Here are the original notes that accompanied each video on Youtube

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Part 1: Michael giving his channel its introduction.

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This is a relatively brief but accurate description of the point of this YouTube endeavour. I end this video by sharing my 2001 poem, called "Lymm Dam". Sharing poetry is categorically not the purpose here. There is absolutely no shortage of poems in the world. However, in this context they provide a wonderful vehicle to navigate many years of a story, my story; but ultimately it became everyone's story. When that universality was increasingly apparent, artistic writing was out, because the courage and transparency of nonfiction was then insisted by this message. Like they say, if you have something to say; say it! So, in terms of creative writing, metaphors, and implications, etc., were out. Having said that, I will talk and read some poems, in the lead up to my greater clarity. Hope you join this journey. Godspeed.

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Part 2: Volunteering at Winwick Hospital was the beginning of a long recovery.

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Having resigned from the job I mentioned in Part 1, I became unemployed with no income, but I was getting even more psychotic without insight. In time I was presented to a psychiatrist by my parents. Schizophrenia was considered, then psychotic depression with a better prognosis, was later diagnosed. I became eligible for sickness benefits, and I volunteered in the social therapy department of the local NHS Edwardian mental hospital, "Winwick", which was originally a fully independent asylum with everything from a farm to a carpenter's shop. Not long after my "gap year" there, it was bulldozed to build an estate of expensive house on the plot. Roughly the second half of this video offers a rendition of my 2001 poem, "Gap year," but that actual year stemmed from about summer 1992 to summer 1993.

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Part 3: "The Jigsaw": A poem about our social models.

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This poem is less of a story telling one like the last two, but with this description, it's more informative. It introduces a useful metaphor. Essentially, our own self-realisation, or as Mazlow said, self-actualisation, might be likened to building a jigsaw. When complete it represents a perfect image of ourselves, and most engage in such construction, to become "us" in life. But many are sidetracked, perhaps by careers and/or work. Do they "sell out?" Other externals might take over like religion, which can and is debated as to whether it is internal or external. That's massive. As a twenty something year old, my figurative jigsaw was trashed with my psychosis, and I was still in employment. That's a very bad state to be in, especially in my case because the commercial job I had was cutthroat. Having said that, now consider these two lines taken from "The Jigsaw" --- "People seemed to see through the clarity of my identity crisis and aimed to force odd pieces into my jigsaw." --- What a menacing notion, yes? The actual time this poem relates to is the early nineties. It is not an exaggeration to say that the term "mental illness", thirty years ago, would for most people conjure up padded cells, straitjackets, and axe wielding "lunatics." I don't exaggerate. If you had a serious mental health problem back then, you might have very likely reached a psychiatrist, or even a GP, either via the police, or a suicide attempt. I was lucky, I just had a destroyed career.

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Part 4: Leaving Winwick for study, whilst not expecting a very long bittersweet union to start.

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I got onto a conversion MSc course in Computing, at one of the local city's universities. (My first degree was chemistry, and not computing, as you might have guessed.) Before leaving chemistry studies in 1989, I'd got into listening to classical piano. Soon after returning home, I began obsessively learning the instrument. But I didn't expect for a moment, that in 1993 I'd meet a female piano teacher, who wanted to learn about computers, on the first day of this MSc. The video says more, but the best years of my life got taken by a woman 15 years my senior. This time, I read three not too long poems. They are "Self-consciousness", "Night in" and "Clare and I".

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Part 5: Making choices. Taking chances. Trying things out. Ending with the poem "Transition."

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The title gives a helpful description. BTW - Susan Jeffers wrote "Feel the fear and do it anyway" - of course!

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Part 6: Back at square one. The importance of activity. A stroke of luck.

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I read two poems, and I stress the need to keep trying. Experience and pain are the same. C. Jung said, "There is no coming to consciousness without pain." Surely consciousness is self-realisation, or Maslow "self-actualisation. With a god or not, and in the broadest of descriptions, try to keep faith.

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Part 7: Life will be two steps forward and one back.

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We get destroyed, build new lives, soar, and perversely lose so much again. St Paul suggested trusting, hoping, and loving. In truth, there's no sensible long-term tack but to live, and therefore, necessarily, take risks or chances, with our varying propensities to trust and hope!

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Part 8: Four short, structured poems, linking well and sharing much.

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I read four short and identically structured poems, with valuable messages, that are clear precursors to my later nonfiction. Errata: In respect to meditation, I meant "mindfulness" rather than "mindlessness." (These videos are all spontaneous and caught in only one take.)

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Part 9: Two last poems 'Gnosis #1 - "We"' & 'When I changed:'

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When I changed:

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It happened in one moment.

I realised my worth.

Some people stopped liking me.

Some people started.

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Most days became valid.

Acting out me was fun.

I could drink alcohol sensibly.

I became interested in humanity.

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The longer I was me, the more me I was.

Dare I say I increased in wisdom?

My empathy rocketed.

The plight of others could make me cry.

 

In part, the right wing grated.

I gained personal rules.

Turning a blind eye was not one.

Further introspection was.

 

An adult relationship was possible.

I'm made up I became me.

I'm saddened some don't make it.

It's hard, but the "before-me" bit has a name.

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It's called Hell.

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26/1/20

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Part 10: A 25 minute, totally unprepared, and off-the-cuff monologue, about life.

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This video wraps up its channel and messages. Errata: The book "I am" was not written in the beginning of 2019, but rather the start of UK coronavirus lockdown, 2020.

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