A big box of buns and a Diet Pepsi, please.

Don't be like Big Stevie.

When I was a teenager, there was this really fat guy that used to hang around with us. Us being my little clique of long haired metal devotees. On a Saturday he traveled from Belfast to the town I lived in and he hung out with us because we were all into the same music he loved and we all played in bands.

So he came there for the scene, at least I think thats why he came; there were probably other little cliques closer to where he lived but whatever; he came to our town. His name was Stevie and Stevie used to go to the bakery when he came on his Saturday pilgrimage and he bought a lot of sausage rolls and buns from a certain bakery when he arrived. He doused those things in salt and ketchup (the sausage rolls, not the buns) and Stevie would sit and munch his way through his feast every week. He would buy a drink with his food and he always bought a Diet Pepsi. We asked him why he did this and he explained that consuming a Diet Pepsi was healthier than drinking a normal Pepsi that was full of sugar. He was trying to offset all of the other damage that he was doing by shovelling grossly processed foods, fatty foods with chemical additives and preservatives in them and pastry, flaky pastry and cream and salt and ketchup down his neck.

Nothing would change Stevie's mind that in reality, consuming a Diet Pepsi with all that other muck maybe only had a negligible health benefit (yes, yes, I know, its full of artificial sweeteners and preservatives, that’s for another time) than having a Pepsi with 15 spoons of sugar in it, or however many it contains.

So how many of us are playing this offset game in our own lives where we believe that by abstaining from this one food group from this one place somehow offsets all the other unhealthy lifestyle choices that we're making in our lives? Even if you're eating clean, real clean, what about exercise? How much physical exercise you getting every day, how many steps you logging every day or are you primarily sedentary?

You've got your diet under control but you're inactive; you've got muscle atrophy your muscles are wasting away, you're physically weak you don't get out, you don't get natural vitamin D, you don't get sunlight, your immune system is weak, you don't breathe fresh air, you don't rest your eyes from computer screens; but yet you will abstain from milk containing a chemical additive to reduce methane and believe somehow you're getting a win in there whereas in reality you're just simply doing your own little negligibly effective offset.

Who are our greatest adversaries, really? Who really poses the biggest threat to us? As I think about this, it’s from my own perspective, concerning my own life and my own experiences.

The last normal job that I had, I spent around 10 years working in an office. During the first five years of those 10 years, my eyesight began to deteriorate noticeably. It could have been a combination of simply getting older, which probably did factor into the equation, but also I spent an inordinate amount of time staring at a screen for at least 40 hours a week under horrid artificial light, which didn't help my eyesight.

So I found myself squinting at a screen trying to read lines on a spreadsheet, trying to read emails, read reports, and eventually I realised I would need to get my eyes tested and probably need glasses simply to work every day. So, after five years, I went and got my eyes tested. I did in fact need glasses, they prescribed to me, and on donning them every morning, everything seemed to be easier to read.

No more squinting, no leaning forward, no bad posture. Seemed to be an improvement. But after roughly another three years, I noticed that I was starting to squint again, starting to lean forward again to look at my screen. The glasses? They weren't having the same effect. My eyesight was deteriorating further. So I went to get my eyes tested again, and yes, a stronger prescription was needed simply to see the things that you were able to see without glasses eight years ago.

So I was in a job that I hated for so may reasons, set aside the deterioration of my eyesight. I should have been out of that place long before my eyesight began to deteriorate. And I should have been out of that place long before I needed a second set of prescription glasses to be able to do my job. I should have been out of there quickly, because I saw quickly how bad that place was, how badly it was run, how inefficient it was, how soul-destroying it was to work there or simply exist there.

But yet I remained for 10 years with my brain slowly turning to mush, my posture getting worse, gaining weight every year, and my eyesight deteriorating. I should have been gone long gone, but I fell into a routine. I fell into a rut, and I simply treaded water. I traded off a little bit of financial security and comfort for bad physical health, bad mental health, and the deterioration of my own eyes. There’s loads of other things, maybe I’ll write a whole book on it. Not how much that places sucked; how crazy I was for staying there for a decade. I get that leaving toxic environments isn’t always straightforward though. Some other time.

So I can't blame anyone for that really, apart from myself. I did more to harm myself in those 10 years than the government ever did to me. I was afflicted more severely by myself during those 10 years than the government ever afflicted me. My mind, body, and spirit were crushed more by myself indirectly than anything the government could ever did to me.

So while we can talk about how we are being manipulated, we're being controlled, we're being distracted, we're being this, we're being that, we're being the other, in reality we probably do more to damage ourselves in those areas than the government, our “enemies”, “they” ever have or ever will.

And then the knowledge that do possess, the knowledge that we do glean, sometimes (often?) we don't apply it to ourselves. So many people will tell you that eating excessive amounts of processed sugar is bad for you but still do it. Or they'll tell you that it's good not to be in debt, not to be in debt to anyone, to retain as much financial freedom as possible, not to squander money, not to gather possessions that you don't need to impress people that you don't like with money that you don't actually have to spare.

Then they'll go ahead and make shockingly poor personal financial decisions, thentalk about being enslaved, enslaved to the system, enslaved to a taxation system. In reality they're making their own cages to inhabit. People will tell you about how the quality water is from a tap, it needs to be filtered, it should be filtered, it should be never consumed directly from the tap; and then they go ahead and drink from the tap anyway. They know a filter's a better option, they know a filter's a healthier option but they don't buy a filter.

And you wonder why you're physically unwell after years of knowing better ways to do things but simply not doing them. My point being we can blame the government and we can say they're out to get us and they're out to crush us and to take all our money away and to keep us in a position of suppression (and I do believe they are, by the way) I say we suppress ourselves and we harm ourselves more than the government ever has, or ever will.

So from observation and from experience, have I been harmed more by myself or have I seen more harm inflicted by the government, or by NGO’s, Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Medicine? Is it the government that’s making you broke, is it the tax man who is busting you, is it the Chancellor's budget that's going to drive you to financial ruin? Or is it bad financial decisions you have made and it is convenient simply to blame it on the government. Excuses, excuses, excuses. So, maybe this has challenged you, maybe not, maybe it has offended you, maybe not, I don't care either way, I'm just throwing this out there and maybe somebody will catch some of what I'm saying, take a deep breath, have a reality check and start to address some of these imbalances in your own life.

Flame on.