Across the world, things are happening that no prayers or pieties can undo, events so terrible they make the dysfunctional nation I call home appear normal. Here on the periphery of Europe, I have the luxury of thinking about writing and filmmaking. On a good day it’s my highest aspiration. On a bad day, it’s a lost cause. I'm not alone. Many in Scotland share the same thought - how can I have a career in the arts or creative industries and not die of disappointment?

For the working classes today there’s no route to becoming a professional anything in the arts, not when the portal to free higher education was slammed in our faces last century. Whether through creativity or patronage, art is once again restored as the plaything of the moneyed, the unpaid interns able to work for free at the expense of those who can't. In this context and in the absence of a living wage, who gets to make art?

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Recently on Twitter I posed the question – should I create a new account for my latest film? Already I juggle three accounts @MayMilesThomas, @deilsplantin and @VoyageuseFilm so a fourth is probably overdoing it. The jury's verdict – stick to my main account – seems only logical so in future I'll restrict myself to posting here - and linking there.

This, I realise, could easily turn into a full-time job but it's a necessary one when so much of one's life and identity is paraded on the conveyor belt of social media. Long before revelations of mass data harvesting, fake posts and dodgy algorithms, the wisdom accrued from years of posting on Facebook (deleted) LinkedIn (inactive) and Instagram (lapsed temporarily) led me to limit my exposure. Thankfully I never strayed into Friends Again or MySpace and so far I've avoided WhatsApp, Snapchat and their derivatives. However I admit to having YouTube, Vimeo Pro and IMDB accounts though I've failed to exploit them.

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