I was neurotically maintaining the false self. That’s what I was busy doing. That’s what I am busy doing. Pretty much all the time. Non-stop neurotic maintaining of the false self – that’s the name of the game. ‘What a dip-stick, what a plonker, what a complete knob’, you’re probably thinking. What a total bloody plank. I know that’s what you’re thinking but the point is that it’s something to do. At the end of the day you’ve go to have an angle, a gimmick, a ‘thing’ that you do. People always say ‘at the end of the day’ don’t they? At the end of the bloody day you’ve got to have something to do. Everyone knows that. It’s important to have a pastime, a hobby of one sort or another, and neurotically maintaining the false self is mine!

Neurotically maintaining the false self is actually a pretty decent hobby. As hobbies go. Nothing wrong with it at all, in my view. It’s a very respectable hobby – lots of people do it! That is a joke. That’s my little joke. Ha ha ha. Just my little joke. Just my little joke. Just my little joke. Don’t mind me. I’m mad, me. Bit of a mad bastard. A bit mad. But not in a funny way though because neurotically maintaining the false self isn’t exactly what you’d call a humorous kind of a thing. Not really. It involves lots of fussing and worrying. Fussing over this, fussing over that. Worrying about this, worrying about that. With never a break. Very often I find myself getting downright viciously obsessive about it and there’s nothing humorous about that I can tell you. Nothing very funny about the old obsessive behaviour that’s for sure! Not too many laughs to be had there…

But the point I’m making here is that it’s an interest and it’s important to have an interest in life. It’s important to have something to keep you busy and there’s nothing to beat maintaining the false self for that. Very high maintenance. The old false self is! Keeps you on your toes. Keeps your nose to the grindstone. Keeps you occupied. No time off. Full time job it is, which is as I have been intimating just the ticket f you’re looking for some kind of an engrossing hobby, some kind of an absorbing pastime. You really couldn’t do better! Maintaining the false self really does suit me down to the ground, if I were to be honest about it.

Now I say all this but I must at the same time confess to having an awareness of the fact that what I’m saying suffers from a certain logical inconsistency. My argument is a bit flawed, I suppose you could say. The thing is that when I say that it suits me down to the ground to have an engrossing type of a hobby, an absorbing type of a pastime, that’s the false self talking. Who else would the ‘me’ be that is coming out with these statements if not the old false self? So what I’m saying doesn’t actually make any sense. I mean, it’s the greatest load of bullshit when it comes right down to it. I’m saying that I like to have a hobby, an interest to keep me busy, a pastime to keep me preoccupied, and that this hobby or interest or pastime is neurotically maintaining the false self, but there is something seriously wrong with this assertion since it’s the false self that’s saying this!

If I wasn’t the bloody old false self – with its perennial need to be continually distracting itself – then I wouldn’t need to have a full-time hobby, a 24/7 pastime. I wouldn’t have to bother with all that pointless crap. Because it is pointless crap. The whole thing is complete nonsense from beginning to end. That’s the type of existential self-contradiction I have to live with every day of my life! Is it any wonder I don’t have much of a sense of humour? Is it any wonder I’m so often in bad form? Could you blame me? It’s all a bloody disaster. The whole thing’s a complete headfuck from beginning to end…