You can tell a lot about me by the state of my beard.

I've worn facial hair since my mid-teens, ever since my maths teacher commented on my "bum fluff moustache" when I was 14 and struggling to establish myself as a cool, stylish young man (his comments didn't help). My dad claims to have been "born with his moustache", so I'm from a long line of hirsute gentlemen. I remember bouncers waving me into bars and clubs in my late teens while my friends were being asked for ID, saying "he's got a beard, let him in".

I've only shaved it all off a handful of times, and none of them have been great occasions:

The ill-judged "monk" graduation restyle

I had half an hour to kill yesterday before a post-work event started, so I popped to a favourite quiet bar for a cheeky pint before it started. It's a real ale specialist pub so it's usually full of middle-aged men asking to sample half a dozen types of bitters with names like Wenlock's Shotgun or Half A Bob Mild.

I'd come in to read a magazine in peace and settled down to a corner table with my beer. Opposite me was another guy about my age doing almost exactly the same thing, a book nestled on the table as he got up for another pint.

To my right was a middle-aged couple finishing their drinks. They stood up and the woman announced she needed the bathroom. The man looked over at the bar to read the code number needed to access the toilets. "6-8-7-1" he read back to her. "68, the year I was born" she mused back. "And then 7, the number of men you've slept with!", the man leered back at her. They were standing so close to my table that he had to have said it for me to hear, especially the volume he boomed it at. She laughed it off and they made their way to the exit.

My name is Matt and I'm addicted to watching YouTube video series about men making new lives for themselves on canal boats.

I don't know exactly how or when this addiction started. I remember late one night, perhaps during a covid lockdown, browsing the Amazon Prime Video listings to find something, anything that was new and unchallenging. The days and weeks were long and intense, and you switched on the TV for an escape at the end of the evening.

I ended up watching a whole season of "Britain by Narrowboat", which documents the journey of two men who sell their house and quit their jobs in order to become canal-based vloggers. The show tagline describes the premise as "a last-ditch attempt to save his mental health", referring to one half of the couple (who indeed experiences a breakdown while aboard his vessel).

Hello. This man has been feeling, well, sorry for himself.

This email is a day late, which isn't so bad in the grand scheme of newsletters. But most of my week has been a write-off due to a particularly unpleasant stomach bug. It began ominously on Wednesday afternoon as I gamely tried to stay logged into work video calls, and by that evening I was able to describe in minute detail the tiling pattern of our bathroom floor.

The nadir came on Friday morning, where I had spent my second night in a row sleeping on the sofa (to spare my partner from constant night-time disturbance). I heard the now-familiar crash on the floorboards from the room above which signified my almost-five-year-old son erupting from sleep. As his feet padded down the stairs towards me I groggily looked at my phone to see just how early this wake-up call was happening.

He bounded into the room, flicking on the light as I writhed and grimaced, and it turned out he'd come prepared. He pointed his kid's tablet at me, armed with his newly-discovered camera app, and took a photo of me at perhaps my lowest ebb of the year so far:

Twelve years ago today, I climbed out of a taxi in Menlo Park, California and was greeted by a large billboard featuring the ubiquitous blue thumb of the Facebook logo, whose head office we were there to visit. This was my first experience of visiting the "campus" of a big tech firm: previously I'd been to satellite offices in smaller countries which didn't feel like the real thing. As I scanned around the set of buildings peppered with busy-looking computer nerds, I could feel the excitement tingling within me.

I'd permanently deleted my Facebook profile just a few months before, which made things quite challenging when building a Facebook app as part of my then-job. I'd already decided that the social network did more harm than good, and wanted no part in it.

Walking into the main building, however, was a severe test of my faith: look at this place. Graffiti lined every wall (with pens for you to add your own). Classic video game machines punctuated corridors; break rooms with wall-to-wall free snacks and beverages were everywhere. There were vending machines selling Apple accessories and skateboards to take you to your next meeting so you could literally move fast and break things. And did I mention the free canteen?