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Friday 28 April 2017

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

Thursday 27 April 2017

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...

Tuesday 25 April 2017

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.

Sunday 23 April 2017

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.

Friday 21 April 2017

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 :)

Thursday 20 April 2017

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.

Wednesday 19 April 2017

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

Tuesday 18 April 2017

Would You Just... Know What Is?

I'm at Jake and Missy's, squooshed on the mattress in the corner of the attic bedroom, writing on Jake's MacBook, while Dreads shows Jake his save on Final Fantasy and Missy and Charlotte lie prone on the bed checking Snapchat and making Boomerangs and farting surreptitiously. The light in the room is soft and low and we're doing what we've been doing all day: glorious expansive nothing.

I got a taxi up here after the close last night, Jakey was waiting up and we played Mario Kart, watched QI, hung out, then woke up this morning in time for Dreads ambling over with his XBox for breakfast and chills.

Its 23:05 now and the day has drifted in easy peace. Dreads wanting to download the new Worms game. Waiting for it to download. After an hour, three percent. OK, at this pace it'll be done in... a really long time. Leave XBox on, amble to the shops for lunch, eat French loaf and cheese, drink tea, make each other laugh, leave as long as we can, check the download.

Thirteen percent.

We listen to some insane Middle Earth meditation music on Missy's phone about being invited to Bilbo Baggins's birthday party and sitting by a crackling lambent fire as fiddle music plays feeling your whole body slowly relax. Don't even ask me, but we're all lying together in the beds innocent as newborn babes, me with my head on Jake's chest, then squidging with Missy, as wizards blow smoke rings and farmers clip the hedge and hobbit children play down the street. Like I said, don't ask me, but also don't knock till you've tried.

We fall asleep, Jake's customary day-off nap ("Well its just nice isn't it? You get up, eat, wash, go on a little expedition, then you get to go to bed and do it all again"). We wake up and check the progress on Worms -- 46 percent -- so play a board game to pass the time. Zombie 15 in extended campaign and gotta set up the tiles into a board, 1a connected to 3b and 4a and 5a and 7b, no the other way up so it makes a cul-de-sac, and shuffle all zombies of 1, 2, and 3 number into weapons cards, and add three zombies to the horde box, must do this for each scenario, groaning the whole way, then play for seven or nine high-octane minutes rushing punk kids through ruined suburbs checking police station and getting supplies from mall, then reach exit battered and shaking, our little plastic figures we picture, and then gotta set up whole nother board and cards for next scenario and after five it gets way too frustrating and we give up, in same place we always do with this damn game that we still full nerd love, and we cross fingers and check Worms.

87 percent.

So we roll around some more, Missy's friend Charlotte comes round - "Oh it's your friend, Missy, your one friend. We assumed you were making her up. Don't be weird around her and drive her away like everyone else." Missy Sassy Sarsaparilla puts hand on hip. "Excuuuse me?"

And we eat pizzas and crisps and salsa and then Dreads scrolls games on the Microsoft store and I write this and Jake goes out to smoke cigarettes and Charlotte goes home and Missy, friendless again not that we're bringing it up, lies on the bed watching us, and the night is quiet and the lamplight dim and I look at my friends and think about that Kurt Vonnegut line where he says:

"I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is."

Because that's how I feel right now. If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.

Now, if you'll excuse me, in a moment of serendipity that I know appears a little too much like narrative convenience but I promise you is not, Worms has just downloaded.

Until tomorrow. X

Sunday 16 April 2017

Would You Just... Drop In On Yourself?

Well I didn't write anything yesterday. It was the first day of Snooker -- world championships are held in the Crucible fifty yards from my pub, our busiest and horriblest two weeks of the year -- and wiped out at 6pm I went for a drink with Straw. I had two pints, then a Coke, I was good, and it was a warm friendship chat both of us making the other crack up, and it was no-brainer worth it, but when I got home I made tea, ate tea, opened my laptop, and fell straight asleep.

But, hey, there's no use crying over spilt milk, right? I'm refreshed now, awake, and I've got a few hours to write before my close shift tonight, so all is good.

I've been thinking about the subject of my previous post, being mindful in daily life. It's so interesting, pretty much the first thing you notice when trying to be more mindful is precisely how mindless you usually are.

I'm what you'd class the neurotic type, lost in thoughts ever poking at the world, trying to make sense of it, what it's for, what we're doing, why this, how come that -- the kind of spiral thinking that can peel back the surface of reality and lead to spectacular discoveries, but just as easily descends into negativity and depression. But I think whatever your mental type, whether an obsessive planner, a hedonistic party-goer, whether chasing personal success, following a cause or a dream, whether you live for your career, your family, your weekend, your travels, the truth is that most of us spend the vast majority of our lives halfway asleep.

We race along with our heads down -- towards what? -- as the scenery flits by out of the windows, and the days come and go.

Routines, habitual behaviours, are vitally important. It would be exhausting to have to bring conscious attention to every action, every moment -- if every time you brushed your teeth felt like the first time, having to think about how to pick up the toothbrush, apply the paste, scrub each tooth. Turning behaviours into habits takes the pressure off our mental load. Conscious attention might provide the impetus, the initial push -- OK man, time to brush those damn teeth, turn off Netflix, close laptop, into the bathroom -- but as soon as the routine is taken up you're off down the neurological waterslide and the rest just happens. You don't have to be there for it.

This is good. This is necessary. But the drawback is that if you're not careful all the moments of your life can slip by on this autopilot setting, and then you look up and wonder where it all went.

Every now and again something snaps us out of the routine. A first kiss. The death of a loved one. A promotion. A sacking. Skydiving in New Zealand. Hearing music transcendent in its beauty. I think our society has a sort of tacitly agreed upon idea that the purpose of life is to seize the day by creating as many of the more positive (again defined by society) of these moments as possible, leading what would be called a "full life".

Which is fine. But let's say these moments when we're truly awake come about every, what, hundred-thousand moments? Every million moments? Every billion? And if we try really hard and spend lots of money and take all opportunities perhaps we can cut the ratio down to one in every ten thousand? One in every five-thousand?

But meanwhile all the other moments are slipping by unnoticed, too boring, too quotidian, to be worth being present for.

Yet surely it is these quotidian moments that truly make up our lives? If most of our time is spent not winning races and securing deals and jetskiing in Jamaica and buying yachts in Monte Carlo, but instead spent scratching our legs, trying to fix the glove compartment latch in traffic jams, counting our change, clearing our phlegmy throats, then isn't it worth being present for these moments?

The mindfulness practitioner Jon Kabat-Zinn has a wonderful phrase for attempting to do this. He talks about "dropping in on yourself." When you're in the shower or brushing your teeth or on the way to work, try just dropping in on yourself, asking yourself what's going on. Are you really in that shower cubicle, in that car, or are you off worrying about next week's meeting, replaying last week's embarrassing event, picturing the precise revolting sneer that you know your mouth must have contorted into yesterday as you awkwardly tried to flirt with that person you always see on your coffee run?

And if you're happy to be in this imagined past or future, then go for it. But more likely it's happening without even your knowledge, bypassing conscious choice, your brain chuntering on on its default setting.

So do me a favour over the next few days and drop in on yourself from time to time. Check the contents of your thoughts. Your emotional state. What sensations you can feel. What you can see around you. Smell. Hear. What is it like in this moment of your life, in this part of the world, right this second?

Wake up to your life, as you live it, as often as you can. You might be surprised what you find.

Friday 14 April 2017

Would You Just... Chunder On?

One of those days today, not bad, not good, just another day on Earth. It was steady on the bar, and I spent the morning feeling stupid, awkward; Liam Straw would say a cool thing and I'd say a version of it but worse -- Oh, Robert, with your hands like nervous spaghetti -- and I'd go, Oh, Liam, with your... ears... like... a wooden spoon, but a lumpy one I don't know leave me alone man I'm tired. Or Mark singing along to the playlist and me singing along as well to fit in, please like me, everyone please like me -- but then I don't know the words and I get them wrong and Mark has walked off and I'm just humming out of key to myself wondering if I even like the song wondering who I even am.

Trudging along like this, feeling gumpy, until twenty-minute break with a sandwich all of my own sat by glorious self on city centre park bench, just me and my sandwich -- and but then here comes the local drunk, always sleeping in pub booths pissing himself, waking up and yelling at customers, threatening bar staff, sobbing that alcoholism is a terrible disease, he's lost his brother his wife why he even alive why even live? -- and it's sad, I know, but for literally seven years it's just been this, without change, and compassion has limits, and it's my break, and he's leering over me, over my sandwich, saying something incomprehensible about Ronnie O'Sullivan, and I stare out and think, well, that's that ruined.

And back on the bar it's busy, the wave is breaking, and we bop around grooving to the rhythm, helping each other, owning our sections, staying focused. We're a team. We're together.

But in the fortress of my self I'm chundering on with the same old mindlessness, same boring thoughts, blabalabalaba, what if he and does she think and I never will but even if though when wasn't how come if they but could... And on and on.

Except there is one single moment when I wake up. What happens is I realise I'm chundering, and this makes me really glum and frustrated, man I'm so mindless, always in my head chundering on I don't know anything it's so stupid what's even... And I realise I'm frustrated about my frustration, and I get frustrated about that, and I get really angry -- And then I think, Ohhh, OK, but... yeah. OK. Let the chunder chunder. Grumble grumble. Just watch the chatter. Watch the frustration. Ohhh...

And I look around me brightly, and would you just look at this world? All of it ending. All patterns of light. Is that right? Well, it's structures made of more structures down into infinity, and it's shapes of starlight crush-forged in suns and sailing here to play for a time at being tonic bottle, bar blade, dumb old Robbie-Bear, silly leaking sink. And look at these humans crowding around, look how they crave. What do they crave? No one knows. Can I help them. Mate, can I help you? Wow. Your eyes are it all, past guarded shame of iris down into empty forever...

And three or four I serve with love in my heart, awake to the sublime tragedy, and then someone orders drinks separately so I have to make three trips to the same place, like I can't remember three drinks, and he rudely demands lager in "normal" glass -- All right, mate, I'll put back this cubist hologram of a glass that you have to drink from upside down hanging from the ceiling that I was going to use, shall I? -- And look how he's talking to his wife? But look how she's talking to their kid, Jesus, and how long is left on this shift? And who is coming in? And why doesn't I wish that wouldn't it whether if but chunder chunder chunder.

And I'm unconscious again until I remember on the bus home and get frustrated and then try to be more mindful, but then I forget again, then I remember once at tea, then forget.

And I don't think there's a special trick, any shortcut. I don't think it leads to anything particularly. I just think that we can plod in routine and autopilot through the moments of our lives, or we can wake up and catch them. And if we do... well, we don't get anything really.

We just get those moments.

The moments of our lives. Here. Now. Passing.

Thursday 13 April 2017

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

My uncle is visiting. He is downstairs with my mum right now preparing tea. Clattering of cutlery, knives on chopping boards, familiar voices rising through the floor. Very old sounds. I am up here staring out at a striated sky going watercolour pink, trying to write this quickly so we will have the evening to watch a film.

We wandered today, through woods with bluebells rising out of the grass, along Abbeydale Road looking at the street art, up and around Nether Edge, my uncle pointing out the crooked corner houses, the tumbling lean-tos, the ragged interstitial spaces of shrub-land where rusting rakes and Calor gas bottles were being gradually reclaimed by the twisting vines. We tramped to Hagglers Corner to see Jakey, past Bramall Lane into town, bought craft beer bottles from the Market, stopped in work for drinks before a bus home.

All of which sounds nice and mostly was, but I felt a low-level depression through much of the day, a kind of underlying psychic malaise. I remember looking at those bluebells early on, Mum I think had said how pretty they were, and I remember looking down at them and feeling the familiar hollowness. The bluebells were just there, no more than themselves, inadequate and uninspired and drained of vibrancy.

Depression saps spiritual colour from life. Nothing is unified with anything else, reverberating with the music of the cosmos, a window on the divine, but simply itself, cold, unimportant, grey.

I am used to this feeling, and it no longer holds much fear. I have plenty of tricks for dealing with it. I try to put effort into noticing the good moments when they occur, into clinging to them, reminding myself that, yes, this is nice. I work at laying down positive tracks of thought, try to return myself to the station when I catch myself on a train into darkness.

And antidepressants help a lot. Cognitive therapy helps. Mindfulness, meditation, writing morning pages, writing this blog, exercise, socialising, eating well, all are ways to keep myself buoyed, to keep from slipping too far down into bottomless waters.

I am doing well, the best in at least a decade, and I have no intention of stopping. But I don't want to give the impression that I am fixed, that these posts are about happy endings. I still struggle constantly. There are times every day that I want to give up.

But this really is OK. The point is not a happy ending, but a continuing life, one in which I wake up day after day and do the work to live in this moment, to really know this moment, whatever it contains. This is just as true for the difficult experiences as the easy ones.

This is what it feels like to be low. This is what it feels like to be in pain. I am not turning away from this. It is my life, and I will be here to live it.

Night night x

Wednesday 12 April 2017

Would You Just... Eat That Cake?

Self worth is something I've struggled with for most of my life. As far back as I remember I always felt that I needed to be a certain way to feel worthy, that I needed to win something, achieve something, change something. If I could make people laugh then I'd be liked at school. If I could prove my intelligence then I'd be accepted at family gatherings. If I could say the right things about football then I could make my dad happy again.

As I grew up I think this mutated, whether because of bullying, acne, or any number of other things, into the feeling that I had no worth. That I never said the right thing. Never did the right thing. Never looked the right way.

Part of me knew that this feeling was stupid, and I didn't share it with anyone else, kept it hidden away, pretended it wasn't there. But deep inside, I felt it.

That monkey mind that chatters away every instant, measuring and labelling the universe, trying to make sense of it, had a million solutions over the years to this feeling of inadequacy. All involved changing some fundamental thing about myself, if I could just figure out what it was. If I could just get rid of the acne... If I could just learn to stop making dumb jokes all the time... If I could just be more fashionable... Just be more mindful...

But here's a truth I think I'm only recently beginning to understand. People with a healthy sense of self worth simply feel that they are already good enough.

They don't feel good about themselves because they look beautiful, because they say wise things, win competitions, because everyone loves and worships them. They just feel content in being the people they can't help but be.

There's a Zen saying that goes something like: "In the realm of spring nothing is better and nothing worse. Some branches grow long, other grow short. All are perfect."

Each of us has a role to play. Who knows what is ultimately right and wrong, what is good or bad? Where's the use in fretting trying to second-guess a universe that provides us no answers?

Who you are right now, clumsy, wide-thighed, with weird elbows, greasy hair, getting sweaty when you start telling a joke and forget the punchline, never coming top of the class, not quite understanding the definition of capitalism -- that person that you never asked to be, can do nothing to change -- that person is as beautiful and deserving of love as anyone alive. Love is not something to be earned. Like existence itself, it is something there under everything. You just have to pay attention to it.

There's nothing passive, nothing namby-pamby, about this mindset. Winning is still nice, success is still nice. But it's icing on a cake. Great when it's there, not the end of the world when it's not.

If you are reading this then you have your existence, you get to be here, for however long, on a planet in space with trees and books and oceans and the swaying music of nature wish-washing out of your window every night. Who cares if the icing is lumpy or even not present? There's so much cake. Go out and stuff your face.

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

A quality to the light this evening like soft music playing far away. Wittle-woo-cha-woo, chirrup birdies. Choo-cha-woo. A father striding home, bouncing briefcase off one thigh. Blossom fresh and damp upon the tree. Cars in silent repose. And purple clouds spread gently across the sky, their edges glimmering pink and gold, the light being drawn from the land through cracks between cloud and sky, flashing lips with lambent flames before they too close shut and the world falls finally dark.

I don't feel depressed today. I feel exhausted, but I feel nice. Although it must be said, when you have fallen into deep places inside yourself many times, those places become hollowed out, their widths and depths become known, and even when you are walking happily above through sighing grass you never completely forget what lies below, all the emptiness that is there waiting.

I want to discuss what I said yesterday about being someone who "suffers from depression". I think that the actual symptoms of depression are universally felt. Sadness, isolation, lethargy, feeling like nothing is worth doing, like nothing will make you happy, that love itself has come apart at the seams -- these are feelings we have all experienced. There is nothing unique about depression; it is regular pain, yet felt at an irregular concentration.

I can't remember where it comes from, but there's a good analogy about this regarding thunderstorms. You can get a thunderstorm anywhere where the right conditions are met. The sun warms the surface of the Earth, heat is transferred to the air, which rises, cools, and falls, forming a convection current. Patches of moist air blowing through are caught in the current and swept upwards, where the vapour condenses and becomes rain. When a cloud grows large enough the top freezes, and particles of ice knocking into one another create an electrical charge which attracts a build-up of positive charge in the ground, connecting as lightning.

Anywhere the surface of the Earth is heated, a thunderstorm can form. And so it is with mental health. The climate of any mind will, under the right (or wrong) circumstances, brew up a depression.

But just as some parts of the world are prone to constant thunderstorms, so some minds are more at risk of depression. With a lot of effort I believe these mind climates can be stabilised to decrease the frequency of attacks, and where they cannot be stabilised, mindfulness and acceptance can go a long way to helping you weather what storms remain.

But the first step is simply acknowledging that there is nothing shameful or wrong about any of this, about how you are feeling. Black skies and crashing lightning may appear otherworldly, vengeful, monstrously terrifying, yet every facet of them obeys natural laws.

I'm way too tired to do more tonight, but if you ever struggle with low mood then do me a favour right now and remind yourself that what is happening to you is normal, that it makes sense, that as with the darkest storms, it too shall pass.

And know that, even if you do not feel it, you are loved.

Monday 10 April 2017

Would You Just... Talk About It?

I'm in low spirits today. Faint hangover when I awoke like windswept moors, levelling out as the day progressed to empty steppes of lethargy and anhedonia. Not done much with my day, and back at work again tomorrow.

But that's all OK. Being mindful is about paying attention to what is actually happening. It's not about turning everything into bright roses and tranquillity every day, which let's be honest would get pretty dull after a while. Mindfulness is simply about being awake right now, bringing awareness to your life in this moment, whatever this moment contains.

The last of the sun is fading from the sky and I'm sitting nursing an Earl Grey. Outside I can hear distant cars travelling to unknown places, driven by people I will never meet. I feel sad today, and small and confused. Can this be all we get? Surely not? Surely not?

And yet there is a sort of power there, too, accepting this sadness. It stops the feeling from overwhelming me; I smile at it, simply let it be. It's all right to be sad sometimes, especially after two really tough shifts at work, after tiring myself out writing these things, and then of course drinking last night. The blues after taking alcohol always undermine my antidepressants for a day or two.

I suffer from depression. It is worth saying that. Much of what I write is informed by my depression, deals implicitly with its effects -- and yet I generally pull up just short of explicitly stating the fact.

Well, as my main man Dumbledore once said, "Always use the proper name for things. Fear of a name only increases fear of the thing itself."

So let's have it on record: I get depressed. I don't want this thing talked about only in whispers and nudges any more, while it sits in the darkness back there cackling at me. And I don't want to feel that I had a voice that could have been used to help others who are similarly suffering, that I could have brought even some passing comfort, and that I did nothing.

And anyway, out in the light of awareness it's not so bad. Yes, depression wears on my nerves, fatigues me, makes complicated thoughts harder, makes what should be pleasant experiences less joyful, feels like I'm always carrying a few kilograms more than I'd desire on my muscles.

But at the risk of sounding like a broken record, that is OK. People find worth in life under all sorts of conditions, dealing with terminal illnesses, surviving in war zones, in prisons, in neighbourhoods destroyed by poverty. Depression isn't an easy thing to live with, but if it is the hand I've been dealt then so be it. Many have pulled off great wins with less.

Or maybe I'll just fold the cards into paper aeroplanes and launch them into the sea. We all get to invent the rules of our own game, after all. The only thing that really matters is that we are here and awake for the playing.

Hugs.

Would You Just... Drink a Coke?

Well that didn't work. Totally went out. Totally drank. The old me would use that as excuse to hate self, drink more, stay out, ruin everything, give up.

But that's not happening. So I'm afraid you're getting a post in the middle of the night, about nothing, rambling and disjointed. It's all I can do, it's better than nothing.

Long, tough shift, the kind you put your head down and grind out. Stop talking to each other, stop planning for later, just make your world smaller, what you have to do right now, what you have to do next, and do it. Professional bartender weathering the storm. Serving two at once, telling third and fourth they're next, showing you're in charge, showing there's no room for anyone getting angry. Everything goes slick, quiet, involved. Wine from fridge and put prosecco away while there; pour with one hand while reaching for Pepsi glass; wash a jigger while pouring Pepsi, pass wine across because heard someone on other side ordering; do little dance to keep your body moving; look left and right, judging who's just arrived, who needs serving next; swallow anger at lads leaning forward trying to push in; stay calm, smile, keep mood light; do it again, and again, and again...

I don't know, maybe I don't do that. Maybe I wish I did. But I certainly try. And a long shift of trying sure takes it out of me.

Then everyone meeting for Lauren's birthday. And I didn't drink, for the first two hours. And then I drank slowly, and skipped rounds, and didn't do shots or anything. And then it was West Street Live and there was that familiar feeling that if we're here we should be going for this, music rising, desire rising, get doubles and fuck ourselves up and we don't care, we're washing away, let's get washed away together beautiful ending of all things race into music and togetherness and it's all gone so give ourselves away to this final thing lose ourselves in alcohol and noise and each other, go past and past and past...

Yet I stopped myself at that brink. I got a Coke. I hugged everyone, made sure Lauren knew she was loved, I walked out, I got in a taxi and sped away into the morning.

And now here I am, 0310, sat in bed, knowing I could have been better, glad I was not worse.

It's a long, tough road. But I'm getting there.

Day off tomorrow. See you then.

Saturday 8 April 2017

Would You Just... Find Some Gratitude?

Home from another long shift, half asleep slumped in my chair keeping myself upright to write this, then I will collapse in bed with an episode of Stranger Things and sleep good empty sleep until work again tomorrow.

Here is a list of things to be miserable about:
  • All the usual things I mean they're literally always the same why even mention them?

Here is a list of things to be grateful for:
  • Finished work in time to lounge in the beer garden in the evening sun and drink a Gamma Ray and chat nonsense with Dreads and Lizzie and Grace, then Missy and Emma and Jake and Joe turned up, and Missy was as usual Queen Sass, and Jake and I drank beer and caught up.
  • Droop-eyed tired, but from slog of honest day's graft, earning a paycheck, paying the bills. Doing what I have to do. And doing it to best of my ability.
  • This Dougie MacLean album on Spotify leading gentle evening softly to dusk.
  • I do not know what I'm doing with this post, and that's fun. If I always knew what to do and how best to do it I'd be an automaton simply following orders from my brain, slave to actions. But I don't know. I get to attempt to work it out. It's an adventure.
  • Finished reading HG Wells history book been dipping in to for months. Finally got it done, and it was good.
  • Whatever background sadness or loneliness or loss I'm feeling in my bones, whatever psychic pain reverberating in the recesses of brain, is the price I pay for getting to be here and alive and awake for all the good stuff.
  • And that sadness is necessary anyway to even experience the good stuff. We can only know through contrast. Incessant upbeat music is a drag. Stories without peril mean nothing. Life requires downs as well as ups.
  • And hey anyway there's this nice thing they teach in mindfulness -- be aware of your self experiencing the whatever, the pain or frustration or whatever. Is your awareness of frustration itself frustrated? Is your awareness of suffering itself suffering? Just allow the pain to exist. Not judging it, not trying to get rid of it, just watching it. Just watching the annoyance when you inevitably do judge it, do try to get rid of it. Whatever thoughts or emotions or sensations you are experiencing, to be there for them, paying attention to them, watching them come, watching them go. Pain isn't an obstacle blocking us off from leading a full life. Pain is as valid a component of a full life as anything else. Just wake up. Be here for this right now, whatever it is.
  • Also I have biscuits downstairs.
  • Uhh I'm pretty sure this song that has just come on has a didgeridoo in it. I don't know what's going on right now but I reckon it's hard to be unhappy when you're listening to a didgeridoo.
  • I get to go to bed soon. There are millions of people alive who don't have beds, and I have a huge double bed waiting for me. Not that I'm bragging. I wish those people all had beds of their own. But I may as well enjoy mine while I have it. 
  • I also have fingers, knuckles, a respiratory system, working colon, elbows, eyeballs, hair (some), toenails, bones, veins, belly, face. I have a body and it was just given to me and I didn't have to fill out any forms or anything. And I have no idea how any of it works but it does. I want to pull in oxygen and put that oxygen in my blood? OK, done. I want to complexly manipulate bones and muscles in my hand to pick up pizza and chomp it down and convert the pizza into energy to keep me waffling on like this for more days? Yep, done. I want to dropkick a cat out of my window? Aye, sound, done.
  • I'm not going to dropkick a cat out of my window. Guys. Come on.
  • The judge said it wouldn't just be a warning this time if I did it again anyway.
  • I can step outside the implied parameters of this list format while still maintaining an overarching narrative thread, because I'm a bad bitch and I do what I want.
  • Also seriously there are biscuits downstairs I'm going now for those biscuits.
It's a friend from work's birthday drinks after shift tomorrow, and I'm planning on going out but not drinking. Let's see how that goes, hey?

Kisses.

Would You Just... Not Cry Over Spilt Milk?

I'm shattered. Only from working a long day on the bar -- could have been hosing down victims of chemical weapons attacks in Syria, or marching for freedom with oppressed masses, or supporting family working three jobs in drug-ravished neighbourhood soon to be demolished to make way for gentrified coffee shops -- and yet I'm shattered only from serving a lot of drinks, being on my feet longer than I wanted, having to be engaged and courteous and in twenty seconds greet a human and find out how they want me to act, polite? laid back? and remember their eight drinks and make them perfect while masses of hungry eyes bore into me, wanting me, I'm next, pick me -- and, yes, it was a tough Friday shift, as they tend to be, but it's fine. I'm genuinely lucky that these are my problems, this fatigue is my suffering. I do know that. I do feel it.

I'm privileged, and I'm content, snuggled under blanket in this bedroom with curtains closed and only noise the clacking of laptop keys and the distant shush of traffic away somewhere in the night.

But, yes, I'm one tired boy.

I'm also hungover. Really hungover.

I've had the odd bottle of beer over the past few weeks, but last night was the first time I fully broke down and did what I said I wouldn't, went boozing.

Day with ma Pops watching film and catching up, then rattled off a blog post from a booth in work with my headphones in, writing like the wind, then after posting and feeling another important step taken, wanted evening relaxing seeing my friend's band at the Washington, having few relaxed beers.

(Listen to Syrupp by the way. They're cool and lovely.)

But then sampled Gamma Ray on keg at ours before walking up, then cans of Red Stripe at the gig, then only half an hour till the guys on the close finished (deja vu, I know, but this is really pattern of all our nights), and so whisky chasers with Straw and Zoe at Dev Cat, others arrive, then West Street Live not letting in (thank the Lord), so Harley and kids on mandy too hip to be human, some ruined white girl skank sitting at our table and yelling at the girls, wanting a fight, then her mates fighting on the dancefloor and kicked out by doormen, us on double rums and vodka sodas in plastic glasses, then lights up and room emptying, but no one wants this done so back to Baby D's, Mystery Jets and drinking games and easy nothing, then check phone and, no, it's, fuck, it's 7am, and we taxi home along empty streets in morning haze and I fall into bed and my alarm is set five hours then up for work, and already the worst skunking hangover piercing in, and I've done it again.

But, hey, it's OK. It is really OK.

We are human. We stumble. I think the path to change is easier trod by accepting our falls and wry smiling at them, shrugging, remembering all only big no-meaning game, and get up and go again.

Old me would self-excoriate, build guilt, feel weak, keep whole pattern repeating. But there's no use crying over spilt milk.

Which, for sure, is the biggest cliche, but David Foster Wallace (I know, like I ever quote from anyone else) has this great thing in Infinite Jest about corny cliches. It's in this drug/alcohol recovery centre, and the old timers who have a chance at making it, who've reached their bottom and are honestly willing to fight to change, get to learn this deep truth about cliches like "one day at a time" and "keep coming back", that they are easy to say, but way harder, infinitely harder, to actually do.

I had a good night last night. I'm paying now (oh how I've been paying today). I plan on not boozing like that again for a very long time. That's stuff I can affect now. My state of mind. What I want going forward.

You just clean up the spilt milk and get on with things. That's all.

See you tomorrow.

P.S. You might as well read that whole IJ bit about cliches exerted on the New Yorker. It's so good. It's here.

Thursday 6 April 2017

Would You Just... Challenge Those Thoughts?

I know it's not important, because I could be a bunch of atoms making up some eggy moss on an alien planet, I could be a deep-sea creature that tastes everything it eats purely through its anus, I could be Katie Hopkins (!) -- and yet I get to be me, drinking maibocks in the evening sun and listening to the Rolling Stones and eating hummus -- so, yes, I know it's not important, that in the grand scheme of things I'm ridiculously lucky to even be existing at all, let alone existing on a mostly tranquil planet as part of a mostly civilised race of people (excepting Katie Hopkins) that has evolved to the extent of inventing hummus, and I am grateful, don't get me wrong -- but this daily blogging thing is still really bloody difficult.

Here is what the voice in my head is currently saying:

"OK, dude, looks like you got away with those last two posts, somehow -- guess you were so pathetically honest and vulnerable that people actually found you endearing or whatever -- but don't ever try that shit again! Time to quit now, seriously, before you make a real fool of yourself."

It's crazy, isn't it? It can't be just me who has a voice like this, forever criticising, forever worrying, keeping me small and subdued. Maybe I've just been listening to mine for longer than most, been boarding that train so often the service becomes regular.

But there are things you can do to fight back. Actually, no, let's not do the macho-militaristic thing, because balls to that. But there are things you can do to find more love in your life.

Being mindful is one. Returning yourself to your centre, to your station platform, again and again and again, instead of simply letting the thoughts drag you down pre-set tracks without your consent. Thoughts are only that, ephemeral, transient things, and the more you bring yourself back from them the more you align with the person at the centre to which the thoughts are happening. Not the clouds coming and going, but the tranquil unchanging sky behind them.

Another thing you can do is to challenge the thoughts themselves. Mindfulness brings you back to the platform, but it takes some more work to question whether the train routes are still beneficial, whether it is worth putting in the effort to lay down new tracks.

Take this fear I've got over blogging, over people seeing and rejecting my unpolished, unedited "naked" self. This fear may have been a coping mechanism when I was an unpopular and bullied teenager, sensing that I was too different from my classmates and the only way to prevent the daily abuse was to break down who I was and reforge myself as someone who fitted in, someone who liked football and FHM Magazine and laughed at the popular kids' awful jokes and definitely didn't read The Lord of the Rings cover to cover complete with all the appendices and some of the Silmarillion as well.

This censoring of self may have worked at the time, to an extent. It may have guarded me from the worst of the abuse, been the necessary signal to the others that I was willing to put my head down and step back in line and remain part of the group. I don't know. But over the years it has hardened into an ingrained unconscious behaviour that makes me feel (I think, I mean, I'm not a psychologist or anything) that who I "naturally" am is somehow deeply flawed, repulsive, lacking, and to show anyone this side of me is to risk shame, banishment, isolation, death.

Or maybe everyone feels a bit like this.

But it's probably time to challenge these thoughts. I've lived for so long by them, and by many others like them, and so far it's not been that successful.

If I ask myself what matters to me, as who I am today, not who I was when I was 14, it turns out that what ______ or ______ think about my clumsy writing is not at the top of the list. Nor in fact, is what pretty much anyone thinks of my writing, in terms of what they think of me.

I just enjoy doing it, and I hope it'll be helpful to some people. So I'm carrying on.

Working all day tomorrow, but might try to do something little late at night. If not then Saturday.

Toodles.

Wednesday 5 April 2017

Would You Just... Not Board That Train?

Oh well guess what? It's even bloody harder to write today than it was yesterday. That malice serrated whisper of a voice is prattling away about how dumb last night's post was and how embarrassing and I've got nothing worthwhile to say and it's pointless anyway everything is screwed might as well quit now and blah blah bloody blah.

Well hear this, voice: we're doing it again, and again and again and also again and again and then again and again more and again and etc you get the picture, voice, so hey, how about doing me a favour, old buddy old pal, and fucking the fuck off.

- - -

Dog down road barking rapple rapple and clouds spread flat against bruise of sky and telephone wire doing lazy gymnast bounce as night draws in. Life trundling by. I'm in here bent to laptop, so small, really, not important at all, watching the Earth turn onwards.

Here's something: A thought isn't the truth. A thought is... like a train. Like a train coming into the station. One coming in now. "I'm worthless," the train says on the side, in big glowing letters. Everyone on the brain-platform hearing it coming in, looking at watches, going, Harrumm, yes, yes, the 20:16 from Anxiety-ville, right on time, running this service every three minutes for years, like clockwork -- and the passengers all go jostling up to the yellow line and the train grinds in and the passengers push on board, then train pulls out and rockets away through swaying fields of self-criticism, past Hopelessness Gorge, and on into backwaters of Depression Marshes, same as always. Journey bin taken so many times -- at first was just a horse and cart going a way that felt necessary, that seemed to make sense -- but now it's tracks, forty-carriage train, reclining seats, buffet car. Easiest journey available, comfortable routine. Only one problem: going dead straight to nowhere, over and over, thousand times every day.

But listen. Just because a train comes in, doesn't mean that train needs boarding. Can just watch a train arrive, watch it depart. Thunders off, into distance; wave at it as it recedes.

Thoughts come, thoughts go. They make a lot of noise, they clamour for attention. But they all depart. And you alone on the platform with a choice.

Always with a choice.

Here's another arrival. Not announced on the board. It's... a little fella on a wonky bicycle, squeaking slowly up.

"Not a whole heck of a lot of room on here, mister, and going sure ain't easy, but jump aboard, if you'd like."

"Well, where you headed?"

"As far as I can before crashing, I guess. Then I'll go again."

Sounds fun.

See you tomorrow.

Tuesday 4 April 2017

Would You Just... Keep Going?

Here's the thing. I'm putting a new post on this blog tonight. That is happening. That is happening even though there's a voice telling me I can't do it, that I've got nothing to say, that no one cares, that I'm making a fool of myself and everyone is laughing at me--

--Seems paradoxical, that everyone could be laughing about something no one cares about, but the voice sounds adamant...

It really is the worst, this voice. If you don't have a voice like it then I think you're very lucky, because mine sabotages every single thing I try to do in my life.

But I guess there has to come a point when you stop listening. When you go ahead regardless. And that is what is happening here. If this post is a mess then it's a mess. And I'm getting up tomorrow and doing it again. And that post can be a mess as well. And every post can be for the rest of my life. But I am not quitting this time.

I wrote a draft of this where I tried to explain all this stuff so you would understand. But the voice sabotaged it all, shut down my brain and threw me off course so I had nothing to put up, hoping the days would turn to weeks, the failure would build, and I'd go back to boozing and not trying. It's so much easier, in a way, to live like that. Feeling worthless, but also never having to ask to be valued.

But I've had enough. So this is going up. I guess I can't explain it now. I guess this won't make an awful lot of sense, unless you already have an inner voice like mine, whispering piercing nothings all day in your ear. If you do then you already get it; if not then maybe I'll be able to write it someday.

* * *

There's this advice about creating art, I can't remember where I heard it, but I've been saying it for years: To make good art you have to first allow yourself to make a whole bunch of bad art.

It's got a ring to it, right? You can tell how wise and true it is straight away. The thing is, though I've repeated it a lot, mostly to impress girls, I don't think I've ever actually lived by it. I always write so carefully, polishing and pruning, removing any trace of what I think of as my clumsy, ugly, embarrassing real self from proceedings before I hit that "publish" button. And that's so hard to do, and so hard to sustain. And the more successful the writing gets, the more I feel it has to be done. And the pressure builds to a point where I can't take it and I quit.

So maybe it's time to just say motherfuck it and let go, to stop hiding my ugly self and instead let him out into the light and let him blink and look around and get used to the fact that he can be out here, he can be himself, in a way he hasn't since I think before the acne, since before the bullying and the depression and all the rest.

The alternative is what I've been trying for a decade now, and that clearly isn't working.

So here we go. I have no idea what's going to happen. But that's part of the fun.

See you tomorrow.