Author’s note: this is a stream of consciousness ramble. Not as funny as you’re probably used to, but I need to get it out. Back to normal next week, cheers.
The Wild Geese is a 1978 action war movie that stars a troupe of grizzled, faded luminaries as mercenaries tasked with rescuing a deposed national leader. Richards Burton and Harris lead the cast, with Roger Moore adding rakish charm and Hardy Kruger bringing boatloads of heart and soul.
I first watched The Wild Geese when I was about ten-years-old and I loved it. To this day, as dated as it is (and the film’s attitudes are shockingly dated), I love it for the massive great whack of nostalgia I glean from it. It is hardwired to my childhood.
The Richards were notorious hellraisers in ‘78, and their contracts reflected this. They got half their salaries up front; the other half would be delivered when filming was completed. Simple message: keep it clean for this shoot.1
Harris stayed on the level while shooting in South Africa (he fell off the wagon upon return to London) and revelled in the adventure. Burton, however, was in a bad way. He was clean but he was pining for Elizabeth Taylor following their second divorce, and he suffered from chronic back pain throughout the shoot. A few years later he was admitted to hospital, and doctors discovered that his entire spine was coated with crystalised alcohol.
Jesus wept, Holmes - why are you talking about some old action movie and some old fart’s bad back? Because, my dear Ledgeheads, over the last few week’s my attitude to my life and career has calcified like Richard Burton’s spine.
Pop a record scratch in here and go back to the start.
I first jumped on Substack in an attempt to make sense of my life following a late diagnosis of ADHD2. I’d spent my entire adult life knowing in my fucking bones that I wasn’t ‘normal,’ but pretended to be nonetheless. Diagnosis means you don’t have to pretend anymore; I spent those first six months tearing down the support systems that I’d built up to get me through the world.
I thought I had time and space to carry on doing this. I thought my cosy little corporate job meant I could suss myself out at my leisure. Then I got placed at risk of redundancy. Pow!
It’s been a long process, lasting for all of 2025, and I’ve gone through the five stages of grief. I was fucking furious for most of the spring, but I’ve had an excellent therapist since May and she got me to through the worst of it. I have accepted my fate; I now have 10 weeks left with my shoulder to this miserable wheel, then I’m a free man.
I can’t wait to leave. A lot of lifers feel the same. The culture that has been nurtured for over a decade has dissipated, slashed to bloody tatters at the altar of profits. Simply put: people in the UK cost way more to employee than people in other countries around the globe, and for everything else there’s AI. At least they’re honest, I guess.
Did you ever see Office Space? Marvellous little Mike Judge comedy, ahead of its time like so much of Judge’s work. In it, Peter works a mind numbing office job until one day when he is hypnotised to care less about work, only for the hypnotist to keel over dead before bringing our hero out of his hypnotised state - leaving him in the ‘couldn’t give a shit’ phase of his career forever.
One of Peter’s colleagues in Office Space is Milton; a mousey programmer who is harassed and bullied by middle management. He actually lost his job several years back, but due to a glitch and his own innate timidity no one ever noticed. Milton is the kind of guy who has a favourite stapler.
I have spent most of the last 14 years as a Milton. I mask up at work harder and tighter than anywhere else; a Victorian corset cinched tight around my soul. Show up, do the job, don’t rock the boat, collect the coin. hope that they won’t notice me for another 30 years… then 20 years… then 15.
Fuck you Holmes, we see you.
Since confirmation of the inevitable, however, I have entered my Peter phase. Uncertainty holds us back, resolution sets us free. I’m a bit of a twat when I’m set free though, so I feel a certain degree of sympathy for my colleagues who’ve dodged the bullet.
“Morning, Lewis. How are you?”
“Four.”
“Four?”
“Yeah, out of 10. I’ll be at six when I go home, and if I’m lucky I’ll get to seven by Friday afternoon.”
Or the other peach I’ve taken to using recently, which was taught to me by one of the baristas in the coffee shop on site. Oppe og ikke gråter is a Norwegian saying that roughly translates as “Well, I’m up and I’m not crying.” Let me tell you something, people skip the pointless fucking chit chat when you stone cold deadpan that shit back at them.
I know my situation is not their fault, and they don’t need a light shone on the harsh realities of The Great Culling of 2025, but the faceless exec who made these decisions isn’t taking me for coffee any time soon. And hey, we’re always told to bring our full selves to work too, so here’s my full self after he’s been wrung out: a misanthropic wanker who just wants to be left alone. Suck him up for another 10 weeks while I slap a smile on my boat3 and we all pretend we care about each other, okay?
The ideal scenario would be a couple of months of gardening leave. “We get it Lewis, you don’t want to be here any more than we want you here. So why don’t you sit at home and eat crumpets4 from now until Christmas?” That would be so sweet. But this is capitalism we’re dealing with here, and there’s still blood to be wrung from my body before its discarded.
Back in January when this shit started, if you’d said to me that I should consider it an opportunity, I would’ve flown at you like Tommy in Goodfellas when Billy Batts tells him to go get his fucking shinebox. The worst thing I could’ve heard. Opportunity was uncertainty, and uncertainty was bad.
We learn, we grow, we move.
A beautiful little song has wormed its way onto my heavy rotation of late. It’s called Hammer and it’s by a band called Pohgoh. It’s about singer Susie Ulrey’s struggles with MS and depression, but the chorus jives with me hard.
I’ve been pretending for so long
A record-setting con
The smile that I always force
Reactionary sport
Sat in the corner of the office5 for a decade and a half, masked up, throttling all instincts, plodding along, stimming like a maniac just to keep my head attached to my neck.
In the past, I’d beat myself up for co-opting someone else’s struggles for my own needs. I’m a middle-aged white man, my struggles are minimal, right? I need to reframe that line in my own head. I’m neurodivergent; I’ve struggled my entire life. I’m not minimising anybody else’s woes, but I have got to stop minimising my own.
That shit’s unhealthy, doubly so when you realise that it’s probably your biggest masking strategy of them all. It’s been a soul sucking behemoth and it’s been sat on my back this whole time.
I don’t want to be a corporate drone anymore. Life is too short to spend it enriching the richest. I want to do something more worthwhile. I want to do something positive.
Dreaming modestly conjures up public sector, working quietly away in the civil service trying to improve a small yet vital public service. Or maybe working for a charity, an organisation that demonstrably improves the world somehow. Dreaming big scares the living shit out of me. Dreaming big has me pondering retraining, going back into education, getting new qualifications, working with people who are struggling through the same experiences I have. Probably being self-employed. Never done that before.
No safety net, a running fucking header into the unknown.
And yet.
A few weeks back in a session, my therapist said to me “You’ve got a story to tell.” She kind of floored me with that one because I do not think I’m fucking special. But when I stop and think about it, would my story, my lived life, help other people? I’m starting to think it might. When I got diagnosed, so many people - professional and amateur - gave me incredible advice and guidance. I want to do the same.
I’m not sure if I’m dreaming big or small yet. I just know that I don’t want to sit calcified in the corner like fucking Milton. I want to find some joy in what I do. Here’s Pohgoh to play us out.
Thanks to for putting the idea for this one in my head. Thanks also to and for constant, consistent ADHD related inspiration and wisdom.
And thank you for reading. My ego is huge but fragile, so show some love before you scarper. Bang that like button on your way out, or get involved in the comments if this piece landed well with you. If you’re feeling really flush, buy me a beer and I’ll love you forever. Cheers.
Poor old Roger Moore was sat in the corner, literally begging for fewer scenes with these acting heavyweights.
And now you’re fucking stuck with me forever.
Boat race = face.
Twice through the toaster on the highest setting, then doused in lashings of butter and Bovril until they’re pissing beefy, buttery goodness all over the plate. I’ll eat a whole packet just like that, please and thank you.
You will note, not sat in a corner office. You need determination and application to get one of those plush little prisons.
As someone who has been through too many redundancies to count (corporate media, eh?) I could lay down a few platitudes about how things will work out, it could be the best thing to happen, etc. Maybe, maybe not. But you're a very decent writer and I wish you the best of luck in figuring it all out
You’re always an interesting read, Lewis. I don’t know if your story would help someone. Probably. But it would be worth reading, for sure.