drive. I know nothing of Soothe.

Which brings us to the point of this essay.

Soothe is required for resilience. This dirty word called compassion. Self-compassion.

I

believe it to be objectively true that I am a worthless piece of shit.

But this is not an original thought.

You see, when I was six, a family friend thought it wise to pin me to his grandmother’s gorgeous four poster bed and sexually assault me while whispering in my ear that I am ugly and sooo stupid. He thought it wise to do this often. Nearly all of my self identity, and so called objective truths about myself stem from these interactions.

I am worthless. I am worthless. I am worthless(?)

This is not true. And more importantly, this doesn’t serve me. These loops are inefficient. And I am exhausted. And need to be rich. And cannot die. So Soothe I must.

I

am twenty-nine. I have lived in this first cognitive loop for twenty-three years. I have lived in the second suicidal loop for sixteen years. Breaking out will be hard. Will take time. But all I have to do is start.

So I’ll start with the hardest, hardest thing. By saying, and trying to believe that

Maybe I deserve to be alive.