I am really struggling mentally this summer...

(above - the summer started great with Orange at Koko, but before this, times they were a-changing... )

Someone might look at the title of this blog & think it would be a cry for help & they would be right. I'm writing this towards the end of July 2026, and mentally, I haven't been doing too well lately. When you find yourself going to bed thinking - would it be so bad if I didn't wake up tomorrow? - You know you're in a really bad place. I've been low before, and I found a way through.

I've spoken to two friends of mine about this, and they've told me I am not alone and they've had similar conversations with many others. With the cost of living having risen to astronomical heights and the world seemingly on the constant brink of war, I certainly can't remember when the outside bubble of our lives (the world around us) has ever been more fraught with peril. Not only do we have the war between the USA & Iran, but the Russian navy is constantly prowling around our own borders, testing our own country's readiness. Why Putin would think it a good time to flex his military muscles further when he is losing huge numbers of Russian troops in the Ukrainian war is anyone's guess. After years of our country being run by a bland automaton, whatever you might think of him, at least we now have a Prime Minister who has a degree of charisma.

But those are all events happening out there in the world, and yes, while they do impact us all daily, to some degree we can always turn off the outside noise. Many of my friends never watch the news - this is why. It's too depressing and can impact their mental well-being.

World issues as grim as they might be, however, aren't the main problem for me at the moment. For me personally, 2024 was the year where I turned a huge corner, and 2025 was the best year of my life since 2013. I was the happiest I'd ever been. This time last year, I had just directed a short film, written by my friend Callum Edmunds, and produced by Will Jordan, and it had gone really well. I'd got to work with Nick 'always go full' Rowe for the first time (a life ambition ever since I'd seen him in Young Sherlock Holmes) and once more with my brother from another mother, the superb talent that is Jason Flemyng. It might have just been for three days, but it was a glorious time and, one minor hiccup aside, the shoot could not have gone better. My creative plate was full in other areas too; in addition to starting work on a biography for Richard from Raindance, I published my Back 2 Raving at 50 book, the launch of which went really well. (It might have been small, but it was successful by my standards)

People seemed to really respond to the content of the book, and I had several strangers reach out and tell me so. My good friend, Edele Andaya (someone who continues to be a positive inspiration), kindly wrote the foreword for the book & DJ Lisa Pin-Up absolutely loved it, giving me a great quote of endorsement. I also had a lovely summer romance in 2025 - it was time-contingent, in the sense that the lady in question was in the UK for her job & would return home at the end of September. After some hesitation, I thought it was better to live for the moment and not overthink it, and we had a wonderful time together. Then I was working on the post-production of the short, while casting/rehearsing the play about the Making of the Magnificent 7. While that was not a show without its difficulties and was not a financial success (I lost out on 3k personally), we had a decent audience every night and acting alongside my fellow cast members was tremendous fun, with some people making it a truly special experience for me. False Accounts - Exposing the Post Office Cover-Up also had another run in 2025, albeit without my direct involvement this time. It was, however, another feather in one's cap. All in all, 2025 was an outstanding year, full of personal achievements, and I fully intended to carry that on through to 2026 and keep that momentum going.

Having gone out of my way to look after certain talent on my last play, it was especially hurtful not to get invited to subsequent productions of some of my actors, which I would normally hear about either after the event, or when they were sold out. This happened not once, but twice, and was a firm reminder of just how transient & vacuous the nature of such professional relationships could be. While this is not uncommon, it was still very disappointing.

Coming into 2026 experiencing that wasn't a great way to start the year. I'd already decided to focus this year on several personal work projects that had fallen by the wayside the last couple of years. One of these was the overdue Diamonds in the Sky book 3, which was close to completion and was ready to drop this summer. Now I'd already decided 2026 would be the year I would update my desktop work setup, because I knew my 2015 IMAC was on its last legs. Most have a shelf life of 7-9 years, and mine was already pushing 11 years, and I was entirely dependent on it for so many things.

I'd also used it for editing recently, as well as my screenwriting and book projects, so it was well overdue for retirement, and I figured for my birthday in July, I would get a new system, hoping by then, a bigger payday would have come in. However, my IMAC decided not to wait that long. In late March when the last two rolling back-ups failed, I could see it was at the beginning of the end. So that week I started a manual backup of everything - a couple of folders a day, not asking too much of it. Having saved about 15% of materials from the drive, mostly pictures, it overheated, had an internal fire, and shut down for good, taking the hard drive along with it. All subsequent efforts to recover anything from the hard drive have been unsuccessful. I now not only had no computer and couldn't work at all, nor run my YouTube channel, but it had taken all my work with it. I was completely devastated and mentally at an all-time low point.

At the persistent suggestion of my friend Angela Clare Draper, I did a GoFundMe, which I set to run for a month, thinking it would take at least that long to raise 1K, but was surprised when we hit the target of 2.5 in only 4 days. Not only had loads of my raving buddies chipped in to help out, but several filmmakers whose own kickstarters I had made over generous contributions to back in the day when I was financially better off, returned my generosity in kind. While I was able to get my YouTube channel back up and running in a week, and had thankfully saved my current client's main file, I had lost all the interviews I'd done for that project. The generosity of so many really took the sting out of everything; I replaced my IMAC and later my 15-year-old PC. When I stepped back and counted the true cost of all the work I had lost permanently, it was truly beyond all comprehension.

Although my screenplays were nearly all backed up already, and I recovered those that weren't from other people, for 16 books this was not the case.

I also lost all my other book files, including book 3 of Diamonds of Sky, all of the story and the character notes, my Arnhem game book which should have released this September and all the work I'd done on the second rave book. I had 150 note pads in my IMAC admin folder, all completely unrecoverable. All my research notes and links, all gone for every single project. All my video edits - gone, most of the files for those edits, gone. I had literally just finished the audio recording for Back 2 Raving at 50, it took 6 months, also gone. All the artwork for my YouTube channel - gone. All my acting workshop notes - gone. All my notes for writing clients, past and present - gone. All the files for False Accounts - gone. All the files for the Magnificent 7 play - gone. All my lyrics, music and music folders - gone. My biography book on actor Gene Hackman - gone. My standalone thriller novel, London on Fire - gone. To put this into context, even though I had only been working on the Gene Hackman Biography book for the past few months, you're talking at least four hours a day, often more, so you're talking hundreds of hours on one project alone. Diamonds in the Sky book 3, I had been working on and off for the last three years, that was closer to over one thousand hours. I'd not only lost that manuscript, but all the story and character notes, plus the original files for books one & two. It's not just the work files I couldn't recover; it was all the time I'd lost bringing these things to fruition. I couldn't even begin to process it.

I was ultimately able to recover all but one of my software applications, but the only files I could get back were ones where I'd sent a draft to someone else. This meant that, where my personal work projects were concerned, it was almost zero. (because I wouldn't send a draft of something until I was happy with it)

With the loss of all this work came a complete loss of momentum. I had a very specific work schedule every day. I'd try and give certain projects a fixed number of slots every week, so there was a sense of everything moving forward in unison. Freelance gigs always took priority, but once you've done as much as you can on those, I could easily pivot onto something else that was waiting for my attention. Now, there was nothing to pivot onto at all, and I am struggling to maintain an impetus on anything at all. Yes, it was great I was able to get up and running again so quickly, and I am so grateful to those who made that possible. I'm doing my best to get back into work mode with things, but 2026 got off to something of a rather auspicious start.

Within all this, my personal life wasn't going great either. I'd started seeing someone on Valentine's Day and for a few short weeks I was over the moon, but through no fault of our own, it was soon apparent it wasn't going to work and it was probably best if we just remained friends. While this was all handled with a great deal of maturity from all concerned, I still was really upset we hadn't been able to find a way to make it work. You kept calm & carried on so to speak, but thereafter, every time I met someone I liked, for whatever reason, it was quickly evident it wasn't going to happen. I had someone express their interest who would have actually been a really good fit for me, because I am very attracted to people that are also creative, and secondly very driven. It brings out the best in me, being around someone like that. But as soon as I tried to sort out an actual date, so we would could see if we could build on a really promising connection, they withdrew, after which, so did I. I've always felt kinda lost without a muse, it's just part of who I am, and right now, I don't have one.

I also tried dating online (not the aps, but a dating group on facebook) but when I would write to people (a short, polite introduction, nothing more) I would rarely, if ever, get a response.

I guess everything was evidently taking a toll because I noticed I started to engage with people less and less when I went out, and would frequently talk myself into leaving events early. This even happened on New Years Eve, (and more recently, my birthday); I ended up getting home at 930pm & seeing in 2026 on my own, alone, at home. In the last few months, it's happened almost every time I go out. I'll suddenly decide I have to go home, and before you know it, I've left the venue and I am on my way home. My flashbacks are also more frequent than this time last year, and there is this sense that everything has come full circle again and I am right back where I started. I have to remind myself that is not entirely true, and I managed to direct a play, a short film, and write a book during that time period. Maybe it's just the lack of having someone special in my life to share those achievements with, that somehow makes them feel less impactful.

The person I dated last summer also came back to the UK this year, and even though they'd already told me they didn't want to go dancing again because they would miss it too much when they got back home, there was certainly no reason why we couldn't meet up for coffee etc. However, then they decided not to tell me they were coming, stopped taking my calls after a year of staying in touch, and unfriended me on arrival to the UK. That was nice of them!

I still continued dancing, the one thing that was a constant source of happiness, but now I've had to scale that back because of the financial constraints. Even though dancing was like my gym, I knew I couldn't go every week anymore. However, even before the end of 2025 the London Day Rave community was already beginning to show cracks.

On that scene, for one reason or another, lots of different people started to fall out with each other, to the point in some cases where certain individuals couldn't even be in the same event without something kicking off. Several people have stepped away from the Day Rave scene recently because of this toxic atmosphere, which has become more prevalent in recent months, and harder and harder to avoid. I can personally sympathise with this.

Recently I became the target of some considerable vitriol. I mean, you expect that to some degree when you put yourself out there, but certain individuals were looking for any excuse to take anyone down a peg or two. It became so awful, and you'd notice in others around you a change in attitude & energy because tongues had been wagging - it all started to become very unpleasant.

There are a couple of events that I've personally stopped going to now because I don't want to be around that kind of energy, especially when the events are on the smaller side, and it's hard to avoid it. I'm not alone in this. Toxic behaviour on our beloved scene is a frequent topic of conversation these days, and tickets for events are not selling anywhere near as fast as they were in 2024. People might not admit it, but I can tell you this is certainly one factor impacting those sales. We all came out to dance to get away from our problems and crap like this, not be on the receiving end of more of it.

So I came into a very different summer in 2026 - broke, with no work, and feeling more alone than ever. There are a few important things that are keeping me going at the moment - one is that I have a couple of friends of mine, good people, who are feeling even worse than I am at the moment, and remind me of one thing that I am good at, which is being there on the end of the phone for good people when they need me. Then there's my YouTube channel, and there's the ever-enthusiastic energy of my two nephews, Cass & Noah, who are always a complete joy to be around. Their Dad, Jason, being at the end of the phone whenever I need him. I try to call him when I've got good news but that's been notably absent of late. Plus, despite my apprehension, there's the impending trip to Ibiza, now just two months away, and the subject of my next book. I hope it will be the trip of a lifetime. I know life can at times be like this: one month everything is great, the next - boom, things happen, and then it feels like a constant struggle. I've felt like I've really been struggling for about eight weeks now. It would certainly be a lot better if we could all make a concerted effort to be nicer to one another, when the world in general has become such a horrible place.

Someone said to me the other day - 'Christ Lance, I feel like I don't want to be here anymore...'

It pains me to admit it, having been so strong for so long, that I know just how they feel.