|
|
|
 |
|
|
This week’s Symphony: Jean Sibelius,
Number 2 in D major Sunday 7th May To bring you up to date, in the last week and a bit I’ve been back to Birkenhead to my mum and dad’s for a few days, had trips to Llangollen and Liverpool and come back to find myself struggling between the desire to get on with my life (and possibly relocate to Manchester) and the impulse to buy a large chocolate bar and shut myself in my bedroom. Today started badly- in fact, it started at around 6.30 when the first bee of summer flew in through the window and spent the next five minutes throwing itself bodily against the glass until finding a way out so I could sleep for the next couple of hours. Unfortunately Sundays these days are for doing things I have to rather than things I want to, so after a spot of tidying up (and, given that I’m thinking more in terms of relocation than tidying these days, a fair bit of throwing out) I ended up going out in the rain to take a load of magazines and jars for recycling and then retreating to bed for a couple of hours with the large chocolate bar. That said, I think today’s revelation has been that I need to work on my friendships. I was sitting here this afternoon feeling sorry for myself and that nobody ever makes the effort to get in touch with me, when I asked myself when I last made the effort to get in touch with them. So text messages, phone calls and even some real letters will shortly follow- I can’t expect people to make an effort for me if I can’t make one for them.
Monday 8th May One of my abiding niggles is people sitting next to me on the bus. There are a few reasons, I think- I’m intensely jealous of my personal space, but I’m also a fairly large chap so I take up more than half the seat and I can’t abide clashing elbows with somebody. It’s also a constant irritant that for some reason, modern popular music seems to be written to be played at top volume, so that (as today) while I’m trying to listen to my Sibelius I have somebody’s dance music clashing along in the background. Who needs to listen to dance music on a bus at 7.30 on a Monday morning anyway? And I hate being hemmed in too, as well as the forced human interaction which comes from having to ask somebody to let you out. On the other hand, today has been quite productive- a bit of writing, speaking to a friend I haven’t spoken to in nearly two months, doing a couple of jobs online- it’s not exactly non-stop but I feel better about myself for it and encouraged in my tentative ideas about relocating. Affirmations -My opinion is as valid as anybody else’s -I can change the course of my life for the better -I am good enough for any woman I find attractive -I am taking positive steps to improve my health and fitness -I can be organised and spontaneous in equal measure
Tuesday 9th May There’s nothing quite like waking up at 4am and realising that the way you’re living your life at the moment is based on a couple of fantasies and nothing else. Without wanting to embarrass anybody who might be reading this, a large part of my emotional life has become one long daydream about certain people which is far more likely never to come true than stand the remotest chance of happening. Admittedly my dreams did also include a trip to see the space shuttle Challenger on the launch pad, but I think it’s been a wake-up call for me. The rest of today has been absolutely fine, though- it’s that stage of the month when I have to micro-manage my finances, but that’s nothing I haven’t done before and besides I like the challenge of living on as little as possible. It’s also been amazing the difference sunny days have made to my energy levels- there’s been no stopping me today, and apart from a little doze on the bus home, I’ve been getting things done with remarkable efficiency. As part of the emotional preparation for being ready to move by the end of the summer, today I removed all the junk from on top of the microwave and tomorrow I’m going to clear the next bit of space along between the kettle and the home file. Today’s affirmation: I am comfortable being single. I value my sexuality and will only share it with somebody I love.
Thursday 11th May Sunshine, an early finish at work and a three-figure tax refund. What more could you want? How do I rate my self-worth now on a scale of 1 to 100? 55 If my rate is less than 100 the reasons for this are: -Being single -Not having found my place in life -Financial situation What exactly stops me from liking myself more? Seeing myself in terms of my failings rather than my qualities Being unsure of my own opinions- needing somebody else to like me first What are three ways that I hold myself back through not having enough belief in myself? -Finding it difficult to strike up friendships or relationships -Not exploring opportunities because I expect to fail -Believing that I will never really succeed What are three things that I do to be liked by others and feel likeable? -Write and make amusing comments -Bake -Go to things I don’t enjoy
Saturday 13th May It’s a little hard to concentrate on improving myself today as my cousin Chris is lying in hospital in Scotland, either dead or dying, having taken an overdose of various medicaments. Apparently he’d been diagnosed as depressive some time ago, but families being what they are nobody ever really tries to deal with this kind of stuff until something like this happens. I can’t say I was particularly close to the guy, having only met him once, but my one real memory is of him keeping a conservatory full of people in fits of laughter after a family wedding. It’s a common misconception that if you’re amusing or good company, you must be happy- it’s probably more likely the case that you learn how to amuse people so as to make them like you or to fill up one of the dark empty spaces inside. From what I’ve been told, my uncle is being the pragmatic one and can’t see much point in keeping his machine on, while Chris’s mum and sister haven’t accepted it yet- and there’s probably nothing wrong with either approach. They’re just coping in their own way. It hasn’t really changed much about how I feel about depression and suicide, though. Put it this way- my friend Ian walks around with an aortic aneurism inside his chest- or to put it another way, at any moment one of the blood vessels in his heart could burst and he’s drop dead in seconds. I don’t see much difference between that and somebody who lives with suicidal depression which could cause them to attempt to kill themselves at the wrong provocation. What I do know is my personal limitation- and that I couldn’t do it while there were people around to grieve. What three things do I put up with in my life? -Family interference -Unchallenging jobs -Low expectations of myself
Sunday 21st May Today has been a de-mudding day following Otley Show yesterday. Probably nobody who reads this (if indeed anybody reads this) has ever been to Otley Show, so- we’re talking about a big agricultural show with almost every conceivable kind of livestock, showjumping, beagling, men in chicken suits riding motorbikes...and a load of food stalls, craft stalls, pet stalls, owl stalls and charity stalls. The last being us. And thank good ness we set up on the Friday, because in the small hours of Saturday morning it started raining heavily and it didn’t stop for twelve hours. End result- the boggiest field you can imagine, stallholders’ cars and vans stuck in the mud and being hauled out by tractors, and stallholders (like me) caked in mud from the waist down. I’ve been back in for nearly 30 hours now and I still daren’t bring my shoes out of the hallway, but at least we did get a laugh when my friend Eric was helping to push a car out of the mud and got about half a gallon sprayed all down him. We usually go for a meal afterwards, but this time we were just so tired with having to wade through mud and all in need of baths that we called it a day. Otherwise, not much apart from realising that I have a deep fear of intimacy and that my concept of an ideal relationship involved none whatsoever.
For what three things will I not forgive myself? -Making bad choices at school and university -Spending my redundancy money on travel -Stealing in my teenage years In what three ways do I punish myself? -Continuing belief that I will never be good enough -Failing to support any attempt to make things better -Never allowing myself time to enjoy life
Surprising, my best Sunday night’s sleep in ages, no doubt helped by a couple of drinks last night. Freedom of speech seems to be taking something of a battering recently, and the historian David Irving’s conviction for holocaust denial in Austria is a particularly disappointing example. For a citizen of one EU country to be convicted in another, presumably both subject to the same Charter guaranteeing freedom of expression, is surely a paradox which invites a challenge. I’ll lay my cards on the table- as far as I know, I have no personal connection to the Jewish Holocaust of the 1930s and 1940s- I have no Jewish family as far as I’m aware, not even any family on the European mainland. Two or three Jewish colleagues at most, some of the nicest and most caring people I’ve ever worked with. So I simply can’t see it in the same emotive terms that others can, although I can appreciate the intensity of feeling that others might have, and I’d argue that Stephen Fry’s recent programme on his family history would bring such things home to a school class rather more pertinently than Anne Frank’s diary or Schindler’s List. Neither do I understand what’s supposed to be so awful about denying the Holocaust or making it out to be less serious than it was- it’s an event in history, and denying that it took place seems as pointless to me as denying that the Blitz, Charles and Diana’s wedding or indeed last Tuesday took place. There are people alive who remember the details and can prove you wrong. If anything, certain vocal and influential Jewish organisations have distorted the Holocaust more than any one historian could ever do- it’s taken a good fifty years for the other victims, be it gay, Freemasons, Jehovah’s Witnesses or disabled, to be recognised, so that anybody would think that the Nazis were the only group ever to try to wipe a race or people off the face of the planet. The Biblical Philistines, Amalekites and Canaanites might have something to say about that. But ultimately Austria comes out of the affair looking as tolerant of freedom of speech as it was between 1938 and 1945. Not a bad day all round, though, and if I’m honest with myself overall I do feel quite calm and fairly happy at the moment- I’ve just been paid, another lot of stuff is starting to attract some interest on Ebay and I don’t have too busy a week ahead of me. Today’s positive: My manager complimented me on a 10% improvement in my productivity last week.
Tuesday 21st February Not a brilliant day, a bit of a drag plus feeling rough again. I feel as if I either need to be ill or relax and unwind, so I do neither, but at least I’ve finished The Pit, which is a good illustration of why you don’t write a 275-page book and keep all your good ideas to the last 20 pages. My manager also handed out little thank you cards to everybody who went in on Saturday to do some overtime. I didn’t ask whether I have to write one in return when four hours’ pay at double time hits my account with next month’s salary. Today’s positive: The crocuses are coming out in the parks in Leeds. I like crocuses.
Wednesday 22nd February The atmosphere in work today can be roughly gauged by a discussion which took place at about 4.15 this afternoon between two colleagues- let’s call them Single Woman With Cats and The Foodie- and which culminated in the former telling the latter (who has just been promoted from the grade below her to the grade above her) "It’ll all come back to bite you on the arse when you go into IFS. They hate cocky little twats like you". Everybody’s stressed, and in spite of the management-purchased fruit pastilles and wine gums, it’ll be like this for the next week or so because of the dreaded Month End Drawdowns. One possible positive to come out of this is that we could have another Saturday morning overtime session a week on Saturday, but otherwise the atmosphere isn’t good. Today’s positive: Somebody in the Amazon warehouse put my CD in the wrong postbag, so my copy of ‘The Fearmonger’ (ETA Friday onwards with free delivery) arrived today.
Saturday 25th February Says a lot about the last couple of days that I’ve been too worn out to stay out of bed a moment longer than necessary and didn’t wake up until as near as dammit 9.30 this morning. Not a bad day, but one of those where you don’t do much but seem to spend all day not doing it- although posting several books and CDs would count for something. Reading some of Clive James’s TV reviews this afternoon while manning the Lions Club bookstall, it struck a chord to read reviews bemoaning trivial entertainment delivered by bad actors and overpaid stars, even down to a whole mammoth classic serial- I do want to see the 1972 War and Peace when it comes out on DVD, if only to see if it’s as totally miscast as James claims. James’s approach to television is an interesting one- to be able to review television in its entirety, you have to watch the trash as well as the well-meaning highbrow stuff. Shame I just don’t have the patience to do it, and preferred to watch the free DVD of The Wicker Man given out with today’s Grauniad instead. Today’s positive: I bought an inspirational postcard of Martin Luther King’s sayings today. "One day youngsters will learn words they will not understand. Children from India will ask, what is hunger? Children from Alabama will ask, what is racial segregation? Children from Hiroshima will ask, what is the atomic bomb? Children at school will ask, what is war? You will answer them. You will tell them: Those words are not used any more, like "stagecoaches", "galleys" or "slavery". Words no longer meaningful-that is why they have been removed from dictionaries."
There’s no use trying to avoid the issue- I’m hung up about sex. If nothing else, watching The Wicker Man last night and Dominick Hide tonight has proved it- I get distinctly uncomfortable with a bit of kissing and cuddling on television and I’m probably closer to the Edward Woodward character in The Wicker Man than is good for me. Sex just isn’t a reality in my life, you see, it’s something other people do, like getting mortgages and driving cars, and never (as far as I’m aware) having been desired by anybody, I just don’t know how to relate to the idea except with vague amusement. The thing is, while I was a Christian I had a justification for my lack of experience in that it was actually desirable, but now that I’m not, I have to have a reason for it -and also for not trying to catch up for lost time. Not forgetting that any woman of my own age with whom I find myself in intimate circumstances is more than likely going to be more experienced than me, so that pretty much rules out casual liaisons or doing it with anybody who doesn’t love me enough to accept my inexperience. Which may not be such a bad thing after all. Otherwise, a quiet day interrupted only by a trip to the farmers’ market for eggs, vegetarian pies and an almond slice. A fair bit of reading, ironing and putting the usual collection of junk on Ebay. Today’s positive: The problem that I thought I had with a friend was entirely in my head, it seems- we’re still friends.
Monday 27th February Thanks to a new initiative at work, we don’t have to fill in sheets for all the work we do this week as we’re doing more in-depth monitoring of phone calls. So I don’t have to sweat over my productivity, for a week at least. I notice we’re getting concerned about the gap in pay between men and women again. It’s a massive generalisation in itself to say that there’s a pay gap of 17% or whatever, and there are a number of reasons you can’t easily put right. Given that male and female staff starting the same job at the same time will now be paid on the same scale, it comes down to the basic differences between men and women. Maternity is an obvious factor- when it comes to the annual pay rise, particularly when many companies now use a competence-based scheme to work out salaries, yes, someone who’s been on maternity leave for the last six months isn’t going to be able to make the same progress as a man who hasn’t, and they’ll probably get a basic or averaged rise. And taking time out to have children can lead to a split career, where a woman moves between employers and starts at the bottom of the pay scale each time. But it’s difficult to even that out without penalising the man who’s been adding to his skills and experience, thus increasing his worth to the company while his female colleague is re-learning her job. In many cases, the man in a household is still considered the primary wage earner, so his wife or girlfriend may not feel under any pressure or desire to progress at work given that hers is a second income for the household- or it may simply be that there’s something genetic which makes men more driven and competitive. In any case, while there may be a "pay gap" on paper, it’s as much the result of hundreds of thousands of individual life choices as any active discrimination, and it’s neither realistic nor sensible to expect a social phenomenon to right itself just because central government says so. Today’s positive: Winning a half bottle of wine in a quiz. There is no bad here.
Wednesday 1st March I can’t remember any one thing Linda Smith ever said, but I do remember that she was funny, in a kind of sharp yet laconic way in which barbed observations appeared out of nowhere to hit home. And so it was a surprise to hear that she’d died and another surprise to find that she was as old as 48, and particularly sad that she should have been such an ardent humanist. Because in that situation of facing terminal illness, you know that however long you have is It, and if you happen to be one of the unlucky people who dies young then there’s no hope of an afterlife or resurrection. A few years ago I was reading the paper after Christmas, and one of the articles was asking why people still observe religious festivals, at least in name. The writer’s conclusion was that even though we might not necessarily believe every single dogma of any particular religion or denomination, faith still gives us comfort. And choosing to live without that comfort, even in the face of a premature end to life, is in my book as close to true conviction as anybody can come
Thursday 2nd March There was a particularly pretty sunset in the Wharfe valley as I came home on the bus tonight. It’s surely a disconcerting sign of getting older when the footballers you used to watch start dying off. Although I have no strong feelings about Peter Osgood, it did occur to me earlier on that my dad almost certainly saw him playing for Chelsea on their visits to Anfield and his trips to Stamford Bridge to watch his adopted second team. And that got me thinking about Steve Cooper, Tranmere’s blond bombshell of some twelve or thirteen years ago, signed as a stopgap striker and relegated to fourth choice within a year or two. A frustrated gymnast, Cooper’s specialities were (a) celebratory backflips after scoring and (b) a particularly rasping overhead kick which opposing defenders learned to avoid. He apparently dropped dead a year or two back, short of his fortieth birthday. Today’s positive: I discovered today that I’m not totally vindictive or money oriented- a leaving collection came round for somebody who still owes me for a taxi about six weeks ago, and did I let it pass by without putting in? No, I did not.
Saturday 3rd March I think I can say without fear of contradiction that there are good routines and there are bad routines. There are routines which make the world a safer and happier place, and there are routines which drain your time and energy and leave you questioning the purpose of your life at the end of it. Guess which summarises my weekends? Even after a Friday spent at home after throwing up bile at six in the morning, I wake up, make a cup of tea, read, go out to post stuff I’ve sold in the week, come back, read, sleep and watch a bit of television in the evening. Then again, that’s a choice, I suppose- at 8.30 this morning I had ‘Spearhead from Space’ in the DVD player and was all ready to watch Season 7 in a day, but I’m just not the sort of person who can sit down all the time while there’s stuff to be done. I’ll admit it to myself- I’m getting lonely and I need new friends, but it scares me that I might get too needy, especially where the female friends are concerned, and just end up causing bother. Today’s positive: A brief spell of enthusiasm this morning led me to empty the overflowing waste paper basket in the lounge and wash out the jars in the kitchen. Much more of that and I might even have a tolerable living space before long.
What a difference a day makes- for much of this afternoon I was in heaven. Mozart and the Early Music Show on Radio 3, reading an Algernon Blackwood story or a bit of Alistair Cooke, and a bit of warmth in the sun coming through my lounge window. And with the Teach Yourself Italian book and CD which came free with the Independent the last couple of days, I have a bit of brain food for the next couple of weeks. As it’s turned out, a weekend in on my own hasn’t turned out to be such a bad thing. Today’s positive: In a fit of energy this afternoon I wiped down all the windows and windowsills. I just have to remember to do this more often than every two years.
Tuesday 7th March Amazing the difference one aggressive threatening moron can make. In the end, I just lost my nerve, gave him the money and walked away, and I have peace and tranquillity (as far as I know). Otherwise, a difficult day at work trying to get stuff done- basically everything piled up on my desk in the morning and I spent most of the afternoon shifting it-but after last night I’m relieved to feel OK. Today’s positive: Not only has Poundland opened in Leeds but I managed to post four Ebay sales today for a total expenditure of £1.88.
Thursday 8th March Today would have been a wonderful day had I not been discharging security. Basically, doing Discharges means that everything has to be done by 4 to make the last post collection, but when I arrived in work at about 8.20 the files and correspondence hadn’t been tied up, and it was easily 9.15 before I started. As you can expect, this leads to me ending up a stressed nervous wreck trying to get everything done. Otherwise I banked a cheque, posted my only outstanding Ebay sale and did everything I set out to do, and reading Wodehouse on the bus at the moment just serves to make things that tiny bit more idyllic. Today’s positive: Apart from the above, I seem to have hit a vein of relaxation and contentment- hope it lasts a few days at least.
Saturday 11th March Today has been a long day- no, make that a looooong day. Up at 7, out manning the Lions Club booksale until 10.30 and again from 1 until 5 in sub-zero temperatures with a serious attempt at snow going on around us. Started off feeling maudlin about my current crush as usual, but bucked myself up and decided to enjoy myself instead and I do feel better for it. For whatever reason, I just can’t enjoy being the feeling of attraction- it either feels wrong or inconvenient, and I tend to fall for women who are so good that my attentions would just be an inconvenience to them, so it becomes a crush and gets all bottled up and distorted inside. So I decided to enjoy being in the company of friends this afternoon and have a hot bath and/or an early night. Today’s positive: After a lot of tidying and/or searching, I finally found the P60 from last year I need to claim a possible tax refund.
Symphony of the Week: Ludwig van Beethoven, Symphony Number 3 ("Eroica") There’s nothing worse than having snow and nowhere to play with it. If there’s one thing about having a flat that I don’t like, it’s not having any outside place to sit in the summer or make snowmen in the winter. I think I must be getting middle-aged before my time, because my first reaction when the snow started coming down was "buggered if I’m going out in that", and indeed my feet have not crossed the threshold today. Plus I forgot (as I always do on a Sunday) that I keep my alarm clock one hour ahead so I was up and doing at 7.30. But all the fuss has been about the snow in Scotland and all the subsequent fun, which seems a bit over the top. Scotland is cold and wet. In August. If you don’t like that kind of weather, nobody is making you live there. Sundays without religious faith are odd- I seem to spend most of the morning and early afternoon reading, then the afternoon doing bits of housework and tidying before realising that I need to get some shirts ironed before I go to bed. I’m sure there must be other stuff I could do, but it really doesn’t occur to me. Today’s positive: This time next week I will hopefully have met some new friends and re-met a couple of old ones.
Monday 13th March Random Fact About Me: I was 28 years old before I flew in an aeroplane. I should be having a meal out tonight, but the person who was supposed to be giving me a lift is stuck on the other side of Yorkshire, and with snow forecast I didn’t dare take the bus, so I’ve been left here with my slight headache. Today I’ve been thinking mostly about the mistakes I’ve made in my life- choosing the wrong GCSE subjects, the wrong A-levels, the wrong degree and aiming at the wrong career. It’s no wonder I’m terrified of making decisions when every one I’ve ever made has been the wrong one. Hand in hand with that goes the way our society is so hostile to people changing horses in mid-stream; the prevailing wisdom is that you can’t, after a decade in piddling little jobs in financial services, retrain to become a solicitor or an accountant, except at great personal expense and no guarantee of professional acceptance. So I had my four years of study, lacked the confidence to make anything of them, and so I spend the next thirty years never really achieving anything and being a constant disappointment to everybody around me. I’m just marking time until I retire and can actually use my energy productively instead of wasting it on pernickety Scottish solicitors and account managers who refuse to accept that the phrase "we have no trace of the title deeds" means what it says and ring back on the off chance that if they ask us to double-check, we’ll find said deeds under a plant pot or doubling as tablemats in the canteen. It’s a waste of a life, but I’d rather end in ice than fire. Today’s positive: A particularly successful couple of days selling on Ebay puts me well on schedule for my best month in a while.
Tuesday 14th March Random Fact About Me: My undergraduate dissertation was on English verse translations of Virgil’s Aeneid. Tired today in a not-entirely-healthy way, but then Poundland do have those massive bags of Doritos so I’ve only myself to blame. Fortunately these days my liver is so alert to the danger of fat that it practically jumps up my throat and makes a break for it at the sight of a bag of chips. Not a good day in work, mainly because my manager was in and out of meetings with the auditor so I ended up taking her calls as well as my own. The snow was a brief diversion, made worse by the fact that the Leeds gritters were out last night roughly three hours before a series of showers washed all the salt down the grids. Following on from yesterday’s preoccupations, I’ve reached the conclusion that I’ll never be content in life- I resist the use of the word "happy", because historically it really only means "fortunate", but I might be open to substituting it with "fulfilled". The time in my life when I felt most intellectually stimulated was, unsurprisingly, at university, where I had things to read, stimulating challenges and so on. It was also an extremely tormented time for me emotionally, having little or no confidence and finding it extremely difficult to make friends, particularly the female ones. So while sometimes, when my bus home is loading up at the university, I long to be fifteen years younger, I wouldn’t have that level of insecurity again- in some ways it’s a miracle I ever spoke to anybody at all. I’ll settle for "bearable"- enough intellectual challenge to keep me going and few enough demands on my time. But it would be greedy to ask to be popular, successful or loved. Today’s positive: I’m pleased with the way I handled a certain situation today. Could have led to feelings of anger and jealousy but I managed it so it didn’t.
Wednesday 15th March Random Fact About Me: I haven’t been out with a girl since Christmas 1992. Slept badly last night and up early to collect parcels from the post office. The problem with getting paperback books by post is that they’re invariably fragile and it can be a lottery as to the condition in which they finally arrive (this from the guy who sent two copies of Conrad’s Lord Jim back to Amazon because of various knocks and creases), but generally speaking we were on solid ground today. Another difficult day in work- a lot of demands on my time and a particularly choice selection of arrogant twats either asking stupid questions or asking me to email them documents of which they already have a hard copy, because it’s less bother for me to do it than for their typist. I’d love to know whether law degrees actually include a lecture on the best way to show casual disdain for others, or whether it’s just the basic lack of social skills which comes naturally to anyone resident within the M25. Didn’t feel like dinner tonight so in the end I just had my last two hot cross buns with what’s left of the butter. I think I’m reconnecting with part of my emotional self which I lost many years ago, because in work today I felt the same sense of low-level angst which characterised my undergraduate years. Or perhaps it’s just been listening to Beethoven in the mornings, but in a lot of ways at the moment I’m more like the person I was thirteen years ago than two or three years ago. As if a decade or more of my life was just a detour through Christianity and now I’ve come out the other side and I’ve got to be myself again, worse luck. Today’s positive: I’m starting to wonder where P G Wodehouse has been all my life. Balm to the soul.
Friday 17th March Random Fact About Me: The first professional football match I attended was Liverpool v Southampton. St Patrick’s Day, and yet again I struggle to reconcile the fact that I love Irish people, some twenty years ago a bunch of them came pretty close to blowing my aunt and uncle to bits. Finished the week shattered from overtime and from constant phone calls while trying to do time-critical work which has to be out of the office in the last post collection at 4, not helped by a message from our head of department on working hours which was misinterpreted and put a lot of noses out of joint. I’m wondering, though, whether part of the strain this week has been down to listening to Beethoven in the mornings, and whether next week’s Berlioz might not be a little more congenial and less angsty. And so home to find that I’m about £60 further overdrawn than I thought, although with being paid overnight that shouldn’t be an issue, and Tranmere contriving to throw away several weeks’ good work by losing at home to Walsall. Is it significant that I can’t really get myself worked up about either? Today’s Positive: I’m going to have a good day tomorrow.
Random fact about me: I was 19 before I drank a pint of beer. For all the agonising I do, every so often something happens which shows me that there are people who do give a damn about me and who are prepared to get to know me. There were things which happened over the weekend which are going to be very precious, I know- things which were said, but also things which weren’t, the non-verbal signals and actions which make the difference between genuine feeling and treading water. It doesn’t happen very often, so it chokes me a bit, but I know that I’ll move mountains if it means seeing some of these folk again. Today’s positive: Just look at what I’ve said for a minute. People went out of their way for me this last weekend, and for once in my life I feel as if I matter.
Tuesday 21st March Random fact about me: I have never been on a package holiday. It’s taken about 48 hours for the veneer to come off the weekend- by early afternoon today I was back to getting wound up at work and wishing somebody would declare war on Scotland. I’ve decided that early starts are the best way of getting my three hours of overtime worked up this week, so 6am it was today and 6am it will be for the rest of the week, but with the difference that on Thursday I’ll get away at 4. While checking the date by which I need to stock up on first class stamps to avoid the rate increase, I found a nasty little surprise on the Royal Mail website. From August, not just the weight but the size will be taken into account, and anything more than 25mm thick will cost a minimum of £1 to post regardless of weight. I’ll just have to get all my books and videos sold by then, I suppose, but I just wish somebody would explain in plain English why everything has to keep costing more. I’m nine months away from my next pay rise and it still isn’t enough. Today’s positive: I’ve started writing something based on a couple of chance remarks which were made at the weekend, and with a view to having it ready to be a present for somebody. If it works, it’ll be the best thing I’ve ever done, but then I said that about the Angliad, a thoroughly pretentious attempt at historical verse which I tried writing at the age of 18.
Wednesday 22nd March Random fact about me: I have crossed the Clifton Suspension bridge over 1000 times. Rather nice cricket-related moment today in work; I was on the phone to somebody mid-morning when my colleague Duncan passed me a note which simply said "INDIA ALL OUT - 100", which accounted for a strangely cheerful tone of voice while I was being given an ear-bashing by one of our more Pictish managers in Scotland. At this stage in the month my main concern is paying bills, and today it was the turn of the Barclaycard, which I overpaid slightly because of the additional expense of a train ticket back from Newcastle on Sunday. It’s rather happy/sad that at the same time that there are people who seem to like me and are at least happy for me to have their phone numbers, I don’t always feel confident in calling them- but at least I seem to be starting to make one or two friendships where for almost the first time in my life, what I say is less important than what I am. And the concept of being liked for being me is perhaps the most difficult concept of all to take. Otherwise, the Special Project is taking its first tentative steps but I just need to get into the habit of spending time at it regularly. Today’s positive: A couple of times today colleagues spoke to me as if they trusted me to know what I was doing. A strange but encouraging development.
Saturday 25th March Random Fact About Me: I own three signed photographs of Sophie Aldred. Stayed out on a leaving do last night so wasn’t at my best when it came to this morning’s overtime- a headache born of pure exhaustion was pretty much a constant companion until about 3pm-and then slept for three hours, which I fully needed not having had a proper night’s sleep since about the Friday before last. A few weeks ago my friend Simon the Undertaker was telling me about a customer of his, a self-made businessman who was burying a relative. "The thing is," he was saying," people have got to realise this isn’t a fucking practice!". And in the last couple of days in little ways I’ve tried to take this on board- letting myself go a little bit more, enjoying being out on the do last night rather than feeling that I "had to" get home, and seeing money as a means rather than an end. The other day I sent a text message to a friend because I worked myself up into a state as to whether I should ring her or not, and by the time I’d finished it was after 10 therefore too late- whereas if I’d been thinking clearly I would have known a friend as such and tried, late or not. It’s easy to feel sorry for myself and think that my life is dull and boring, but then again I’ve had two nights out in the last seven days and next Saturday I’m out to a dinner. It’s not perfect, but at the moment I’m probably not giving the friends I have their due either. Today’s positive: New approach, new me. If I have your phone number, expect a call.
This week’s symphony" Schumann’s Symphony Number 3 ("Rhenish") Sunday 26th March Mother’s Day brings with it an interesting set of associations- not least the fact that, according to the medical profession, I shouldn’t be here. About 10-15 years ago, the doctors discovered that Mother only had one ovary, which apparently renders you technically infertile. You would think that this would make me feel special or glad to be alive, but it doesn’t. Instead, I can’t help dwelling on certain other events- the way that I was only able to study at Bristol because other people dropped out of my course, or that my lack of success in the areas of life which are important to me is somehow due to my being a surplus person who shouldn’t exist. Perhaps there was a kid who was run over at the age of four, and I’m living their life. And then there’s all the stuff from my upbringing, dominated by the power struggle over me between my mum, aunt and grandma- for the first 33 years of my life, I’ve been like Macbeth, with three women dictating the course of everything so that there’s very little in my life that’s my own. So it was kind of a relief that Mother rang me rather than the other way around- her activities on a Sunday are unpredictable to say the least given that she gets up early to see to the cat and tends to kip in the afternoon. On the other hand, I’ve already lived longer than at one stage I was planning to do, as I discovered last week that a one-time crush of mine got married last weekend and there was a point where I was considering chucking myself under something large and mobile if that ever happened. Fortunately having left that particular church a year and a half ago, she’s history so that’s that. Otherwise I’ve been curiously out of sorts today. Mildly tired, but not enough for an afternoon snooze to be really worthwhile, and if I’m honest with myself, feeling a little lonely and unloved. Fortunately what I’ve realised of late is that in these situations I can either sit on my own and feel miserable, or I can try reaching out to people. They may not be there, but whether they get back to be tonight or Tuesday fortnight, it’s about creating some kind of relationship. Today’s positive: In spite of all the baggage, I do at least feel my own person to an extent today and did summon up the courage to ring somebody.
Monday 27th March Random fact about me: From the ages of 9 to roughly 12 I supported Tottenham Hotspur. Given that it happens every year, I’m amazed at the effect that the clocks changing seems to have had this year. Without exception, I think everybody at work today has been particularly grouchy (and I include myself) and out of sorts. Still, at least we’re still doing overtime so another three hours are on the cards this week. It just seems to have been a rough day all round, though, really. I miss certain people who aren’t around, and without them the futility of the general drift of my life seems to have been thrown into sharp relief. Things aren’t good, they aren’t getting better and I’ve reached the stage where in many ways keeping going is an end in itself. Whether it was a phishing attempt or not, I also had a slight panic over my Paypal account which resulted in me emptying it just to be on the safe side- the last thing I need is to lose the money I rely on to keep me going in the last week or so before payday. What I need is somebody to reach out to me and tell me that things are OK- but really that’s just a sign that what I really need is to develop some inner strength and confidence rather than depending on the approval of others for it. I also worked out today that if I fell under a bus tomorrow, there would be thirteen people at my funeral. Today’s positive: At least I now have Firefly to keep me entertained. Strange to think that I now own two of Joss Whedon’s series in their entirety.
Tuesday 28th March I have appeared on the Australian reality TV show My Restaurant Rules. Today I’ve been particularly appreciative of my colleague Amy, because she’s the only thing in between me and another colleague, who apparently goes by the nickname of Tiny Tears- because she’s not quite 5ft tall and has a tendency to have to go into the corner and have a cry at moments of stress. She’s also particularly sarcastic when she wants to be and spent several minutes on the phone to a business manager this morning yakking on about how useless men were. In front of two male colleagues. And during the course of the day her language has been getting worse and worse, which just makes it difficult for me because I try to do my level best and make sure everybody gets along. I’ve also been a little bit off my food lately, although seeing as there wasn’t a clean pan or dish to be had in the flat when I got home it did at least give me time to sort that little situation out. Today’s positive: Sometimes, just sometimes, you take a chance and reach out to somebody and find you’ve made the right choice.
Wednesday 29th March Random fact about me: I still have my original transmission recordings of The Trial of a Time Lord, and they work fine. Still off my food and still not getting on with colleagues. Today I’ve mostly been eating fruit and soup, although I forced some scrambled eggs and potato fritters down tonight. Tonight also marked my third attempt to watch the Firefly opener ‘Serenity’. Tonight I got as far as the halfway mark before various other jobs I had to do started taking precedence. I can see it’s going to be one of those sitting down in the dark with the lights out jobs. Today’s positive: Seven hours to work tomorrow, with a 4pm finish to boot.
This Week’s Symphony: Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Number 2 "Little Russian" Sunday 2nd April Nothing too strenuous today- after all, last night I was at a Lions Club dinner and only arrived back shortly before midnight. So today has mostly been a case of reading, a little bit of cheap food shopping at Netto (and if you could see how cheap the veg is, you would too) and ironing, while thinking vaguely about my life and how I see myself. Because as I keep saying, this is ground zero. I’ve dismantled a lot of what I’ve put in place over the years so as to be more or less acceptable to more or less everybody, and I’ve found that in the middle there wasn’t very much at all- no core "me". And while it’s tempting to meander around feeling aimless and sorry for myself, I do have to at least try stuff to see whether it’s "me" or not. Hence the progressive flogging off of my stamp collection- twelve years of pretty aimless and random expenditure, much of it strictly speaking beyond my means, but now I’ve basically reached the conclusion that something that sits on a shelf and isn’t looked at is a waste of space and quite frankly, I need the money more. So bye-bye stamp collection. I took the same line with my DVDs a while ago- four basic strands to my collection, and anything else which doesn’t fit is out. Or was out, the only exceptions being The Matrix (signed by Joe Pantoliano and Paul Goddard) and Casanova (for David Tennant, naturally). Which just leaves the process of building up what I want to be. Over a year ago I committed to being cheerful, positive, confident and not afraid of failure- and I haven’t made a good job of it. I also wanted to emphasise friendliness, energy, confidence, patience and enthusiasm, and I haven’t done a very good job of that either. But there’s always tomorrow. Today’s positive: I took another step today towards a tiny little home business.
Monday 3rd April Monday blues are, in my case at least, very different from late-week blues or weekend blues. In my case, it’s usually down to missing perhaps a third of my normal sleep on a Sunday night and knowing that not only am I not good for very much, I’m not going to be good for very much tonight either. And today, I think, also feeling the need of a best friend in my life- not something I’ve ever really cultivated, or to be more accurate, my best friends’ best friends have always been other people. I’d just love to have somebody in my life who was going to be the closest friend I’d ever have, somebody who saw stuff in me that I couldn’t see myself, and yet somebody who allowed me to give of myself too. And true to form, the possible candidates in my life right now are ruled out by one thing or another. The other thought which occurred to me today is this- what kind of person decides to be a dentist as a career? What is it which prompts somebody at the age of 18 to decide that they want to spend the next forty years bending over malodorous mouths, seeing years of work decay and disintegrate because nobody looks after them properly? Even the ability to charge £35 for fifteen minutes of your time (although a good fiver of that will probably be accounted for by the dental nurse) surely can’t make up for a trade with few challenges and where whatever you do is only holding back the processes of nature. Today’s positive: I only have to work one more Monday this month.
Tuesday 4th April An unusual day in work today- our team supervisor up in Glasgow and her deputy off sick, so the mantle of responsibility fell on Debsy Websy, who has a slightly unfairly-earned reputation for being a bit of a dragon, but is all sweetness and light if you can talk rugby union and cope with her scattiness. It’s all been a bit low-key, really, with an undercurrent of deep longing for somebody to come and take me away from all this, or at least allow me into their life. I’ve also been trying a bit of meditation lately and it seems to work once I’m used to the feeling of physical relaxation and a different kind of awareness. I won’t say more because I’m fairly new to it and don’t feel qualified to put my own experience into words. Today’s positive: Today we were given our Easter eggs in work. There is no bad here.
Thursday 6th April Although I decided long ago that I’m not gay in any meaningful sense of the word (about 80% straight in the final analysis), for somebody like me with a fundamentally passive personality, there’s a certain attraction to an environment where as a man, one can sit and wait for somebody else to strike up the conversation. Because there’s a glass wall inside me, I can’t reach out and start conversations with people and end up feeling awkward waiting for somebody else to make the first move. I’m that hardwired to need unsolicited approval from other people and it means I do things I don’t want to just to feel a part of things. It’s probably just as well that I wasn’t born female or I’d have ended up a right slapper who went with anybody who gave her the time of day. So while I quite like the idea of being chatted up and the frisson of naughtiness which comes from doing something which is both right and wrong at the same time, I also know that the day I walk into a gay venue and sit there waiting to be picked up is the day I can wave a permanent goodbye to any idea of self-worth. Mucking around with the amount of sleep I get finally broke down today- increasingly dopey throughout the day, I was in bed at 7.45 and awake again at midnight. Today’s positive: This time next week we’ll have broken up for Easter.
Friday 7th April There’s a lot of truth in the wisdom that the best way to stop feeling sorry for yourself is to do something for somebody else- today the somebody elses were a party of old folk I helped take to a brass band concert and provide with enough tea at the interval to ensure that several sets of sheets will need changing tomorrow morning. Otherwise it’s the same old stuff with no easy answers although for once it’d be nice not to have to come home from work to a cold empty flat. I’m also not entirely well (and nearly fell asleep at the concert) so I should probably retire before I say anything else.
Saturday 8th April I’m definitely not well and unnaturally tired- going to bed at 3 this afternoon and waking up at 6.45 should have proved that- so it’s generally easier and better in the long run if I keep myself to myself and don’t come out with many of the thoughts which have occurred to me in the course of today, and if I feel somewhat in need of company it’s probably better sought tomorrow when I’m feeling a bit better. Today’ s positive: I’ve never been so glad of being a vegetarian as when I came out of the Oxfam shop today to see a truck full of cows going off to their fate, and reflected that I’m not part of that any more.
This Week’s Symphony: Johannes Brahms, Symphony Number 2 Sunday 9th April As of last week, thanks to a popularity-craving Scotsman, old age pensioners have been entitled to free off-peak bus travel- something some of them have had for years, but what was previously applied in different ways by different councils is now universal. This annoys me. It was bad enough when I used to work Saturday mornings and dreaded a sunny day because I knew the bus home would be full of pensioners all paying 35p for the trip while I paid around £55 for a month’s travel, but now a monthly pass costs £63 and pensioners travel for nothing. I’ve seen nothing about additional funding for public transport to meet the extra demand but looking at another above-inflation council tax increase I get the suspicion that I’m having to pay for the privilege of not being able to get a seat on the bus. Which leads me to the question of what exactly we owe older people in our society. I grew up being taken by my grandma to meet her friends, and believe me I can listen to old people’s stories until the cows come home, but I think it’s a question which is going to become more pertinent over the next couple of decades. The generation which went through the Second World War, yes, I can see that they deserve to be looked after- but what of the generation which followed? The baby boomer generation had everything handed to them on a silver platter- born on the NHS, with the benefit of increased opportunities for university-level education- but once they’ve become the dominant generation in society they’ve taken all that away to line their own pockets. Cut public services to fund tax breaks, whittle away student funding to the bare minimum, do everything possible to ensure that their children have it harder in education, work and retirement that they did. We’ll remember that when we’re paying for the residential homes- the reason why I refuse to worry about pensions is that it’s not my generation in power yet, and when it is we’ll surely take steps to rectify the mess we were put in by our parents. Five things I want to learn more about:
Monday 10th April Today our department took yet another step towards an atmosphere closely resembling Russia in 1917- the clerical staff who get our files out were effectively two down, one having left last week to concentrate on her sheep farming and somebody else supervising a new temp, so of course first thing our manager goes over and tries to cajole them into doing more for us and the net result is that we end up with filing clerks who have the hump and go on a go-slow, so we have to pull our own files out. Add to this the prospect of no overtime for the next couple of weeks as our work volumes are expected to fall over Easter and the biggest credit card bill I’ve ever had and an incipient cold (yes, another one) and it hasn’t been the best day of my life. Also a distinctly indifferent week’s trading on Ebay. But it’s not all doom and gloom- as it happens I have a little more financial slack this month than I thought and should be able to get through to next payday without having to starve or beg from parents. And there’s nothing like having to choose what you have to get rid of in life to help you decide what’s really important to you. Today’s positive: The next Monday I work will be May 8th.
Wednesday 13th April There’s been a good atmosphere in work today, mainly because we’re all breaking up for Easter tomorrow so nobody wants any hassle. Other teams have been bought Easter eggs by their managers; we’re having breakfast bought instead, although I can’t help thinking that the next expenditure on a toasted teacake is rather less than on a decent chocolate egg. Never mind- I worked out years ago that there’s only one way to get the egg you want, and that’s to buy it yourself. And in any case, I think I prefer Lindt gold bunnies. More to the point, I intend to use some of the time to further one or two of the projects I have under way. The slight nuisance is that, as Sod’s Law would have it, my printer cartridge dies on me exactly a week before I get paid and with a set of letters (from my club secretary’s role) which have to go out tomorrow, so everybody’s going to get letters which look as if the letters have been cut out from Dennis the Menace’s sweater. One place to avoid this coming weekend will be York. The Yorkshire Wheel has finally opened- a smaller version of the London Eye, for your £6 you get the opportunity to rise above the city of York and see the famous Minster, the railway station and- well, people’s houses, really. You see, although York has dozens of historic buildings, half the fun is that the’re tucked away in little alleyways with names like Whip-ma-whop-magate and Gropecunt Lane, so the buildings you’re actually going to see will be modern shopping parades and housing developments. People will love it. Today’s positive: Just seven hours to go.
Saturday 15th April (morning) It’s taken me this long to get myself back on a level footing after a bad Thursday which, if nothing else, confirmed that TinyTears is a two-faced selfish patronising cow, who sucks up to the business managers in the field while treating the rest of us like three-year-olds and refuses to share when they send her chocolates to thank her for helping them. Part of me still wants to crawl into a hole until Tuesday. Otherwise, the highlight of yesterday was probably starting my three-monthly book reorganisation, on this occasion putting more of my Virgin Who books together and keeping the new series ones on the same shelf. Pity I need to find room for three more shortly. It’d be nice to think that one day I’ll have shelf space for all my books, but I just can’t see it being anytime soon, especially not with three boxes full of Who under my bed.
Monday 17th April A couple of hours ago I was going to pack this in, but I won’t for the moment. Easter just seems to have vanished into two days alone in the flat, with all the stir-craziness that involves. If on Saturday I wanted to crawl into a hole on Tuesday, at 2pm today I pretty much did that. For as long as I can remember, there’s been a part of me which, if I didn’t have to work would be a recluse, and I think that today I nearly fell into that for good. I haven’t done any of the writing I wanted to do, and only a fraction of the housework that the Wicked Witch of the North-West (in other words Mother) told me that I needed to do in the course of a three and a half hour visit. Having said all that, I do feel as if I’m on the verge of something- I’m all churned up inside and teasing away at one of the issues behind what I think of as my immediate problems. For most of the last eighteen months (and let’s not forget that Wednesday marks the second anniversary of setting out on my world tour) I’ve been living from week to week without a real plan, but I think now is the time to start thinking a few years ahead and some of the stuff I’m feeling is just a prompting to do that.
Tuesday 18th April Horrendously stressful day in work today, not helped by having colleagues who would rather criticise than do something to make things easier and being one of two people having to take telephone calls for four. I am that close to just coming straight out and saying that I hate the Scots now, but the truth of the matter is that people from all over the country treat me worse than you would a dog and there’s nothing I can do about it. Otherwise, I’m starting to wonder why I find it difficult to be happy for other people. It’s far easier to envy somebody their good fortune or happiness, I think at least in part because there are certain basic things other people have- confidence, friends, love, security- which I don’t and can no longer see a way clear to getting. I don’t think I have anything in my life which anybody of a similar background would envy. But the good part of it is that because it doesn’t come naturally, if I am happy for somebody else’s success then it’s a conscious decision to do so. Today’s positive: Overtime is on again and Woolworths in Leeds have a Slitheen figure in.
Thursday 20th April Payday, and already £130 has gone through my hands- admittedly £100 of it into another account, but you get my drift. Any thoughts I had of going off to Whitby to look at the Goths on Saturday have had to take second place to the fact that work are doing overtime again and I can’t afford not to. I’ve gone back to my Fiona Harrold life coaching book and will be incorporating excerpts from my attempts at her exercises here. Five things I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t got around to so far (with reasons why)
How would my life be different if I succeeded in transforming my life?
Friday 21st April Who do I think I am?
Saturday 22nd April After some consideration, I’ve reached the conclusion that I’m exhausted. Not just tired, exhausted. I’ve been burning the candle at both ends for a while, in the knowledge that with a week off ahead of me I could do a bit more overtime to keep my head above water, and it gets to Saturday and I’m shattered. Trouble is, I’m so used to being tired now that my instinctive response is to keep going through it, so I never unwind properly either. What with it being two days after payday, and finding myself in Leeds city centre on a Saturday lunchtime, I’m afraid my resistance collapsed and I had the splurge I was trying not to have. Three books (one of which I had serious plans to buy from Amazon but never quite got around to it) and lunch in Wrapid (one of the few fast food places with a decent variety of vegetarian options), plus assorted Thorntons clearance chocolates and the Times. Something I learned about myself from my mother was:
Something I learned about myself from my father was:
Something I learned about myself from school was:
This week’s symphony: Gustav Mahler; Symphony Number 1. Monday 24th April The problem I always have with the first couple of days of any time off is that I’m too knackered to do anything except potter around, do a bit of reading, a bit of housework, write a couple of letters and have a bit of a half-hearted go at tidying up before needing to sleep again. That said, today has been good in the main- a successful attempt at having a lie-in (rare enough in these parts), a quick letter to my relatives in the Isle of Man and before too long I was out having a haircut (where I incidentally ran into my friend Ken in the barbers, but that’s by the by). A spot of food shopping later and I was back home; shortly afterwards I was in bed, although I’ll qualify that by saying that you don’t sleep for three hours in the middle of the afternoon if you don’t need it. I wonder if it’s entirely coincidental that I enjoy my evenings more when I just sit and read with some music on in the background, broken up only by a spot of exercising on my now-very-dilapidated-and-shedding-ball-bearings exercise bike, than having the television on. Reading about the Battle of Britain lately has made me think more about the time, not so long ago, when people didn’t come home from work and expect to be entertained for three or four hours solid- when people read books, went to the pictures, pursued hobbies, spent time with friends and so on. It’s certainly not a coincidence that in places like rural Westland in New Zealand, people value each other more, spend more time outdoors and almost certainly get more out of life because they don’t expect to have their entertainment handed to them on a plate. Then again, I’m somebody who has to be practically tied down to be able to watch anything of over 45 minutes’ duration, so I may not be the best person to ask. The limiting beliefs I hold about myself are: -I’m too old to change direction in life -I’ll never be able to afford the life I want while I’m young enough to enjoy it -I can’t change the course of my life by my own means -I’m boring -I’m unattractive -I’m difficult to get on with -I will never be in charge of my finances -I’ve lived on my own for so long I couldn’t ever live with anybody else -I’m not suited for any particular job -I don’t have the persistence to really achieve anything The three limiting beliefs that hold me back most of all are: -I’m too old to change direction in life -I’m unattractive -I’m difficult to get on with
Tuesday 25th April There are no worries quite like money worries, are there? After paying my Barclaycard today I realised that, even with the results of certain sales online, I have precisely £4 uncommitted until I’m paid on the 19th of next month, and while I have food in the cupboard and credit cards for emergencies, the thought of financial meltdown is never far away. But as I say, I have enough for today and tomorrow, and not everybody has that. Otherwise, I’ve settled into my usual week-off festival of pottering about- a bit of tidying here, a bit of floor-cleaning there, taking the rubbish to the recycling bank, reading The Murder on the Links and even doing a bit of writing myself. With the possibility of any days out pretty much squashed by the financial situation, it’s still good for the soul to be recharging the batteries while also improving my living conditions. The cost to me, in my life, of my limiting beliefs is: -Roads not taken and creative potential unfulfilled -Missing out on friendships and relationships -Putting up with second best all the time -Feeling that so much of my life is out of my control -Expecting the cold shoulder Seven qualities I most admire in other people Friendliness Vision Responsibility Confidence Commitment Cheerfulness Enthusiasm
Wednesday 26th April The most exciting thing I’ve done today has been eating far too many Mr Kipling Cherry Bakewells, but then again they are the most addictive substance known to man (or this one at least). Otherwise, only I could have a week off work and make it feel remarkably like being unemployed two years ago, although I did get some fiddly cleaning done in the kitchen- my units all stick out at right angles to each other and the mop won’t go in all the spaces, so every so often I have to get down on my hands and knees with a bucket of warm soapy water and scrub. The ending of The Murder on the Links seemed a little muddled just when it was promising to be particularly good, but I did watch a good episode of Firefly tonight. Joss Whedon may not cure all society’s ills, but so much of his stuff is a tonic. The person I am choosing to be from this day on is someone who is cheerful, positive, confident in his own abilities and not afraid of failure. The qualities I most want to emphasise and enjoy in myself are: Friendliness Energy Confidence Patience Enthusiasm I am now ready to give life to this new image of myself from this day forth. I commit to reinforcing these qualities until they are a deeply ingrained part of who I am and who I am seen to be.
This week’s Symphony: Jean Sibelius, Number 2 in D major Sunday 7th May To bring you up to date, in the last week and a bit I’ve been back to Birkenhead to my mum and dad’s for a few days, had trips to Llangollen and Liverpool and come back to find myself struggling between the desire to get on with my life (and possibly relocate to Manchester) and the impulse to buy a large chocolate bar and shut myself in my bedroom. Today started badly- in fact, it started at around 6.30 when the first bee of summer flew in through the window and spent the next five minutes throwing itself bodily against the glass until finding a way out so I could sleep for the next couple of hours. Unfortunately Sundays these days are for doing things I have to rather than things I want to, so after a spot of tidying up (and, given that I’m thinking more in terms of relocation than tidying these days, a fair bit of throwing out) I ended up going out in the rain to take a load of magazines and jars for recycling and then retreating to bed for a couple of hours with the large chocolate bar. That said, I think today’s revelation has been that I need to work on my friendships. I was sitting here this afternoon feeling sorry for myself and that nobody ever makes the effort to get in touch with me, when I asked myself when I last made the effort to get in touch with them. So text messages, phone calls and even some real letters will shortly follow- I can’t expect people to make an effort for me if I can’t make one for them.
Monday 8th May One of my abiding niggles is people sitting next to me on the bus. There are a few reasons, I think- I’m intensely jealous of my personal space, but I’m also a fairly large chap so I take up more than half the seat and I can’t abide clashing elbows with somebody. It’s also a constant irritant that for some reason, modern popular music seems to be written to be played at top volume, so that (as today) while I’m trying to listen to my Sibelius I have somebody’s dance music clashing along in the background. Who needs to listen to dance music on a bus at 7.30 on a Monday morning anyway? And I hate being hemmed in too, as well as the forced human interaction which comes from having to ask somebody to let you out. On the other hand, today has been quite productive- a bit of writing, speaking to a friend I haven’t spoken to in nearly two months, doing a couple of jobs online- it’s not exactly non-stop but I feel better about myself for it and encouraged in my tentative ideas about relocating. Affirmations -My opinion is as valid as anybody else’s -I can change the course of my life for the better -I am good enough for any woman I find attractive -I am taking positive steps to improve my health and fitness -I can be organised and spontaneous in equal measure
Tuesday 9th May There’s nothing quite like waking up at 4am and realising that the way you’re living your life at the moment is based on a couple of fantasies and nothing else. Without wanting to embarrass anybody who might be reading this, a large part of my emotional life has become one long daydream about certain people which is far more likely never to come true than stand the remotest chance of happening. Admittedly my dreams did also include a trip to see the space shuttle Challenger on the launch pad, but I think it’s been a wake-up call for me. The rest of today has been absolutely fine, though- it’s that stage of the month when I have to micro-manage my finances, but that’s nothing I haven’t done before and besides I like the challenge of living on as little as possible. It’s also been amazing the difference sunny days have made to my energy levels- there’s been no stopping me today, and apart from a little doze on the bus home, I’ve been getting things done with remarkable efficiency. As part of the emotional preparation for being ready to move by the end of the summer, today I removed all the junk from on top of the microwave and tomorrow I’m going to clear the next bit of space along between the kettle and the home file. Today’s affirmation: I am comfortable being single. I value my sexuality and will only share it with somebody I love.
Thursday 11th May Sunshine, an early finish at work and a three-figure tax refund. What more could you want? How do I rate my self-worth now on a scale of 1 to 100? 55 If my rate is less than 100 the reasons for this are: -Being single -Not having found my place in life -Financial situation What exactly stops me from liking myself more? Seeing myself in terms of my failings rather than my qualities Being unsure of my own opinions- needing somebody else to like me first What are three ways that I hold myself back through not having enough belief in myself? -Finding it difficult to strike up friendships or relationships -Not exploring opportunities because I expect to fail -Believing that I will never really succeed What are three things that I do to be liked by others and feel likeable? -Write and make amusing comments -Bake -Go to things I don’t enjoy
Saturday 13th May It’s a little hard to concentrate on improving myself today as my cousin Chris is lying in hospital in Scotland, either dead or dying, having taken an overdose of various medicaments. Apparently he’d been diagnosed as depressive some time ago, but families being what they are nobody ever really tries to deal with this kind of stuff until something like this happens. I can’t say I was particularly close to the guy, having only met him once, but my one real memory is of him keeping a conservatory full of people in fits of laughter after a family wedding. It’s a common misconception that if you’re amusing or good company, you must be happy- it’s probably more likely the case that you learn how to amuse people so as to make them like you or to fill up one of the dark empty spaces inside. From what I’ve been told, my uncle is being the pragmatic one and can’t see much point in keeping his machine on, while Chris’s mum and sister haven’t accepted it yet- and there’s probably nothing wrong with either approach. They’re just coping in their own way. It hasn’t really changed much about how I feel about depression and suicide, though. Put it this way- my friend Ian walks around with an aortic aneurism inside his chest- or to put it another way, at any moment one of the blood vessels in his heart could burst and he’s drop dead in seconds. I don’t see much difference between that and somebody who lives with suicidal depression which could cause them to attempt to kill themselves at the wrong provocation. What I do know is my personal limitation- and that I couldn’t do it while there were people around to grieve. What three things do I put up with in my life? -Family interference -Unchallenging jobs -Low expectations of myself
Sunday 21st May Today has been a de-mudding day following Otley Show yesterday. Probably nobody who reads this (if indeed anybody reads this) has ever been to Otley Show, so- we’re talking about a big agricultural show with almost every conceivable kind of livestock, showjumping, beagling, men in chicken suits riding motorbikes...and a load of food stalls, craft stalls, pet stalls, owl stalls and charity stalls. The last being us. And thank good ness we set up on the Friday, because in the small hours of Saturday morning it started raining heavily and it didn’t stop for twelve hours. End result- the boggiest field you can imagine, stallholders’ cars and vans stuck in the mud and being hauled out by tractors, and stallholders (like me) caked in mud from the waist down. I’ve been back in for nearly 30 hours now and I still daren’t bring my shoes out of the hallway, but at least we did get a laugh when my friend Eric was helping to push a car out of the mud and got about half a gallon sprayed all down him. We usually go for a meal afterwards, but this time we were just so tired with having to wade through mud and all in need of baths that we called it a day. Otherwise, not much apart from realising that I have a deep fear of intimacy and that my concept of an ideal relationship involved none whatsoever.
For what three things will I not forgive myself? -Making bad choices at school and university -Spending my redundancy money on travel -Stealing in my teenage years In what three ways do I punish myself? -Continuing belief that I will never be good enough -Failing to support any attempt to make things better -Never allowing myself time to enjoy life
|
 
|
