I experienced my first end-of-history illusion when I was eight years old. I was filled with a sense of dread, straggling up the Buttle Street Hill, lugging a 365 entry daybook of fables and poems on the way home from school, thinking that I had nothing more to say. I mean, seriously, what if I couldn't think of anything else to say? It had nothing to do with having something interesting or valuable to say, I wasn't yet exposed to the notion that I could even be an interesting or valuable person, but that there was literally nothing left for me to say. I'd used it all up - everything that I could think of had been said and I was literally feeling emptied of things to talk about. It was quite a dramatic existential anxiety for an eight year old, who only ever wanted to be an author, to experience.