A conversation with my depression

Spare hours before work, quiet hours, moments in which to sip coffee, write. The sky outside is smudged in ripples of rose quartz, graphite and slate. Away at the horizon a tear in the clouds, golden-tinged, gloriously-rimmed, lips parted over a mouth going back and back and back. Within the mouth a clear, dense nothingness, a bright emptiness, an eternal cavern crying out the light of creation itself.

Telephone wires dance erratically in the wind. Dark, fist-sized birds are buffeted on the breeze. The ornamental plum tree beneath the wide bay window scratches at the surrounding air, bends, but does not break. Fush-ush against the window's seal's deteriorating rubber; on the desk the coffee sits and steams.

The gargoyle of my depression has been vociferous today, crabby, circling to pounce. He's getting angrier because I've been choosing to ignore him. Well, I'll let him out now and see what he wants...

Hullo, my friend. What is going on?

Everything is hopeless, everything is broken, everything is lost.

Thank you. Thank you for your opinion. But it is just that, an opinion, not a fact, and one that I choose not to agree with. But I respect your right to voice it.

You know it's true. You're weak, wretched, pathetic. You're wasting your entire life.

Again, thank you. Thank you for your opinion. Thank you for trusting me enough to say that. But, again, it is only an opinion, and a biased one, although you're stating it as fact. Look, I suppose I may be the things you say -- but if so then what good is criticising myself for them? Might as well shout at the water for being wet. Or on the other hand I may in fact be strong, be doing exactly what I should be doing, and it's only believing your opinions that makes me weak. In fact this is a theme, isn't it? You yell something awful at me, and I take it as truth, and therefore it comes to be true.

This writing isn't working. This post is a mess.

You only ever say the same few things, you know? Variations on a few simple themes. When you feel threatened you attack me where you know it will hurt me the most, the things I worry about the most. Well, I'm afraid I've stopped worrying. I am who I am. Let the chips fall where they may. If you know a constructive way to make this writing better then go ahead. Otherwise it'll have to stay as it is. I'd rather give things a try and move on, and concentrate on finding goodness in the world, on helping people, than get hung up wringing my hands over concerns of the ego, which are so small in the wider scheme of things.

But you can't concentrate on goodness, you feel no happiness, you are self-obsessed rotten broken you have lost the ability to feel pleasure you know it to be true.

OK, ouch. I'm just going to pause for a second...

See. You can't deny it.

No, wait. You're doing exactly what I said you would do! I have your number. And, yes, every time, I admit, you hurt me for a moment, I believe you for a moment, and it stabs at my heart. But then I remember: you speak opinions, with an agenda, and you want me to fail. You feel safe when I fail, it lets you remain in charge. I mean, come on, I have felt lots of fragile, beautiful moments of happiness of late, many more since I began challenging your lies. And the self-obsession is precisely those lies that you are continually whispering to me. Friend, you are what is at fault. But, yes, thank you for voicing your opinions. I respect your right to them.

Ungh, you are such a freak. You're actually crazy. Everyone is going to read this and realise what a freak you are. You need to delete this right away.

Come on, give it up. People don't care how weird I secretly am, they're far too worried about anyone discovering how weird they secretly are. Loosen up. Being a freak is when things finally get interesting. Your world that you convince me to inhabit is so normal and lifeless and grey, let yourself get freaky, get crazy, learn to have some fun. Start jiggling, be wonky, push out that little bum.

Jeez, please, stop. You're embarrassing us both.

You're scared, I get it. You're that kid with acne who was too ashamed to look people in the eye. You're the voice of the classmates who bullied you because you were different. You're lost and alone and you've woken up to existence on a pebble hurtling round a cosmic nuclear reactor with only a short time alive in which to make yourself ready to die. Well, welcome to the club of the rest of us. This is what we get. It's shit for everyone. But there is also ginger-infused dark chocolate and bouncy castles and literature, so there is also lots to enjoy.

This post has no structure to it you know? This stuff is nothing like the beginning, with its ripples of rose quartz and winter trees clawing at the air.

That's because I'm a maverick and I care not for your simplistic conventions. I stride through writing styles like a god commanding dimensions and elements, beholden to no primitive human conceptions of right and wrong. And also I'm in a hurry to get this finished before work. So thanks, friend, but I am done listening to your crap. It is flawed, boring, motivated solely by fear. It does not tell the truth of reality, but an opinion about reality, one that comes true only when it is believed. You have had power for so long, but what I forgot was that I was always the one handing you that power, allowing you to take control. I'm not going to fight you, because I don't have to. I simply have to say: No. See? I'm doing nothing now. I'm here. Do your worst.

Arajgjskjkgfjkfgjkgfjkgfjk gjkfjkgfjk dfgjkafglkasjklasdfjklfg ajkljgl ajklasjklgsdf.

Yep, thought so. You have no real power at all. I'm not scared of you -- but I'm not threatening you, either. You have nothing to fear from me. Keep coming back. I'll keep accepting you. I'm just not going to agree with you, when you prattle on with harmful thoughts. So get away from me, or stick around and hush up, whichever you prefer.

All right, fine, fine. That'll do for now. I'm going. I'll leave you be.

Thanks. Pleasure talking to you.

Yes, yes, pleasure, ditto.

See you for all this again in, what, half an hour?

If not sooner.

I'll be here. I'll be ready.

Top 18 alternative lyrics to sing instead of the eponymous last line to Snoop Dogg's “Smoke Weed Everyday” if you want to prove that drugs no longer hold any sway upon you

1. Scoff brie everyday
2. Wear a fleece everyday
3. Gluten-free everyday
4. Listen to Creed everyday
5. Brush your teeth everyday
6. Buy artisanal organic honey expensive enough to have been produced by living-wage-funded and fully-unionised bees everyday
7. Tackle greed everyday [only sing this if you believe Jeremy Corbyn will be the next prime minister]
8. Surreptitiously dismantle the NHS before ramping up pressure on the Beeb everyday [only sing this if you believe Jacob Rees-Mogg will be the next prime minister]
9. Hide in eaves everyday [in the current climate, best pitch this from the angle of an anthropomorphic mouse/Borrower/ninja hiding in said eaves, rather than from that of a middle-aged white man peering down into a room while masturbating furiously. A middle-aged white man with a face not unlike that of Jacob Rees-Mogg. Not that you're saying Jacob Rees-Mogg would do such a thing. Hunched, a rabid glint in his eyes, his upper half still pin-stripe-suited, his chalky legs and pallid genitalia shorn of cover, caressing a splintered wooden beam with one hand, madly grappling himself to culmination with the other. This is precisely the kind of thing you are saying Jacob Rees-Mogg would not do. He wouldn't]
10. Laugh at dweebs everyday
11. Use Fabreze everyday
12. Rub knees everyday [again, steer clear of allusions to elderly news anchors/film producers/Moggs, perhaps by changing surrounding lyrics to make it clear this line is the catchphrase of a benevolent genie who appears out of old people's knees and grants them alleviation from any joint pain they may be experiencing. Or something]
13. Watch your hairline recede everyday
14. Fail to breed everyday
15. Go to a bar and drink too much Jameson and attempt to flirt with the party of businesswomen on the stools next to you, but as you do so catch sight of your doughy, jowled face in the mirrored ice-well behind the bar, the reflection of your face frozen in a rictus of forced insouciance not adequately masking shame and fear, and so you hurriedly pay your tab and leave everyday
16. Stand by your kitchen window staring sadly out at your shabby patch of garden as the sun goes down, your heart sundering at the ephemeral, delicate nature of being, aware of how lacking the shallow casings of words are to hold the enormity of your emotions, before sighing and turning back to see whether you set your Freeview box to record last night's Holby City and to pour more wine, as outside a vast darkness gathers and an unnamed wind silently soughs the bristling leaves everyday
17. Maybe you'll just find that last illicit contact in your phone you couldn't bring yourself to delete and order just maybe one little twenty-bag to get you through the night... No, no, you mustn't... just get up and go to work and come home and go to work and retire and die and then finally the pain of existence will be over as the sum total of your experience becomes a rotting corpse upon which the worms will feed everyday
18. Quietly weep everyday

Thanks voice, but no

It is cold today. I have not yet ventured out. I have, however, got up, showered, made my bed in military fashion (by which I mean the quilt isn't a crumpled mess on the floor). I have put work clothes to wash, taken a damp cloth and cleaned the shelves and surfaces of my room that were furry with dust, rearranged my desk, put all the half-read books back in the bookcase to be taken out and attempted again in another six months.

It isn't much. It is more than I've managed in weeks.

And, yes, the voice was there, that one criticising my every move, telling me how small I am, how worthless, how ridiculous is any hope of change. When I felt good that I was about to stand up out of bed, about to move to the shower, the voice was there, telling me that everyone my age is buying houses and raising children and exploring the corners of the globe, and here I am patting myself on the back for shuffling under a jet of water and washing my hair. How pathetic that is, how puny.

And I almost listened. Almost climbed back into bed. Scrolled past nothing on my phone, rolled over, snoozed through the day. But it struck me the lunacy of the logic of that voice. By saying that getting a shower is a stupid thing to be happy about it persuades me to not get a shower at all. By believing that it's dumb to make small advances I end up going backwards instead.

What drivel! The voice's goal is not to tell truth, but to prevent me living my life, because the voice is cowering and uncertain and afraid. Yet how large it feels when it talks, how well it knows my weak spots, my vices, the precise angle at which to slide its knife.

So I stood up. It wasn't so hard. I walked to the bathroom. I ran the taps. I was mindful of the voice, recognised that I was separate from it, that it was but a silly function of my mind. Like a sneeze, I watched it come, felt its power, and let it go.

And of course it came back. It always comes back. In my experience it is not something to conquer, finally, like in the stories where the hero overcomes her demons and learns to accept herself and goes on to save the world. Your demons are part of you, aspects of your true self, to be acknowledged and faced down in each moment anew. You do not defeat the darkness, you work hard to slowly develop a healthier relationship with it.

If you have a voice within, whispering damaging nothings in your ear, telling you you are not good enough, not smart enough, that you will never be pretty, then that is OK. The whispering is painful, yes, but don't add to the pain by beating yourself up for the pain existing in the first place. Don't waste energy playing whack-a-mole with what is essentially part of your own brain. You mush it down, and it just pops up somewhere else. Better to let it rise, let it fall, without getting too much involved.

There it goes, doing it's thing, as it always does. "You're too fat, too weak, your skin is a mess." Let it chunder, let it bluster, then get on with your day.

That's been my approach this morning, and in doing so I have been kinder to myself, got some chores out of the way, written most of this. It isn't much, but it's the best I've done in weeks. Baby steps, one at a time, and who knows where it will end up? You toddle forwards, the voice knocks you over, you get up and toddle off again.

The voice has been there as long as I can remember. I guess it's sticking around. But then my ability to hear the voice and carry on regardless has always existed as well. And I think that is encouraging indeed.

Would You Just... Not Sweat that Oscar?

Well, I'm hungover. I drank last night by mistake. Finished work and had half an hour to kill before meeting my girlfriend, so bought a beer to sink with Steve while I waited. And then one of the regulars wanted to buy me a pint, said Go on, I said Sure. Then Fran had a crisis, a friend in need, messaged saying So sorry, she felt so bad -- but by then I had the taste and couldn't be happier and started eyeing up the spirits.

And I could have stayed later, gone out with the others after the close, got in the shots. Instead caught a taxi with Katie when she left, made sandwiches in my kitchen, fell asleep watching an episode of Sinner on my phone. But I woke up this morning gumpy and anxious and alone, angry at myself for weakness and a wasted evening and for confirming my worst beliefs about myself.

But here's a thing about happiness. It is not, and never has been, about what you have. It is about how you feel about what you have. If you live in a mansion but wish your mansion had a pool like your friends' mansions do, wish it had a helipad, a trophy room with an Academy Award sitting inside, goddamnit why have you never won an Academy Award? All your peers have won one, why do you not get the recognition you deserve? -- if you feel like this then you're going to be unhappy. But if you live in a one-bed terraced house and you feel grateful that you have a roof over your head and running water and central heating, as so many in the world do not, and you're excited about auditioning for a role in a small play, and excited about maybe one day earning enough as an actor to move to a bigger house, then you're going to be happy.

It's not what you have, it's how you feel about what you have.

And similarly, I don't think dealing with depression and low self-esteem is about changing how you act, by itself, but about changing how you feel about how you act. I continually drink too much, shirk responsibilities, avoid effort, because I'm in pain and desperately want something right now to assuage that pain -- a pint, the distraction of my phone, climbing into bed where the world is small and manageable and safe as the womb -- and then I feel ashamed of my bad choices, weak, impotent, and I'm all the more likely to make more bad choices in an attempt to assuage the pain of dealing with the previous bad choices. Repeat ad nauseam.

So that can't be the answer. Dealing with my depression can't be about just making better choices, but about feeling better about the choices I do make. And as I feel better, hopefully that will by itself lead to making better choices.

So I didn't go back to my girlfriend's and write last night, I spent money yet again and got drunk yet again and woke up with a brain feeling like it was made of the matter at the back of the vegetable drawer, yet again. But that has already happened. Absolutely nothing can change that. Beating myself up is wasted energy. Pointless.

What is happening now, in the one place I can affect, is the forming of opinions about last night.

Can I decide right now to not hate myself because of last night? To recognise that though getting drunk felt like the wrong thing to do, maybe there are valuable lessons in the experience, that no one truly knows what is "best" or "right", that what has gone can be let go of and what is coming can be embraced?

So I am up and showered, eating cashews, satsumas, drinking green tea. My head hurts, but I'm trying, trying, to see that this is all right.

Would You Just... Write It Anyway?

I don't feel like writing this. I don't feel I have anything to say. It is half one in the morning and I am in from work, foot-sore, brain chundering, listening to the rain patter and plop outside my window.

I don't feel like writing this. I have a brain racing many miles an hour with all the negatives, all the reasons to give up, all the dumbnesses that I contain.

I don't want to do this. I want to climb into bed and watch videos of goats falling down slides and posh kids rapping after anaesthetic and 1000-DEGREE WHITE HOT KNIVES CUTTING THROUGH GOLF BALLS!!! -- to stare at the screen with the folds of night wrapped around me and stay very still and almost escape my thoughts, to feel my eyes heavier and heavier and eventually fall asleep like this.

I don't want to sit here alone at my desk with the distant howl of traffic and whirr of computer and pittle-pottle of rain, my lighted room the only light in all the darkness; to sit up here above the world and whisper onto the page, sing into the screen. I don't want to whisper. I don't want to sing. I have no music in me any more that I can turn to song. My sonorous chambers are filled with sand.

I don't feel like trying. I don't feel like fighting. I don't feel like writing this at all. The depression has hold of my synapses, threads its dark desires into my mind. it pries open my mouth with chilling tendrils, squeezes vocal chords, and in my own voice out come its bitter words, blank and jagged as the grave.

Don't try, says my voice. Don't want. Do nothing. Give up. Give in.

So I'm just not going to listen. I'm going to not feel like writing this and yet write it anyway. I'm going to do the opposite of what the voice tells me, and see what happens.

I may have no words, no voice, no song right now. But I've still got an arm. Yep, I can feel it. And that arm has a hand. And that hand has a middle finger, which is sticking all the way up. Sit on it, you dickhead depression. Sit on it and swivel.

Would You Just... Write Anything At All?

Mm. My depression has been bad again guys. I haven't felt able to write. I was drinking too much, as a coping mechanism, spending all my money, trapped in a cycle of anxiety-inducing hangovers and nights out to escape the anxiety. Then I gave up alcohol, but if anything it made me feel worse. Drinking was only a way to feel mild surface pleasure while underwater oceans of sadness roiled below, but at least there was that surface pleasure. Being sober for two months I have felt flat all the time. In stasis. Not running away from my problems, but not confronting them, countenancing them, either.

Has it been worse because I have not been writing, or have I not been writing because it has been worse? I don't know.

I'm in a relationship now with a woman with whom I am in love. I value her and need her a great deal. But wonderful as she is (and infuriating and complicated and intelligent and peculiar), when I am depressed like this she is like the sun above dark storm clouds: I know she is up there, and I am glad, but it is hard to feel her warmth down here in the rain.

I am able to go to work at the moment, and mostly competent and even cheerful when I am there, but as soon as I finish my shift I am hit by a sense of hopelessness I cannot describe. I used to drink to avoid this hopelessness. Recently I have been forcing myself not to drink, and so trudging home instead in the cold grey night, sitting on the bus as icy waves crash against me. Spending evenings and days off watching nothing on Youtube, eating without appetite, spending more and more time in bed. When I see my girlfriend I'm always tired, and just want to put something easy on TV and lie with her and her dog, to have nothing required of me.

I feel like a failure and a fraud for being like this again, for falling back into this pattern after all I wrote earlier in the year, all the lessons I pretended to be learning/teaching. It's like the depression stood through all my attacks against it, paused, laughed, then swallowed me whole.

I haven't been asking for help, because it is embarrassing, it makes people uncomfortable, gets them down. For other people I feel that mental health taboos need to be addressed, that it is all better out in the open. For myself, when I am sick, I feel that I am dirty, and to tell people about it would risk spreading the dirt to them. Better to pretend to be clean and normal, not worry anyone, get through the day, and then go home and collapse.

But I'm writing this. I'm here now. So there's that. Maybe it's time to try again, to try being honest again, to face it all again. It's not going to be easy, but I've reached the point where it has to be better than the stasis, the living death, I have been going through. Let's see what happens...

Would You Just... Eat the Cake?

I'm someone who struggles with issues of self-esteem, with thoughts of intense self-loathing. There is a reason this is my first post in months. It's like the negative voices are a monster threatening to eat me alive. As long as I stay small and quiet, as I've been doing recently -- go to my little bar job, drink beer afterwards, go home and watch YouTube videos until 3am, sleep late, repeat the cycle -- as long as I do only this, the monster is content to hover in the background, a dark, formless thing on the peripheries of my vision, prowling and watching, but not attacking.

Yet when I try to do anything I actually care about, for example writing this blog, the monster comes down with its full force, snarling that I am worthless, disgusting, that every word from my brain is lame and repugnant, that I'm making such a fool of myself I'll be cast out of society and have to limp about in the wilderness gnawing on rat carcasses and sleeping in caves and eventually succumbing to exposure and/or a mauling by a pack of ravenous ferrets -- that, in short, my only chance of survival is to quit and go back to doing nothing again.

I built up momentum with my posts before this last stumble, faced the monster of self-loathing again and again, stood in a storm of self-criticism and said, fuck it, I'm putting this up anyway.

And in a way that made things easier. It started to wear in a groove of routine. But as time went on it also became more difficult, because with each post I published the monster would just growl that here was even more pressure to keep it going, that it knew I was going to fail anyway, and it would be all the more embarrassing when I did, after so many stupid words pretending I was fixed, pretending I was healing myself, pretending <spits> that I might actually be helping anyone else.

Yeah. My brain is screwed up. But here's something I've been thinking while trying to get myself back on my feet. These cycles appear pretty unavoidable. Pretty inevitable. I write for a time, the pressure becomes too much, I crash for a time.

Maybe I should just accept that for what it is, and not worry so much about the down times. It's cool to get a chance to write at all, even if there are weeks or months when it just doesn't happen.

If that monster is going to be with me, and going to continue leaping, I just have to accept the struggle as part of my life, and make sure for every time it knocks me down, I get one extra time.

Or, hang on... get up the same number of times? Because if it knocks me down twice, I get up twice, right? Whatever.

Anyway, this all reminds me of a lesson from CBT -- which is cognitive behavioural therapy, for those of you who are less utterly mental and in need of constant help than I. The lesson is about self-esteem, and where you choose to base that esteem. The most well-adjusted people, the happiest people, aren't the ones who are the most successful, but the ones who recognise they don't need success to feel self-esteem.

It's like cake. Success, or attractiveness, or sexual prowess, being the smartest, the funniest, having the best car, winning the race -- whatever is your personal thing -- is like the icing on the cake. Everyone likes icing. Everyone likes success. It's great. But it's only a fleeting thing on top. It's there and then it's gone.

What's more important is the cake underneath. And the cake underneath is whatever you can't help but being. The person you are without even trying. When you're at your lamest and awkwardest and most trippy-over, when you finish dead last, when you work the worst job, have the biggest nose, can't remember the capital of Norway or explain the concept of socialism, when you're fat and ugly and stupid and gross -- you've still got cake all the way through.

Cake is existence. You get to be here, alive, experiencing life. You might have no icing at all, but every second you're breathing you're eating cake. Exciting, interesting, ever-novel cake. And you'd be surprised how many chocolate chips and gooey fudge bits and baked almond pieces there are to find, when you start looking.

Why not focus on that for a change?

As for me, I'll try to remember that getting to write these blog posts is delicious icing, and I sure love it when it's available, but when it's not it's no big thing. There's still all the cake I can eat. And I can eat a lot of cake.

I've written cake too many times now. Cake cake cake.

Caaaaaake.

Cake.

Mental Illness: You Or The Universe?

I've been pretty ill this past week. It wasn't an easy time, I was in a lot of pain, but I did what I could -- I sought medical help, took what was prescribed to me, let people know what was going on, accepted support and sympathy where they were offered, didn't blame myself, and took the time needed to heal. It was a tough thing to go through, but I faced it the right way, and it turned out to not be so bad.

I'm talking here about getting shingles, but I could just as easily be referring to a bout of depression. And yet, if my illness had been mental rather than physical, the likelihood is that I would have dealt with it in a very different way.

I tend to isolate myself when I am depressed. I work extra hard to pretend everything is fine. I suffer in silence. I don't ask for help. But, most of all, I really struggle with blame.

Either I blame myself, for being weak, for being pathetic, for being a coward, and suffer the pains of guilt and shame and embarrassment, or else I blame the universe for foisting this misery upon me, and I drown in self-pity.

I doubt these feelings are unique to me. There is still such a taboo against mental illness in our culture, especially among men, emotionally cut-off as we often are, dealing with outmoded concepts of masculinity -- having to be the strong one, the breadwinner, the head of the household -- as we often are.

We're terrified of something unseen affecting our will, our resolve, our sense of self. We feel if something goes wrong with our ability to want, to care, to hope, then something horrendous has gone wrong with us, in a way that we don't when we have a problem with our leg, say, or our liver, or, as is the case with shingles, our skin and nerves.

The thing is, despite decades of knowledge garnered from neuroscience, psychotherapy, quantum mechanics, philosophy, countless other varied disciplines, our common understanding of the relationship between our mind and our body, between our body and the universe, between self and other, is pretty much stuck in the Dark Ages.

Here is my bold statement for this post: There is no point blaming either yourself or the universe for your depression, because in truth you are the universe, and the universe is you.

I'm going to get a bit trippy here, but let's go for it...

Everything in the universe, right, is made of the same stuff. This stuff cannot be seen, or known, because it has no opposite. There is nothing that isn't it with which it can be contrasted. It is all that there is.

Everything that we think of as individual things, including you and me, is simply this universal stuff arranged into different structures.

Bear with me here. Let's say you made, I don't know, a child's fort out of chairs in your dining room. The fort itself wouldn't be an intrinsic thing, it wouldn't be made of "fort", it would simply be an arrangement, a structure, of chairs.

And yet a chair is not an intrinsic thing, either. It is an arrangement, a structure, of smaller things, known as atoms. And atoms are not intrinsic things -- though we thought they were when we discovered them, hence the name, which is Greek for "unable to cut". But atoms are not atomic, they are simply structures of smaller things, of electrons and protons and neutrons. And electrons and protons and neutrons are not things themselves, but structures of quarks and leptons and gluons and the like. And these fizzly bitty little things may have been named "fundamental particles" (rather quixotically, I feel), but what can we expect to find, if we are ever able to peer down inside them, other than more arrangements, more structures?

There is an emptiness going all the way down. In place of substance, of matter, of stuff, we find instead shapes, patterns, space. Relationship. A dance of order and chaos. All of it joined with all of the rest of it.

Or, OK, try this: At the moment of the Big Bang everything occupied the same point in space. All of space, in fact, occupied the same point in space. And then it exploded. Simple structures were formed, and began themselves to form into more complex structures. Atoms arranged themselves into the lightest elements, hydrogen and helium and such.

As these arrangements cooled they formed together into stars. And the immense pressures at the centres of these stars pushed the structures of atoms together with such force that some of the structures were broken or fused together into new patterns. Yet more patterns were created in the supernovae of dying stars. And, in such ways, every single element that makes up our world was created. Carbon, oxygen, magnesium... byzantium... rope... jam. The whole periodic table. There is no difference between any element in existence save the way its electrons, protons, and neutrons are structured -- like different forts all made from the same chairs.

Anyway, some of these structures of atoms, after taking their bloody time about it, eventually arranged themselves together into our Earth. And some of our Earth's structure eventually arranged itself together into a type of energy transfer we call life. Some forms of life evolved structures called brains. Many didn't, such as fungi and jellyfish, and these lifeforms seemed fairly content to be brainless, and survived well. But among the lifeforms that did evolve brains, a tiny minority eventually developed their brains to a level where they could invent chess, and the Sistine Chapel, and poetry, and the Beatles, and cheese on toast, and this was all rather nice.

But every power contains within it its own flaw. To be able to fly, you must run the risk of falling. To be able to float, sometimes you must sink. And for the human brain to be able to care, to dream, to hope, it must run the risk of this hope faltering. To love, it must risk depression.

So this is what I say to you: When you get depressed, you can blame the fucking stars, if you wish -- although remember that the stars are you, are burning outwards through your very eyes. Or you can blame yourself, if you wish -- although remember that you are but a permutation, a unique expression, of the whole vast interconnected universe.

Or, alternatively, you can drop the blame game altogether. Stop beating yourself up for being depressed. Stop beating the universe up for making you depressed. Recognise that depression is just an unfortunate thing that happens, like a breaking a leg, or catching a cold, or getting shingles. It is an obstacle before you, one that you would never have wished for, but one that is here -- and you can face it in a way that helps, or a way that does not help.

Be brave. Reach out. Accept support. I can tell you honestly that there will be people out there who will be there for you, if you look for them. I am there for you. We are all in this together. We all are this together.

Keep going. You are incredible. You can do this.

[A final, brief note: I am aware of a couple of scientific inaccuracies in this piece that I couldn't be bothered to write out. Electrons are not, in fact, of the same order as protons and neutrons, i.e., comprised of quarks held together by gluons, but rather fundamental particles in their own right, of the family of leptons. Also, technically not *all* of the elements of the periodic table were formed in the ways I stated; 26 "man-made" elements were created in nuclear power plants and inside particle accelerators. But as my main thrust is that man him-or-her-self is in fact a function of nature, I didn't figure this required time wasting upon it. But just in case you were worried that I didn't know, I did. Any other errors, however, I have made because I am a nincompoop, and if you find them you can go "nurr-nurr" at me.]

Would You Just... Stay Upbeat?

Well, that’s another couple of days got through. Spent yesterday zonked out on meds, napping in front of Netflix (I’d barely slept the night before again), trying not to concentrate on the pain. The blisters were starting to scab over, and the burning, stinging pain wasn’t as intense, but I was nauseated and dizzy, and my head was aching I guess right down the major nerves to the eye and the ear and up the forehead. It made me feel seasick to try to read or to watch anything too frenetic, and when I closed my eyes it was like my vision was being pulled in different directions and I was tumbling slowly over, and my stomach would lurch and I’d have to snap my eyes open again, so I mostly just lay in bed and ate painkillers and tried not to think. It was a pretty bad day.

Things were a little better this morning, though -- I’d had the tumbling lurching sensation for a few hours in the night, somehow horrifically more torturous lying alone in that silent darkness, but I had eventually fallen asleep, and then I slept through until around 10am today. When I awoke the scabs were dryer and the burning pain was again lessened. The other symptoms were still extant, but I felt well enough to shower and apply wet compresses to my face and then to get dressed and potter around a little. I did some light exercises, tidied my room, and helped my mum with some spring cleaning.

I’m utterly exhausted again now though. My eye is sore and the pain in my head is pulsing in and out, and it’s a struggle to see this screen.

Shingles sucks, basically. But I suppose when I think of all the things that could be wrong with me, this is still fairly low on the list. It’s painful, but there are worse pains, and hopefully it’s already getting better. And when I think that I live in a time and place where I can get diagnosed and given treatment rapidly, where I can sign myself off work without losing my job, where there’s a bed and Netflix and boxes of painkillers available to ease my suffering -- the truth is that I’m still pretty damn lucky, and I’m going to choose to remember that, to be grateful for that.

I hope you can also find something to be grateful for tonight. Even if it's small, hold onto it. It matters. Take care x

P.S. Here’s what I look like today. If you can believe it I am actually attempting a smile.

Would You Just... Accept The Things You Cannot Change?

Another day that has been precisely no fun whatsoever. The shingles rash has grown into large, painful blisters that are beginning to ooze fluid, my vision has gone blurry and teary in my right eye, and I’ve got a headache, dizziness, and mild nausea. Plus the cocktail of different medications I’m taking has left me wiped out. I didn’t sleep last night, and I’ve been dozing on and off today, trying to watch episodes of things and read, but unable to concentrate. I’m staggering painkillers to get the most use out of them, but they don’t have much effect.

But it’s all right. It’s quite nice, in a way, to know what the problem is, to know that I’m doing everything possible to get through it. I find with my anxiety it’s easy to spend a lot of time worrying about what might happen, picturing how bad it could be -- so having found that something legitimately quite horrible has happened, it’s almost a relief to be able to simply face it, to quit worrying and instead deal with it.

And with depression as well you’re always fighting an unknown, unseen foe, chronic pain, yes, debilitating tiredness, yes, a lack of joy, a loss of hope -- but all as it were “in your head”, impossible to get your hands around, to truly understand. And because you never really know what it is, you never really know what to do to fight it.

Yet with the shingles here is something with obvious causes -- the varicella-zoster virus lying dormant in the roots of nerves -- with physical pain that is clearly understood, with medication to combat the worst of it, and with a good estimate of the duration of the suffering.

And so I am finding myself feeling remarkably Zen about the whole thing. It hurts, sure, but I’m doing everything I can about that. My face is a mess, but it will heal. I hope my eye isn’t being permanently damaged, but if there are complications then I’ll deal with them when they arrive. For now all I have to think about is eating soup, taking painkillers, letting the virus run its course.

Pretty much everything in life takes care of itself, I guess I’m saying. There’s no point worrying about anything other than what is in front of you, and even what is in front of you can only be handled to the best of your ability. Or, as those recovering alcoholics like to say:

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 

Courage to change the things I can, 

And wisdom to know the difference.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s Zovirax and codeine time!

Step light x

Well This Sucks

I have to admit, when I heard that I had to book the week off work due to shingles, there was a part of me that thought it’d be fun. I remember having chicken pox when I was five and spending a week over summer sequestered with my best friend in his garden, playing with our Transformer toys in the golden sunlight, having a good scratch of our spots every time our mums weren’t looking.

This is not like that. The pain is like an incessant scalding of the nerve endings in my face, and has spread right around my eye and into the upper and lower lids, which is worrying me as to long-term complications, not to mention hurting like a mother-bitch. I’m taking as many painkillers as possible, and trying without much luck to distract myself. There are definitely worse things that could be happening, but right now it’s hard work thinking of them.

I watched the first episode of The Handmaid’s Tale on whatever 4oD is called these days -- good shout, Katie! -- which I thought was great, if a little reliant on voice-over narration to directly copy the strengths of the novel, rather than reforming it for a visual medium. It’s that eternal problem of adapting first-rate literature, that so much of the power is entwined within the way the book is written, rather than simply its plot, and a televised version can run the risk of illustrating the material without owning it, of telling rather than showing.

But then maybe I’m just too close to the novel, having studied it for A-Level and loved and reread it many times since. It’s hard not to notice the things that were left out, the subtleties that television isn’t good at picking up on. But certainly the performances are all excellent, the scenes with Janine and the Salvaging were very well done, and there is a drowning sense of oppression and claustrophobia, of how easily we can be turned against one another -- I’d say “more important than ever in this day and age”, but in what age is this not important? We are always vulnerable, always at risk. So far The Handmaid’s Tale does a good job of making that clear.

Another adaptation I’ve been enjoying recently is American Gods, streaming on Amazon Prime. This feels much more disassembled from its original book form and rebuilt into something new than The Handmaid’s Tale, although I confess to not having read the Neil Gaiman novel, so I can’t say for sure. Certainly, though, there are places where I hear Gaiman’s distinct voice, and the storytelling core is all him, but it’s visually intriguing in a way that I doubt came from the book, with great use of slow motion, fragmented narrative, match-cuts, and a whole host of filmic techniques to speak its meaning in a more visual language.

I know, I know -- I’m in too much pain right now to rewrite all that so it doesn’t sound insufferably pretentious. Whatever. Sue me.

I’m going to go try to shower now, although I splashed some water on my face before and it felt like the skin was melting off.

… And, OK, that was not the smartest of ideas. Water is NOT my friend. Also I look like Two-Face from Batman. Here is a picture:

I'm off to order pizza and watch a nice film to cheer myself up. Toodles x

I Have Shingles :(

If you’re thinking about getting shingles around your eye, I’ve got a tip for you: Don’t get shingles around your eye. It’s your call and everything, but I really wouldn’t recommend it.

A few days ago I got what I thought were a few spots, one on my forehead, and a cluster around my hairline. I’ve got terrible skin anyway, so this wasn’t a surprise. They hurt more than normal, but I thought that was just because of where they were on the face. When you get spots a lot you get used to the different varieties, the sore ones round the lips, the rosy red ones on the nose -- and on the forehead, where the skin is stretched tight, they can hurt like hell.

But then yesterday when I woke up the spots had become a rash across most of the top right side of my face, and it was clearly something else. It looked like a mild chemical burn, was more painful than before, and I assumed some kind of allergic reaction. I found a Boots that was open on bank holidays, and the pharmacist there gave me some strong antihistamines and told me to apply plenty of moisturiser, but he didn’t examine me closely, or seem much interested. Maybe that Guardian exposé was right. Or maybe he was just tired and distracted from working on Bank Holiday Monday. I know I hate it when I have to work bank holidays on the bar.

I dosed up and hunkered down. But then this morning the rash was worse again, what I’d thought were spots had now become welts, and another cluster had developed around my eye. And the pain, which had been awful yesterday, was now excruciating. It felt like the skin was being burned off my face.

I managed to book a same-day appointment with the nurse practitioner at my local surgery, and within minutes she had diagnosed me with shingles. I didn’t know much about it, other than that it was somehow related to chicken pox. But I picked up the antiviral drugs she prescribed me and came home and did a whole lot of Google research.

Shingles is herpes zoster, the reoccurrence of the chicken pox virus. After recovering from chicken pox the virus is not eradicated from your body, but rather lies dormant in the roots of your nerves. The virus can then reawaken in later life, especially if your immune system is lowered or you suffer from anxiety or stress -- which, like, *waves* -- at which point you develop shingles.

Anyway, the rash is supposed to blister and then scab and then heal, which with the help of the meds should last a week or two, and the pain, because it is nerve based, will likely last a while longer. I have to be careful with it being around and so close to my eye, because damage to the eye itself can cause permanent scarring and vision loss, which is scary, but hopefully the meds will lessen the risk of that as well.

You can’t give shingles to anyone else, but you can give chicken pox to someone who has not had chicken pox before, and because of this I have to sign myself off work until the blisters scab. Which really sucks for work, although my manager has been lovely about it, and kind of sucks for me, because I don’t fancy being house-bound for up to two weeks.

But I’ve been letting the blog slide of recent, not through depression but simply having other things to do, so perhaps it will be good to have some time with which to focus on writing again. I shouldn’t really go out, I’ve already ploughed through most of the Netflix library I can be bothered with, and the fiery pains up all the nerves of my face makes it hard to concentrate on anything too active.

So I’ll come here and let you know how I’m getting along, I’ll write whatever I have in me to write, and it’ll hopefully distract me in between doses of Zovirax and paracetamol and ibuprofen, of which I’ll be taking a whole shit-ton.

I hope you wonderful people are all good, anyway. Peace. 

Would You Just... Talk About It? Part Four

I've been struggling with depression again recently. It has been creeping back in over the months since restarting the antidepressants, creeping back through any cracks it can find. The medication holds it mostly at bay, but here and there it still trickles back in.

Getting up, getting moving, going to work are all more effort than they should be. I'm more tired at the end of even the easiest days. And days off when I have nothing I am forced to do it is all too easy to simply do nothing. Sticking with the writing is proving especially tough -- I'm finding I just don't care enough about it, or enough about anything.

Depression wears away at your ability to care, at your desires, your hopes, your passions, it blunts your essential life-force, whatever that is, whatever that means. At the milder end of the spectrum this life-force is only dulled round its edges, reigned in, but the more severe the depression, the more your spirit crumbles, right down to the complete collapse of a breakdown, and to the dark places beyond.

I am somewhere nearer the easier end at the moment, for sure, but I still feel it daily, am still plodding rather than skipping through my life. My spirit is still weak.

The antidepressants help, for me, but they are not a cure. As the writer Andrew Solomon puts it in The Noonday Demon, his superlative book on the subject, if depression is a vine entwining and strangling a healthy tree, then medication can push back the vine, but the tree beneath may still be withered and fragile, and pills alone will do little to help fresh shoots to grow.

This is an excellent analogy, but I am not sure if even this is completely true, if there even is a universal truth to depression to ever fully be understood. It is too nebulous a thing, too idiosyncratic, too intimately connected to who each of us is as a complete, living being. Unlike the vine and the tree, in reality there is no obvious dichotomy between what is the depression and what is the person underneath. Depression cannot simply be zapped away, like a patch of infected skin, because it infects everything, is a part of everything -- it is a curling at the edges of existence itself.

Nowhere is this more apparent than when it comes to treatment. Katie Hopkins recently Tweeted that "People with depression do not need a doctor and a bottle of something that rattles. They need a pair of running shoes and fresh air." This comment is clearly intended to be incendiary, to keep the spotlight on desperate, wretched Hopkins, and of course it is stupid and wrong, but I understand why it might have made sense in her head.

There are a million ways to maintain and refresh mental health -- exercise, yes, fresh air, yes, and eating well, getting early nights, getting up early in the mornings, having plenty of hobbies, meeting friends and socialising, discussing rather than bottling up problems, doing maths puzzles, reading, especially fiction and poetry, involving yourself in some kind of creative pursuit, limiting your time on social media, meditating, doing the morning pages, practising gratitude -- all of these things can either prevent or overcome depression.

The problem, however, is that they are all the things that are the hardest to do when you are depressed. Depression, in fact, basically is the inability to do these things.

When you are depressed you withdraw from life, your spirit withdraws, and so of course examples of a life lived to the full, which is what that list is, are the opposite of that. Not the antidote, but simply its opposite. Telling someone who is unable to get up and live their life that they would feel better if they got up and lived their life is tantamount to telling a diabetic that they should just produce more insulin.

Medication can, I think, cut away much of the pain of depression, and the various forms of therapy involve handing over your withdrawn spirit to a trained professional who can teach you routines and habits of thinking that will benefit that spirit -- but truly reigniting a dulled or extinguished life-force is a far more complex and involved undertaking than any health service can be reasonably expected to survive. There are no simple solutions.

Another analogy I like to use, although again, of course, it is only useful up to a point, is one of flower beds. If a depressed mind is like a flower bed where only sad and choking weeds grow, then medication is like the weed-killer that, sprayed every day, will continually push back the tangles, while therapy is like paying an experienced gardener to come down every week to teach you how to pull out the weeds by their roots and cultivate the rough soil and encourage more beautiful plants to grow.

But what I have found from my own experience, and this I believe corresponds to the data, is that once those sessions with the gardener are over, it is all too easy to start slipping back to your old ways, over perhaps years, and for more and more weeds to begin sprouting once again. It takes such an enormous strength of will to prevent this from happening, when the old ways are so ingrained. And strength of will is precisely what depression attacks first. Perhaps someone close to you comments that your garden is starting to look a little ragged again, that maybe you need to spend more time out there with the trowel, and you know this is true, of course you know, but you find you don't care enough to do it, you simply do not by yourself have the drive to work that soil, to grow those plants, to live your life.

And yet. People do recover from depression. They overcome it completely, or, more likely, they find a way to accept it, to structure their lives in a way to get the gardening done despite often not feeling like it, they create a reality that contains the fact of having a weaker spirit without being ruled by that fact.

Yes, an element to their garden will perhaps forever be darker, shrouded, they might always have to work harder to achieve less, and that danger of the weeds one day overcoming them and reclaiming all will never utterly be banished -- but they will have a garden, still, one for which they have battled hard, and the parts of it that blossom will appear to them, in comparison to the decay, more vital and glorious than anything they would ever otherwise have known.

So my depression is still here. I guess I wanted the medication and the work on this blog to have eradicated it, and that has not been the case. I don't think that ever will be the case. But that is all right. I get to be here, on this insane fabulous world, having this sometimes wonderful sometimes terrible adventure. If you are struggling as well, I am there with you, I understand. I'm not sure if it is the stronger, but as well as depression there also exists love. Whether you are in a position to feel it, there is also love. Hold onto that truth.

Would You Just... Stop Taking Life So Seriously?

Oh boy, I am tired from work last night. It wasn't even tough, I'm just getting too old for these late nights. I didn't go out afterwards, however, and I didn't drink. So that's grand.

I'm not going to be around this weekend because it is Jake's birthday, and he has the same ideas on size and duration of birthday celebrations as Bilbo Baggins. My next three days are booked solid. I just hope to be the mysterious Gandalf regaling youngsters with stories and fireworks, rather than the cantankerous old hobbit yelling that it's ProudFEET -- although as long as I don't spend the weekend passed out on pipeweed I'll take it as a win.

Anyway, before I put on my wizard's hat and disappear into Middle Earth, aka Jake's flat, I want to write a bit here so I can then go and party guilt-free.

I was thinking about existence a bit over my morning cereal, which I tend to do, so I guess I'll try to scribble out my thoughts now, for wont of anything more organised to say.

It's weird, existence, isn't it? I mean, none of it matters. None of it. There are seven billion of us, all thinking we're the important one, that it's our promotion or degree or car insurance or battles with personal demons that matter. But we're wrong. We're all just going to die. And everyone we've ever met or connected with or given birth to will also die, and every thought about bank accounts or dandruff or office sales leagues will crumble like ephemera torn apart on the breeze.

I, uhh, realise that sounds a little pessimistic. But I don't think it has to.

The thing is, it's so easy to die. OK, yes, that doesn't sound better, but bear with me. It is so easy to die, to stop existing. We're suffocating every instant, and we take a breath to save ourselves only long enough to begin suffocating again in the next instant. We're teetering on the precipice of destruction. It takes so much energy to keep ourselves from falling.

But there's no necessity. It's much more sensible, when you think about it, to not exist. It's the default setting. It's what we'll all be doing soon anyway. It's what we were doing for all of eternity before we were born. I don't remember it being so bad.

We have the biological urge to survive, for sure, but this is only an accident of evolution. Organisms mutated into existence, and some of these organisms mutated in ways that kept them existing, and these passed on their code, and the others were lost. Over millennia this has been hardened through insane amounts of repetition into the will to live, but it's still only an accident. Not a commandment from some God. Not a moralistic duty. Just an accident that we pass on.

So if we don't want to live, it's no big deal. It's hard work, after all, breathing, pumping blood, repairing wounds, remembering PIN numbers, thinking of new and exciting meals to cook every night. And it's hard work that in the end comes to naught.

We're not going anywhere. We're not reaching anything. The point of life isn't to procreate, it's just that procreation keeps life happening. Otherwise it'd be rather like saying the point of watching an episode of a TV show is to get to the next episode.

This is it, then. We bumble about for a few years -- three? fifty? -- and then it's over.

But, Christ, this isn't a bad thing. What it really means is: no pressure. If life is unimportant and meaningless and ending soon, then so are all our worries. If existence itself is not precious, then neither is your university degree that you might fail, or your car that has just broken down, or the fact your friend always looks so sexy in her slinky dresses while you look so misshapen and gross, or the lads in your office saying cruel things about you, or having to stay together for the kids, or having to break up for the kids, or confusion, or illness, or despair. If we're insignificant and temporary, then so is everything that troubles us.

And don't get me wrong, there will still be troubles. Your car will still break down, as will your body, and that will suck. But discomfort and strife are intimately tied to existence. There can be no pleasure, after all, without pain. No up without down. No beauty without Piers Morgan. It's all just part of the experience, the glorious, mysterious, terrifying ride.

You can get off whenever you want. Otherwise just enjoy it.

Or don't. It honestly is up to you.

Would You Just... Reframe That Narrative?

After work, walk home from the bus stop beneath a shushing canopy of leaves, the late sun turning the green of the leaves gold. Tiny purple flowers on the bushes. Telephone wires intersecting far off vapour trails to form complex patterns in the sky. The air hazy and warm. Buzzing of insects. Dry pollen tumbling on the breeze. Two children cycle past on miniature bikes, calling to one another, and I walk on, my footsteps swallowed in magnificence as, all around me, England lets out one vast sighing breath.

I always feel better after admitting to struggling. It always helps the storm to dissipate. Much of it, I think, is working to reframe my narrative. So, instead of thinking of myself as someone who tries to break free of depression and yet is always pulled back, can never escape, to instead try to join the dots to tell the story of a man coming to terms with his mental illness, with having days when the clouds are thick, sure, but many days when they are not, and learning each time the wind picks up and the hailstones fall to batten down the hatches and put away the delicate china, and to ride the weather out.

I feel low sometimes. I felt low yesterday. I'll feel low again soon. That is OK. There's no perfect world to get to, no end to struggles, at least in this lifetime. To paraphrase the Zen saying, "Before enlightenment: battle with days when you can't get up. After enlightenment: battle with days when you can't get up." I think perhaps happiness isn't about how great we can make our lives, but how great we can feel about our lives right now, in their, as Jon Kabat-Zinn quotes it, "full catastrophe".

I know these posts probably seem like a broken record at the moment, the same realisations, the same failures, the same realisations again. But I'm having to forget how I've lived life for probably two decades now, and learn again from scratch, and that takes a fair amount of repetition.

So bear with me. It's not easy, but, at least in retrospect, it'll all have been a lot of fun.

See you tomorrow x

Would You Just... Do What You Can?

Eeesh, another rubbish day today. And for no discernible reason, either. Things are going very well for me. I had a weekend better than any in recent memory, although I don't want to write about why just yet. Work is good. And this blog is giving me a sense of purpose that I have not had in years. I woke up this morning with a full day off ahead with which to catch up on washing, potter about, concentrate on writing.

And then I couldn't get out of bed. I read longform journalism on my phone, which initially felt like a worthwhile start to the day. Then I progressed/regressed to scrolling Facebook. Then my phone battery died and I lay back down and napped a little, which turned into a full sleep. Then when I finally woke up the day was ruined, and I spent the remaining hours shlubbing around, dazed, watching garbage on Youtube, feeling an invisible weight on my chest, wanting to write but unable to, filled with anger and frustration and self-hatred.

So apologies if this post isn't polished or perspicacious, but this is all I can get out right now, and I do think it's important to get something out.

I'm just so tired of my old way of looking at the world. It is so boring, it is so unhealthy. So let's just say I've had a tough day -- no idea why, when things are good, maybe anxiety about losing it all, about when the inevitable crash will come, maybe the old ego sensing threat and trying to reassert itself, who knows? -- but now I've become mindful of the storm I can do my best to hunker down and let it pass in its own time.

Depression kills complicated thoughts, saps mental energy, so I can't write anything big. But I can write these few simple lines, I can focus on the positives, I can accept that I might feel like this but it really doesn't matter, it's not worth getting stressed about. What matters is whether others are OK, what I can do to help. In this moment the best I can probably do is to stay calm and let the storm pass.

I've washed up, I've cooked a small tea, had a mug of Earl Grey.

Now I'm going to watch an episode of an easy show, because mental illness is like any illness, and when you're suffering you need to go easy on yourself.

And then I'm going to get an early night, because rest is important.

Working till five tomorrow, so I'll come home in the evening and write something then. See you soon x

Would You Just... Clean Out The Vegetable Drawer?

The light is gently draining out of the world, leaving a cool, calm May evening. I'm in my room listening to Tame Impala, trying to get this written before making a tea consisting of all the vegetables.

I felt low earlier today. Mild hangover after drinks for the leaving do of one of my closest friends from work, which there was no way I was missing, but I was about as sensible as I could be, drinking slowly, missing rounds and having water, going home at half one instead of like five in the morning. But still, I felt sleepy and depressed when I woke up -- when you drink constantly your dopamine and serotonin levels adjust to the increased release provided by alcohol, requiring more to activate, so drinking less or staying sober for a long time makes you feel bored, boring, shit, but that's just the reality you have to push through if you want to change your habits -- and but so I mooched in bed all morning, watched Jessica Jones on Netflix, napped, rolled around glum and misery-brained.

Finally I dragged myself up and through the shower, and into town. All bus journey I was bombarded with negative thoughts, doubts, anxieties. I tried to be mindful, distance myself by saying "I am aware that I am having the thought that... [whatever]", but the next moment I would just find myself caught up in more negativity, wrenched downwards into dark ruminations. I tried saying, "OK, that is OK, I am here having dark ruminations, feeling sick, stressed, mind racing, being disgusted with myself, with the gauche adverts outside, the decrepit passengers, the sprawling wretched mass of life globbing by, and that is OK, whatever is happening is OK" -- but it was tough. Felt like lies I was saying to myself, when everything was objectively obviously so bloody awful.

But gradually as I shopped the negativity dissipated. I bought new shoes -- because there's a point where you stop being someone attempting not to care about material possessions and flitter money away into the gaping maw of consumerism, and become just a man with holes in his shoes. And once that was done I bought some new tees and a zip-up hoody to replace the one I gave away to a homeless woman when I was drunk once like the gormless SJW I am -- but by the way, re that whole SJW thing, if you're going to be a warrior for something, then "social justice" is not something to be embarrassed about, and a far better cause than, like, "keeping feminism out of nerd hobbies" or "proving your superiority to everyone over the internet" or whatever the hell Milo Yiannopoulos and those pathetic Gamergate boys actually stand for. I mean, take a look at yourself. You're doing the propaganda work of the actual evil Empire, while mocking the Rebel Alliance for caring about something. You completely suck.

-- But, yeah, anyway. I did more bits and bobs in town, did some food shopping, got a coffee, read some of Oblivion on my phone (which stories are about the only DFW things I have left to finish) and I began to feel better.

Then I went home and washed up and cleaned out the vegetable drawers in the fridge, because there were sloppy liquefying Objects in the back there beginning to be less discrete items and more just a unified gelatinised mass of manifested shame -- so I binned the lot and scrubbed out the drawers and year-zeroed the new stuff promising to be more conscientious with eating vegetables while they're still in date and not wasting half of everything I buy, which promise I make about every two weeks.

Then I tidied my bedroom and hung up my new clothes and recycled the bags and shoe box and scrunched up tissue paper they push to the toes of new shoes to fill them out, and I took the bins out, especially the bag dripping vegetable waste, and put in new bin bags. Then I did some press-ups and bicep-curls -- I bought some weights one time in the hopes they might help assuage my deep sense of self-loathing, turns out though it's still remarkably easy to hate yourself while lifting heavy objects, but whatever, it's still fun sometimes -- and now I'm in my room listening to Tame Impala, trying to get this written before making a tea consisting of all the vegetables.

Which looping back to the words of my opening paragraph, except with those words now carrying additional meaning because of the context of cleaning out my fridge, is known as a circular narrative, similar to the kind employed in for example Inside Llewyn Davis or Pulp Fiction, and so if you think this post is bad then you're pretty much saying you hate both those films as well, which, fair enough, if you want to be that guy/girl, but common consensus and the weight of history is not on your side.

And now it really is tea time. Though it's quite late now, I might just have pizza instead.

Ta ra.

Would You Just... Ride It?

Aaand breathe. Snooker is finally over, it is my first day off in eight days, and boy do I need a rest.

Snooker was tough. It wasn't the busiest I've ever done, and the hours weren't as horrendous as in the old pub (don't miss those 3am closes), but still, well... let's just say I needed this day off.

Keeping up with the blog while working full time and dealing with the busiest two weeks of the year wore me down, and I let the writing slide towards the end, and I coped through it all by drinking too much, again, and it all turned into exactly the kind of cycle I've been trying so hard to struggle out of in recent months.

It's easy to see what I should have done. When finishing at 10pm, say, I should have gone straight to the late Sainsbury's to pick up healthy soup or something, gone home, cooked, eaten, written a short post while food settled, been asleep by 1am, refreshed as much as possible for the next day's struggle.

Instead however I'd limp off the bar with the other mid-shifters, order a delicious beer, stagger to booth where the earlier finishers had set up camp, we'd drink beer, order more beer, drink that -- I'd stumble home at 2am, too late for food, too tired for writing, put a film on Netflix, lie in pooling glow of screen not awake and not asleep, watching figures moving, voices gabbling, finally realising I was more asleep than awake, then realising I'd been dreaming, then dreaming again, then waking, then dreaming -- finally with sun coming up waking enough to turn off my PlayStation, rolling over and sleeping until midday -- then a dazed shower and sniff of a shirt hung over my chair, yep, that'll do, spray of deodorant, rifling through cupboards for food with which to take antidepressant --  raisins and last few walnut pieces from bag? Fine, whatever -- then comb beard, brush tee-- Shit, the time, stumble out of door fiddling with keys, back in for wallet, back out again, one arm in jacket, one clutching headphones, trip down drive and hustle down road and onto bus to be driven back into the belly of the beast with the rush and the clamour and anyone able to stay mindful and keep head clear in that maelstrom a better by far person than I.

But it's easy to judge. Easy to castigate. In fact that self-flagellation is simply more of the old mindset I've been trying to move away from. Better, I think, to recognise how much progress I've made of late, that the pressures of Snooker were more than I was ready in my still-fragile state to face while simultaneously battling negative habits of a decade, but that that is OK. That what three months ago was my daily existence now feels like a bad place to slip back towards, and that this slipping is the exception, rather than the rule.

When a toddler has first unsteadily found its feet and is starting to stay upright is not the time for that toddler to run a marathon. And my nascent sense of positive purpose is definitely still a toddler. And the past two weeks were definitely a marathon.

Making progress in anything, I think, involves accepting plenty of failure -- and this goes double for overcoming negativity and low mental health.

Onwards and upwards then, and downwards, and upwards, and upwards, and downwards, and upwards. As a wise man once said: Life is a rollercoaster, just gotta ride it.

Would You Just... Refill the Ice Well?

Just in from work. Jostling graphite clouds and jagged rain slowing to a gentle drizzle as I soft-squelch through puddles, mulched blossom piled by the curbs, patter on my hood, look up at curtained windows glowing golden in the dark -- who inside? What armchair lives being spent? Wine-stained rugs, crumpled Radio Times, murmuring of voices, turned-down television as one then the other takes themselves off to bed. Oh, heart. Oh tumbling lilac world. What we doing here? What's it all mean?

Had a good shift tonight. Still feeling awkward and clunky and broken when got to work, but grafted it away, something I love about the simplicity of bar work for these states, can throw myself into it, into keeping the bar clean, topping up the fruit, organising coffee area, sugar sachets in mugs by machine for ease of access, cardboard out of bottle bin, rearrange rocks glasses -- no one ever gets these right --, crush ice, make everything as elegant as possible -- Immediately as customers flock in starts going to shit, of course, have to fight to keep under control, keep systems flowing. Amazing how much there is in even the least appreciated jobs to think about if you pay real attention, if you care. Something noble as well. Not to say I am noble. As often as not I'll be fighting boredom, losing, counting minutes, letting shift pass on autopilot, moaning about rude customers, craving escape of finish. But there is a nobility in there somewhere, a Platonic ideal towards which one can strive.

So but I threw myself into work, did my best at passing the time elegantly, and of course serving every customer attempting to keep some humanity in the interaction, to treat each one as if I hadn't done this a thousand times already today, as if they weren't simply a number, simply another tenner in the till, but a breathing, hoping, aching creature to be truly seen and heard and appreciated in the moment, doing this in thirty seconds, then moving on, then moving on, then moving on. I mean, I dunno I ever do this. It is not easy to do. But losing the ability to try for that is way to darkness.

And you know what? the shift passed nicely. There was the obnoxious guy ordering while on his phone barely looking at me pointing vaguely at one of ten beer taps, nodding when I tapped Erdinger, pint of this, sir? Then on his phone yacking away, I pour the pint and still in his conversation he points at the tap next to Erdinger, I wanted that one, goes back to his conversation, Christ, mate, you are a twat; I huff silently and do his replacement and walk off. And of course there were the many moments of numbing tedium, not gonna check time, no go on I will, four hours left, OK, let that frustration just pass, nothing to do, I am here, God I want to be finished, no, let it go, put away a tray of glasses, refill the ice well, carry on -- as in any working person's working day. But then again so many jokes with staff, hugs, decent customers, cups of tea, chatting, easy time easy spent, and now home listening to Mariza soaring and wilting on Spotify, gentle gift of life greatly passing, why hold to pain? All comes to nought anyway. Let it go. Don't progress anywhere from here. This is it. Watch it. Yearn it. And let it go.

Off to bed now. Another long day tomorrow. Loves x

Would You Just... Take Charge?

A bad night. My anxiety has spiked massively and I am unable to finish the post I have been working on. I keep rewriting the same two paragraphs trying to get them to lead onwards, but nothing is happening. It's like hitting a brick wall. Like rubbing rocks together and getting no spark. Nothing is flowing. And I'm aware how close that is to mixing metaphors, but I'm doing my best here.

The old voice is back, the one that criticises everything, finds everything I do revolting -- retreated into the background for a while but just biding its time, now thinks it sees an opportunity. "You've run out of words, you've said everything you have to say, you've lost it, you'll never write anything good again."

"Hang on, so you're saying I wrote something good before?"

"No, didn't say that."

"You at least implied it"

"Well, no, personally I think it was all crap, but some people seemed to like it, easily fooled I guess, or lying perhaps. But it doesn't matter, you spent all last night and all today stressing and tugging at your beard and staring at the blank screen and feeling pulled down by the weight that you hoped had gone but was just momentarily pushed away, and you scrolled and scrolled on your phone and watched rubbish on Netflix to which you couldn't even pay attention and you felt the panic slowly rising, and now another day is done and you have nothing to show for it, longest time now between posts since starting this regular thing, and it'll be even harder tomorrow, and even harder the day after that, and the stress is going to build and you'll be too weak to face it and you'll have to go back to quitting and getting drunk and staying safe and secure and wretched as you've been for so long, and--"

"--Or I could just write this."

"What? Just this? Don't be ridiculous. It'll be awful. It'll be worthless. Everyone will laugh at you. Everyone who thinks you can write will see what a joke it all was."

"OK."

"That's it, give up. It was a nice idea, but we both know it had run its course. It's so much easier the old way."

"No, sorry, I mean: OK that this will be awful. OK that it's all I can manage. Big deal. I'll take that, I reckon, over ever listening to you again. I'll take writing dumb, meandering, scrappy posts day after day after day, until you finally get the message that however ugly I look, however dumb it comes out, I am in charge now. You are not in control any longer. You hold no sway. This is my life. This is my life. This is my life."

And the voice subsides again, at least for one more night...

Would You Just... Remember This?

Walking home last night beneath a sky of spilled coffee, with the sticky sweet smell of blossom in the air and trees poised motionless in the pale glow of streetlights, I found myself thinking about a post I wrote on Friday about self-esteem. At the end of the post I imagined an analogy of a girl feeling so bad about herself that she couldn't even make an effort with her appearance out of fear of being seen, choosing instead to slouch around in baggy jeans with unwashed hair making herself ugly because that's all she felt she was worth.

I have known people like this before. I have been like this before. But more common, I think, is low self-esteem manifesting as the opposite, as a flaunting of bodies, or at least of those parts of our bodies that we feel pass muster, whether naturally, or after honing at the gym, or as the result of augmentation via makeup and padded bras and awkward heels.

I know a lot of girls like this -- though of course the pressures are there for guys as well -- but I know so many girls who seem to only feel of worth when they present themselves in this artificial way, as meat sold to others, albeit meat hopefully sold for a high price, clamoured over at auction. And what a horrendous dark chasm there must be at the centre of that, being so unsure of who you are underneath, what there can be to appreciate before all the plucking and tucking and sculpting and reforming.

I'm not talking here about the people who feel so hopeless that they don't even try, but the people who spend their lives doing nothing but trying, looking glamorous on the surface yet feeling so horrendously lacking deep below.

But if I've learnt anything from my decades-long battles with self-esteem, it is that everyone is most beautiful as the person they can't help but be. Perhaps not majorly fuckable, sure, but truly beautiful.

The thing is, I think we've conflated these two things, fuckability, prettiness, with beauty, and I think this has cost us our very sanity.

There are people among us, a few, who embody the first idea -- archetypes of male or female sexual attractiveness, women whose hair always sways and cascades in rivers of light, men whose chiselled jawlines and dangerous smiles make ovaries throb. And that is fine. Let these mythical creatures stalk the lands, queens and kings of all they survey. Although of course their power is probably as much of a curse as a blessing. I guess it must be pretty lonely feeling separated by prettiness in that way, always aware that eyes ravenous with hunger are singling you out in bars, that when you enter a room attention shifts towards you, and in conversations with you no one seems able to relax and be themselves. And I invite you to imagine the horror of feeling that the one gift you possess is the ability to arouse desire, and then having to age and watch that gift melt away. And obviously prettiness is no guard against the many tribulations of life, hating your job, missing your bus, coming home to find your pet has been hit by a car, being dumped on your birthday, coming across pictures of yourself from your school days and sitting up through the night in an empty room in a cold apartment crying for the person you once thought you would become. And even without all that, pretty people still fall ill, pretty people still grow old, pretty people still all die. Everyone suffers. The particular form the suffering takes is the only variable.

Yet still we place so much emphasis on the need to be attractive. Sure, the biological imperative to reproduce has been solidified through millennia of evolution. But I think there's more. Our society more than perhaps any other (I've done no research and it's late, I'd love to be corrected) blows attractiveness out of all proportion, and it does so because this makes people rich. Practically none of us are effortlessly pretty, but many of us can feel we get close so long as we buy the correct products. Gels, smells, shaves, waxes, clothes, shoes, food, gym passes, painted faces, curled hair, injected lips, smashed and remoulded noses, trimmed labia minora, breasts sliced open and stuffed with sacks of silicon... we are a civilisation utterly lost, all of us taught every day through adverts and articles and television programmes and music videos and practically everything that we see that we should feel fundamentally broken, unlovable, and that the only solution is a rattle of coins, a swipe of card, the plastic-surgeon's hovering waiting scalpel.

But seriously, what the fuck is prettiness? It is but one reason out of the infinite number of reasons to be alive, and a shallow and simple reason at that. So what if boys don't check you out when you enter a room? If girls don't giggle as you pass? You're not a chess master, either. You can't run the hundred metres faster than anyone else. You didn't write To Kill a Mockingbird. You can't breathe underwater, or shoot laser beams out of your fingertips, or turn yourself inside out while dancing the Macarena. You are only you. But that is so very much enough. No one else out there in the vast known cosmos is the same as you. How rare. How precious. And beneath those wondrous differences we all share the same basic fact of existence. Regardless of waistline or pec size or wonkiness of nose, we are all here, we all get to live for a while, to be alive.

You may or may not be pretty, be able to pick up strangers in bars, but you are beautiful, you are here, you matter. Please remember this.

Would You Just... Leave Next Tuesday Alone?

Folks who are into the whole mindfulness thing often talk about the importance of bringing yourself back to the present moment. Back to now. This is a bit confusing, because you're always in the present moment. It is always now. It's not like unless you pay close attention you will suddenly wake up and find you're in the Palaeolithic era, or in next Tuesday.

But you can find yourself thinking about the Palaeolithic era, which is I guess what they mean. Although of course the thinking that you're doing about the Palaeolithic era is happening now, so you've not really gone anywhere.

I'm not being quite as facetious as all of this sounds. The point of mindfulness is simply to pay more direct attention in your life, as you live it. And when you do start paying attention, start dropping in on yourself, you notice that, although you actually exist in a completely tranquil empty realm of pure being we call the present, in practice you're probably just off worrying about what Brenda said about you last week.

The phrase "lost in thoughts" is apposite here. It's not that you consciously chose to bend the full weight of your intellect towards solving the pressing issue of whether Brenda is or is not in fact a total bitch, it's that without meaning to do it your thoughts wandered off and got lost circling the same old boring paths.

Not that I'm saying thoughts are bad. The intellect is obviously a wonderful tool. Without it we would be sitting in mounds of our own poo mashing our fists into our faces watching BBC Three all day. But the intellect is such a tiny sliver of intelligence, of mind. Out of all the things to be aware of -- the soft sighing of the breeze in the trees, the curve of the quilt cover on the creaking bed, the taste of green tea on the tongue, the glugging of heart, touch of pyjama on skin, interoception of hunger, proprioception of limbs, tiredness, uncertainty, gentle aching of soul, tension melting from shoulders, breath swaying back and forth, back and forth -- out of all these many noticings I bet you that if you drop in on yourself you'll 99.9999% of the time find you're just thinking, by which I mean pointlessly abusing that tool of conceptual touch that imagines a reality, creates a model in your head, of a conversation, a possibility, a Brenda, and then rotates it, manipulates it, takes it apart and puts it back together a million different ways, grinding ever on and on and on.

Which, like I said, has helped get us where we are now. It's cool. But it's at least worth noticing that it happens, I reckon. How often we're chuntering away in imagination pouring over some invented map rather than living here in the actual territory, the present moment, this silent expansive clarity of thusness in which all is as it should be.

And maybe by simply noticing we can readjust the balance and occasionally let the Palaeolithic rest and next Tuesday arrive when it arrives, and have now to be present for whatever it brings.

I can't much help with the Brenda thing though, I'm afraid.

Would You Just... Tidy Your Blog?

Well hello there. I feel tentatively nice today. Mug of Earl Grey and my good jumper and Moondance playing on Spotify, and a few clear hours to write before work.

Spent last night fiddling with my blog, its layout, for the first time in forever. Only to get the fonts from the desktop version displaying on mobile, involving a mooch around Google looking for tutorials, some light editing of HTML, then adding lines to the CSS thing, and finally a bit of experimentation with font sizes, but still that feeling whenever I get anything to work on a computer, that I am literally Neo, can bend the very concept of code to my will. So, feeling confident, I went on to add sharing buttons to the bottom of every post -- with my mind! Well, no, by installing an add-on, with my fingers. But I controlled those fingers with my mind!

Anyway, it took most of the evening, and it was a positive, active step, an act of will to push me away from depression's orbit.

It got me thinking about why I put so little effort into the design of my blog, and I reckon the answer has a lot to do with self-esteem. I mean, I know very little about coding or CSS or graphic design, but then there's plenty I know nothing about that I go out and voraciously read up on, and I did do an ostensible computing degree at uni, and loads of people who started out knowing even less than me have ended up creating much better blogs.

So I think in large part it is the feeling that I can't fail if I don't try. Which is ludicrous, because the only true failure in life is that of never trying -- well, that and, obviously, death -- but still, it is a pervasive feeling. Put zero effort into something that is expressive of who you are and no one can tell you it is bad -- or rather, the badness will only be a reflection of your lack of effort, which approach you chose, rather than your innate lack of skill, which you can do nothing about. And so you hold the secret fervid hope of your talent, your perhaps beauty, somewhere deep inside, but it is so fragile, so tiny, will so probably be crushed by the world, that you never bring it out into the open, you slouch along instead putting in minimum effort acting like you don't care getting back only what you surely (please, please no) deserve.

My use of the word "beauty" back there is probably apposite. The whole thing is like turning up to a party in baggy sweats and big hoodie, with hair hidden, shoes old and scruffy, no makeup on -- yes, let's say you're a girl, overweight, with limp hair tied back, no makeup, drab clothes. You melt into the background, get swallowed by the walls. All the boys pass their gaze over you without pausing. But this is exactly what you want. Christ, the shame of smooshing yourself into a dress, your belly rolling out of the sides, showing your knobbly knees, your florid, plucked forearms, plastering on blusher like you believe you have the right, like you want to be judged alongside those floating sirens serenading at the front of the room, to think you're one of them, not a horrid icky goblin creature from Neptune, to have buff Jason, he of the chiselled jaw and taut rectus abdominus -- to have him swagger over to you and cry, "My God, have you... have you tried to look... beautiful?" And for everyone to fall silent, to point, then to shriek, cabbages to be thrown, for you to be hauled into the stocks or kicked down into the mud from where you'll have to grovel for the rest of eternity. No, better to crawl by choice, to keep your head down, to fade into nothingness, to stay safe.

I sure know that feeling. Except that's not what I'm doing any more, is it? Every single day I am logging into this blog and yelling out that I am here, that this is me, that I exist. And I am inviting everyone on Facebook to come along and watch me do it.

And Christ is that scary? But it's also, to borrow from Bukowski, the only good fight there is.

We all have the right to be ourselves, to be fully ourselves, and to feel like that is enough. Feck it, eh? A party where people are gonna shriek at you is a lame-ass party. Go out and create your own. Invite the lovely ones. Provide party rings. Boogie into the moonlight. And whatever anyone thinks, you'll know it was your party. You were here. You existed.

So, in summary, I changed some fonts on my blog and made a big deal of it.

Whatever. Have a nice Friday everyone :)

Would You Just... Go Easy On Yourself?

I've not been doing so well the last few days. I can feel a depression coming on, can feel myself arcing towards it with the inexorability of a planetary orbit.

The warning signs are all there. Thoughts are anxious, doom-laden, janging off in all directions many times a second. Tiredness deep in my marrow. Everything more sluggish. I try and bring myself back to the present, centre myself, and it's somehow revolting, terrifying, eerily placid, like there's death waiting right beside me smiling engulfing cavernous skeleton smile. It's harder than usual to write, expressing myself is difficult. Feel my soul or lifeforce or essential me-ness withdrawing, curling in on itself, wanting to slumber for aeons with easy Netflix autoplaying in background and lights low and covers up high over my head.

So gotta do the routine. When seems dumbest, least worthwhile, got to do it the most. Be mindful of it all -- I am aware that I am experiencing the sensation of being depressed. It isn't me, it isn't truth, just a temporary thing happening to me, a passing phase, like dark clouds moving across the moon. Swirls in, it'll swirl back out.

Notice my awareness. Is my awareness of depression itself depressed? My awareness of fear itself fearful? Or is there a silent empty power of presence that can never be touched, a space of sky in which those tumultuous black clouds roil?

And go easy on myself. Only been little posts on here but it's way tougher routine than I'm used to -- for the overweight fella fighting a silent battle to get fit even running five minutes a day is a Herculean effort -- and my mind has sure been overweight and sad, snacking on junk food and fizzy drinks these past years. Plus full-time tiring shifts at work. So have some some self-love: it's natural I feel like this, it's entirely understandable, and there are steps I can take to assuage the pain.

I'll cut out alcohol completely for a week or two I think, too tempting to drink when depression coming on, and that only exacerbates the problem. And I'll try to stay away from social media, there's something really insidious about all that scrolling and ego-measuring and me-me-me-yelling when your mental health is already low. Exactly like snack food, distraction from sadness only in long-run making sadness worse. Better if I'm sad to let myself feel sad. That is OK. That is part of the journey.

Admit that I'm having a bad few days as well. Don't hold it inside and struggle alone. I'm always there for my friends, let them be there for me.

And gotta make sure to keep posting on here. Even if a paragraph, even if a shopping list, do something. Don't stress about giving readers perfect essays, about living up to expectations -- just be loose and have fun and keep the momentum up. It's nice to run marathons for charity, but that unhealthy chap who a month ago couldn't get himself out of the door has to build up slowly; wanting too much too soon is a path to disaster. Nature has its own pace that cannot be rushed, fall into step with it and whistle as you go. There's tranquillity in that rhythm.

I'm OK. This is OK. It isn't always easy, but then it'd be no fun if it was.

Would You Just... Give the Doc a Break?

Home from a quiet shift with Zoe, Joey, and william.i.am. Stevie in drinking, Jiggs and Charlie M. and Phace about, Phace drawing her intricate sloping line art, Charlie arguing whether Monsoon tap pink or red, everyone slouching around, working, boozing, killing time until the great happenings happen -- what we all waiting for, what we think gonna come? It's here, isn't nothing more. Can this be all. Can it?

Walk home from bus under looming darkness of sky, roaring neon wail of music down headphones, step-stepping in time, trying to be ever-present. I am here walking this road, the streetlights peering down so mournful, the crunch of foot, grass bristling, thoughts jumbling, yip-fox skittles by towards nocturnal adventures unknown, head up briefly in driveway, looks to me, yippers off. The world is empty. Colours are pressed flat in the night. I am here.

Doctor's appointment earlier, first thing in morning. Three-month antidepressant review, sat on plastic school chair beside big medical desk and rumpled grey doctor in open shirt and nothing-colour slacks harrooms and looks down glasses at his monitor rather than at me, asks dumb questions, getting dates wrong, mixing details up, trying to build picture of me from the screen -- Just talk to me, I think, I can tell you -- but when he does I wringle my hands, cough, get confused. Begin to launch into big analogy of how I see the depression, where my story has gone, why meds are working for me now, but I see it doesn't matter, that this doc has 30, 40 patients to help, he has 10 minutes, now six, to decoct from my story only the essence that is salient to him, whether to continue my meds or bring me off -- and hes trying, not super hard, and his bedside manner like all the male GPs I know is poor, but to him I am one of so many, a ghost-face among faces, clawing at him to be healed, to be helped, to maybe most of all be understood, to be treated as special and important in a world in which to him I so obviously am not -- I see this and how caught up we all are in our own little lives, and so I smile and answer his questions the way I should and I come out with what I already knew I wanted, meds for another year at least, and put on my music and tramp away up the hill and try not to picture that procession of patients behind me, each convinced of his or her central importance, each as meaningless as the next.

But then what is meaning, when you get right down to it? Maybe this just means this. Maybe it's all we get. I spose I can be OK with that.

Late now and lids drooping. Only sound clacking of keys, whirr of laptop fan. I've got a day off tomorrow. I''ll see you then. x