1.

Because it’s not another diluted version of chic urban zen in point form. I am not chic and don’t do points.

2.

Because you saw a number and imagined bullet points that usually signify a quick read. You know, the kind that leave you unfulfilled but proud of yourself for attempting to do something constructive.

3.

Because you can’t help yourself from reading further, just in case the secret to life unfolds at the end. Sorry. Still looking myself (but this isn’t the end …).

4.

If you want to read something worthwhile, get a book. Something tactile and heavy, where just by the weight in your hands you get a sense of the labour and life energy that has gone into bending and shaping sentences. Where the words on the page are there, like iron wroughted, steel hammered. Where you are confronted by the work of a smith, not a frustrated suburbanite with a flexible aposable thumb.

You should not read this because it says nothing. It is a cultural artefact of this age of immediacy and nutshell enlightenment. It represents the low point of human evolution and reminds you that you are right there in it. How low we have all sunk.

Now go and watch a movie on Netflix, sip an almond milk latte, free of everything except substance and forget that this ever happened. You never came this way to be reminded by Sisyphus that you’re pushing a rock up and over and down and up again over the beige hill of your dreams long since buried beneath the to do lists and shopping lists that have come to define your existence.

You see, my friend, I don’t write to entertain. I write to scratch, to dig into the skin. To remember that earth is a place of dirt, mud, stone and heavy winds that blow cold and if all we do is try to stay warm then we forget who we are.

5. You should not read this because if this is where your existence thus far has brought you, there is no pot of gold here. The rainbow you thought you were following is just moisture in light viewed at a particular angle.