Day 190: Scores

Tired from work, from writing late last night, from fighting to get that post done when the thoughts were fizzling and evaporating somewhere between mind and screen. Stumbling after them in the dark, grabbing their tails, forcing them back into existence. Forcing myself through the misery of writing so badly, of the words being such a malformed betrayal of the initial impulse to write. Forcing myself to finish a draft that made no sense, that was so clumsy and hesitant, that simply did not work. The night getting late, seeing the time, grabbing tufts of my hair and wanting to scream that I flat out could not do it, that I could not get a post up, that I would have to write just a single sentence saying that I'd failed and I had nothing for today.

...But then doing star jumps in my room to get the blood pumping. Making another mug of tea. Slapping myself back awake and grinding out a second draft that made slightly more sense. Tidying it up, trimming it, making it as presentable as possible. Publishing it to the blog, letting out a sigh of relief, and then going to Red Dead for half an hour to unwind my frazzled brain before bed.

Riding my horse far out into the wilderness, watching the ground change beneath me, the rustling of the grass. Listening to the wind soughing the trees. Seeing silhouettes of trees on distant cliff tops, stark and lonely with the moonlight shining through them. A gully far below me. Unseen water flowing in the dark.

Then PlayStation off, six hours sleep, and up for a Saturday open. I'm stuck working a perpetual Saturday open. It always seems to be Saturday open, I'm trapped in purgatory, or in an American TV show where the twist is that they're all really in purgatory. Hey, American TV show writers - come up with better twists!

And now I'm home again, feeling flat and low. But I don't need to be low. It was so tough getting that post finished last night, yet I managed it. If I'm going to focus so intently on the times I fail - and I am, I am going to focus on that - then it's only right, only fair, that I also focus on the times I succeed.

If you keep track of all the goals your team concedes, but not the ones they score, well, then you have no idea how the match really went, do you?

Except, of course, the problem with depression is it finds ways to discount the positives. "That goal doesn't count," it says. "You were offside. You were lucky. It won't happen again." Or else it says the other team are too easy to be worth winning against. "Happy about beating those amateurs? Get real. They're awful. To have only won by the amount you did is embarrassing. It's actually more like failure..."

But that's depression. We know this. I know this. It is the nature of the beast.

I've been playing better recently. That's all that needs to be said. I've been improving. I've scored 190 goals in 190 days, and that's pretty special. Some have been halfway-line belters; some I've walked in after tussles in the box.

But they've all gone in.

Take the victories. Appreciate them for what they are. Keep turning up, let the result be what it may, and remember to enjoy the game for its own sake. It's all just a laugh on a Saturday in the rain, eh?

And make sure to rest. Rest is important. It's what I'm going to do now.