Hi! I’m Mike Gorrie, and I feel the need to explain myself. Constantly.

I’m writing a screenplay and a couple of pilots for my second university qualification. I livestream on Twitch a couple of times a week. Once or twice a month I’m struck with an uncontrollable urge to tinker with a DAW until the catchy sound in my head sings back through my headphones. For the last two decades I’ve been slightly obsessed with Shadow the Hedgehog, and for a little longer than that I thought I hated swimming. I was wrong.

At 36, I don’t know what to do with my life. Anything I want seems only further out of reach the more I work toward it. I look back and see a road piled high with my failures. Sure, I’m wearing a set of lenses that colour things that way — what’s the opposite of rose-tinted glasses, blue? Seafoam? — but it feels wrong, like cheating, to take them off.

After burning out hard, an AuDHD diagnosis, and (eventually) losing my job, I’m living out woop-woop with my parents. It’s okay. Good, even. It’s been a chance to work through some Things™, both personal and family-related (ha). My job description is “student” again. I’m getting better at living instead of surviving. I don’t know what’s next for me, but I don’t need to know. There’ll be writing and swimming and music involved, and talking to fellow weirdos on the internet, and maybe — if I’m a very good old boy — a cat.