Somewhere along the way, I started building software I don’t understand, and will never use. This is about finding my way back to simplicity, craft, and the reasons I started building in the first place.

After years of addiction and recovery, an operation revealed something I’d been searching for my whole life. The quiet beneath the noise. How I Mistook Silence for the Drug is a meditation on stillness, survival, and the alignment that follows chaos.

I left the UK in a motorhome with my wife, unsure what I was moving toward—but certain I could no longer stay. This third part explores what consciousness reveals when you stop pretending: that reinvention isn’t betrayal, and the future doesn’t happen to you—it wakes up through you.

Some places open you. Others close you. A rare few hum at a frequency that collapses into sudden clarity.

I didn’t need a theory to feel it. I felt it in my breath. In the way my shoulders dropped in the silence that arrived when the inner static cleared. It was like being remembered by the land.

Who is it that’s aware I’m thinking? That question didn’t arrive in stillness. It came from suffering—the quiet kind that hums beneath the surface. I wasn’t searching for a breakthrough, just trying to breathe through the ache. But then something subtle, seismic, shifted.

Why I Don’t Work Mondays (And Maybe You Shouldn’t Either) — Monday is my reset button after a hectic weekend full of kids, football, and family chaos. No meetings, no commute, just space to breathe, walk the dogs and reconnect with me. It’s not lazy — it’s intentional.

What if we designed businesses like we design products—intuitive, human-centred, and easy to use? Exploring the early design of two new ventures, drawing on principles from The Design of Everyday Things to shape everything from culture to communication. Inspired by thinkers like Don Norman, Ricardo Semler, Jason Fried, and Paul Graham, it’s a blueprint for a simpler, smarter, and more empowering way to build a company—one that’s as much about how it feels as how it functions.

After five years off the grid, I’m back with a renewed drive to build. Reflecting on my journey from founding Orange Bus to growing it into a global digital agency and navigating the chaos post-acquisition by Capita PLC. It’s a story of pride, frustration, corporate dysfunction, and the toll on creativity. Now, with the past behind me, it’s time to focus on building meaningful, enduring companies once again.

We’ve traded our privacy for “free” web services—but at what cost? Corporations and governments harvest our data, turning users into products in a vast surveillance economy. We’ve handed over control of our digital lives. What began as convenience has become corporate and state overreach. This isn’t just about privacy—it’s a battle between liberty and control. Wake up before it’s too late.