A new plan, again: Day 8

Have I used the analogy about running yet? It can be tough, when you explain everything that happens in your life through analogies, to know which ones you've previously employed.

Anyway, at the moment I'm trying to think of my writing in terms of going running. Where before I wanted to run marathons on my blog to prove that I could, all ego and low sense of self-worth, desperate to show that I wasn't just a lazy slob schlepping about in my pyjamas eating cereal all day, that I could run 3000 word exertions of sparkling prose that I'd drafted and re-edited to death and filled with everything I could think of about some profound subject or other -- at the end exhausting myself and collapsing, looking back worried it was all terrible and worthless -- where before I was doing that what I'm trying to do now, in terms of my writing, is just go jogging round the block once a day. That's all

Just get out the door, do the thing, come back, do it again the next day, and the next, and the next. Develop and strengthen routine, build confidence, integrate the task into daily life.

... Have I said all this before? I feel I've said all this before.

Pssch, whatever. Troubled sleep again last night, and a sinister nightmare, the first in a long time. But feel better now, happy in myself, in what I'm doing. But Christ am I tired.

Last close of snooker tonight, the end of a week of closes, and it's going to be bad. Worried I don't have enough staff. All the barrels and bins to do at the very end, already exhausted and got a bank holiday Sunday shift on the hottest day of the year to make it through, blurg. Gotta grit my teeth and just keep going though. When you're going through hell moan continuously until the manager doing the rotas stops putting you on closes, or however that quote goes.

- - -

Well, it's done. At Fran's now. She was asleep when I came in. Mission wagging his tail, lolling on his belly, nuzzling his snout towards me. Happiness is a dog excited to see you... and a bullshit shift over forever.

I'm covered in bin juice. Finger sliced open on broken glass. Back is wrecked. Mind is mush.

But no more snooker. No more bank holiday wankers. No more work. Glorious day off tomorrow, I'm going to do nothing save sun myself and drink water and write.

 Now to lie down next to my girlfriend, the windows open, the fan whirring, the hot night enveloping like an embrace.

Until tomorrow x