Day 277: Back on track

OK, time to get myself back on track. I knew when I woke up today that I had spent enough time convalescing, that the worst of the depression was passed, and any more time on my back would cross the line into self-pity and self-indulgence.

But still I lay in bed wallowing. I got trapped in a social media loop on my phone, scrolling and scrolling, bingeing on empty novelty, finding nothing nutritious, repeating the same actions anyway. The equivalent of eating through a sharer bag of Doritos, avoiding pain with repetition, the addictive behaviour bringing up guilt and shame, sadness, helplessness, but burying all that with yet more of the addictive behaviour.

Finally I realised I had to move. I thought about what the most important step was right this moment - out of all my worries and issues, what was most pressing right now?

It was getting out of bed. So I forced all my energy into doing this. Then, once up, I made my bed. I took a shower, put on clothes. I tidied my room. It wasn’t exactly messy, but I did what there was to do, put books back on shelves, lined up shoes and slippers, threw food wrappers away, put my camera in its bag and put the bag where it belonged. I meditated. Went downstairs and made coffee, ate a banana, had cereal. Put clothes to wash. Did some reading about depression - know thine enemy - and did some CBT work - know thyself.

- - -

Often, in the depths of depression, one thought above all others ricochets around my skull. “Is this my fault?” Regardless of what I know about the very real and external causes of depression, when I’m suffering and the pain overwhelms me I can’t seem to shake the constant nagging fear that maybe it’s just me being weak and pathetic, maybe I’m bringing it all upon myself by giving up.

I don’t want to get into too much detail here, but suffice it to say my conclusion, which I have arrived at many times before, and need reiterating for myself now, is this: The entire universe is to blame for depression. Every blade of grass, every atom, you, me, God, all the gods, the whole cosmos, it all swirls together in sometimes beautiful ways, and sometimes ways that lead to immense suffering. Depression is part of this. Don’t worry about why it happened and whether you were at fault. It’s here now. It is real.

And yet victimhood is not the correct response either. The locus for change, the pivot point, is the personal self. Your depression will not improve simply by understanding its etiology, nor by blaming others, nor yet by changing laws, by making society more just - you cannot remove past trauma, re-engineer your genes, prevent troubled childhood experiences from causing skewed schemata in your brain from forming. These things need considering, understanding. But they are not the hill upon which you must fight. That hill is the present moment, and the manifesting of all your problems in it. Avoid negative behaviours, ingrain positive behaviours, and you will slowly change your brain chemistry. This is a fact.

As a general rule, action is better than inaction. Even the smallest, most stupid sounding goals can have profound effects when continued over long periods. Don’t stay in bed. Always shower. Eat a piece of fruit. Walk round the block. Do 20 press-ups. Meditate for five minutes. Write a paragraph a day. Create to-do lists for the day and cross them off one at a time, put yesterday’s unfinished tasks at the top of today’s list. 

Doing things helps.

But while doing things, problems will arise. Here, to help me, is a list of some of my problems, and what I can do about them:

Automatic negative thoughts (ANTs) are one of my demons. They arrive suddenly, from nowhere, crashing in. “This is pathetic. You’re worthless. What a waste of time. You're ugly. Repulsive. Stupid. Talentless.”

- What to do: CBT helps here. Catch the thoughts. Notice them. They arise, exist independently for a moment, then I swallow them, digest them, assimilate them, and they are part of me. Note down every time I become aware of one, and it gets easier to catch them in that moment before they dissolve into me. “Aha, that was an ANT. I see you.” That is all that is needed. Make tally charts of every time they arise. For ones with more force do CBT work to challenge them, question their validity. For example: “Do I know with absolute certainty that this blog post is worthless? Can I think of any examples why it is not worthless?” Brought into the light of awareness ANTs tend to shrivel away into nothing.

Rumination is another demon. Related to ANTs, but not quite the same thing. Sometimes it’s an ANT that starts up the ruminative process, but the process itself is the obsessive worrying, round and round, about problems, without coming to any conclusions. Obsessing over why I’m like this, rather than how to fix it. 

- What to do: As soon as I notice myself ruminating it is vital to disrupt the pattern, to get out of that neural network. Concentrate on anything else. If it is necessary then write out everything I’ve been worrying about, put the worries into order of importance, and brainstorm simple plans to tackle the first items on the list. Later worries can be shelved for the moment.

Learned helplessness is something I’m not sure I’ve written about before. It’s a major component of depression, in some models in fact it essentially is depression, the perceived lack of control of situations learned through previous uncontrollable stress and trauma. You can instil learned helplessness in a rat by shocking it or dunking it in water randomly and continuously, until eventually it won’t try to escape even when escape is possible. 

For me learned helplessness manifests as that “woe is me” mentality, overly dramatic, wanting to fling myself on my bed at the first sign of difficulty and tell everyone to leave me here to rot, that it’s too late for me, it’s all hopeless.

- What to do: Again, mindfulness is important. Noticing the thoughts as thus. “This is learned helplessness I’m experiencing right now.” To ask whether past experiences are clouding my current judgement. “Is there actually no way over this obstacle, or do I just feel that way because of learned helplessness?”

(I just felt it then. “There’s no way to finish this blog post. It’s sprawling too far. It's too long. I can’t do it. I need to give up.” So - note it down. Recognise it for what it is. And get back to work.)

Learned helplessness is a system broken through trauma and stress. But the system can be fixed. What was learnt can be unlearnt.

Self-esteem is yet another issue. A far-reaching and wide-ranging sense that I am not good enough, a sort of shadowy lack of confidence leering behind all things.

- What to do: Small actions help. Make lists of accomplishable tasks, and accomplish them. That builds pride. When the feeling comes on, know that it’s a demon, that action is called for. Do not sit and think about the low self-esteem, do not let rumination start up. It’s addictive and ingrained and feels like the right way forwards. It is not. The way forwards is to recognise the danger and immediately act, rather than ponder. Tidy my desk. Do some press-ups. Read a page of whatever non-fiction book I’m reading, to learn something new. Write mindfully about what the low self-esteem feels like, where in the body it is located, how physiology changes. Accomplish even the smallest thing, push forwards a millimetre rather than stay and be pulled back by the demon.

Full depression. And then there are the deeper symptoms that manifest when those others have shunted me fully into a depressive episode. Anhedonia, grief, psychomotor retardation, restlessness, sleep problems, all the rest. That’s where I’ve been the last few days.

- What to do: When this happens think of it like coming down with a bad case of flu, like breaking my leg. Accept the severity of the situation. Drop all other concerns and focus only on allowing myself the time to get better. Treat myself gently and kindly. Call or message people I trust. Go gingerly, but gracefully. Do not reach for pain-relieving vices that will cause more harm than good. Do not drink or do drugs. Do not eat junk food. Shower, if possible. Take short walks, if possible. Watch things on TV I would have liked as a child, guilty pleasures. Give myself little treats. Expect almost nothing, but try not to run to harmful things either. The dark clouds will pass. The sky will be clear once again.

...That's all a loose list, and there are things I've left off, but it's a good start, to help me get back on my feet. Do the things I need to do, stay active, keep ingraining positive habits and behaviours, and when those specific demons show up, as of course they frequently will, deal with them in the ways that have been proven to work.

I am doing so much better than I once was. Healing is not linear, but, wobbly, in spluttering fits and starts, it happens nonetheless. Upwards!

Day 251: Insignificant

My friend Mike is round to watch The Wire. "Wire boys, oi oi oi!" That's what we chant at each other. And we say, "Good Wiring," afterwards, or, "All Wired up now", or something.

We're not intrinsically cool, Mike and I. But we're happy, so whatever.

We're not happy. Of course we're not happy. Don't be silly.

Today, Mike is not happy because of his headphones.

He comes round wearing these headphones. I've not seen them before. "Nice headphones," I say, meaning it.

Mike says: "They make my head look enormous, don't they? I mean, my head is already enormous. And then you add these awful things on top. It's ridiculous. I'm very self conscious about it all." He is smiling, but he also means it, also.

So I make jokes about his massive head for a while. But you know what? I didn't think Mike had a massive head, or that his headphones were massive. Of course, if Mike wanted to present me with this narrative, then sure, I'd run with it, because humans like ready-made narratives, and this one involved someone being the butt of a joke, and that someone not being me. That's always a plus.

But if I'd seen Mike in the street, and not known him, here's what I would have thought: "That man is wearing headphones." And then I would have gone back to thinking about myself, and all the incredibly important things happening to me, like whether my head looked stupid or over- or under-sized in any way.

Or perhaps, paying the absolute maximum amount of attention possible to another human being, directing all my awareness outside of myself, I might have thought: "Does that man have better headphones than me?"

And I would have studied the man, and the headphones. And if the answer that I arrived at was, Yes, the man did have better headphones than me, then I would have felt miserable for a while, and pondered how unfair it was that I had cheap tiny crappy headphones while everyone else in the world, in the entire goddamned world, had giant powerful beautiful headphones.

If, on the other hand, I concluded that, No, my headphones were best, then I would have immediately dismissed the man from my thoughts, and gone back to the integral work of worrying about whatever it was I was I was worrying about. The weird shape of my head, probably.

What I'm saying is that we ALL think we have stupid heads. We ALL think our accoutrements, technological, sartorial, show us up to be impostors and unfathomably pathetic losers. We ALL worry that, walking around in the spotlight, at the centre of the universe, everyone is watching us and sees all our faults and blemishes, that all those bit part actors on the sidelines are staring in at us and pointing and laughing.

But to everyone else WE are the bit part actors. WE are the ones who might point and laugh. To them, it is they who are the centre of the universe. We are as entirely meaningless to them as all those faceless nobodies in the street are to us.

And they are, aren't they? Nobodies. God, how they shuffle and lurch towards us, down the high street, wearing their puffer jackets, their tie-dyed ponchos, their luminous wellington boots, their pin-striped suits. Ceaseless throngs of them. Shoving, sweating, burping. In Armani. In charity shop throws. In torn bin bags.

Whatever. We don't care. We don't give a shit. Get out of our way. We've got important business to attend to, we're incredibly stressed here, distracted, off in the glorious unique temple of our skulls, at the precise, we're certain, centre of the universe, so vital, so necessary, worrying about the things that truly matter, such as our flabby knees, our oddly hanging scarves, everything we own, wear, possess, are.

It doesn't matter, does it? It doesn't matter whether Mike has a big head (and he does, objectively; it is gargantuan). It doesn't matter whether your jeans are tight around your hips. Whether your breasts are small, or large, or wonky. Whether your tongue lolls out of the side of your mouth when you laugh, or your feet slant inwards when you walk, or you have a double chin when you are turned to profile in unguarded photographs.

You're simply not as important to others as you think you are. You don't matter to them, to me, at all. You're entirely insignificant.

And I very much hope that brings you comfort.

......

Music: Sixtyniner, by Boards of Canada. Don't /think/ I've listened to this really early stuff before. It's lush. Wide, expansive, intricate, intriguing. Lush, I say. Lush.

Day 209: Present

Voice of negativity has been howling of late, stomping its feet, threatening to blow down all my houses of cards. "Blog is pathetic," it screams. "You're a heap of dirt. You're grosser than the matter you find collected under the nail of a big toe."

The voice wants me to give everything up, crawl back under the covers, slink away to where it's dark and silent and safe.

Yeah, it's been howling. And in fact it turned up just then. "How many times have you written this exact post? How many times have you thought you had something interesting to say, but you never learn, you never move on. You should just admit that you're making a fool of yourself, and quit this blogging nonsense once and for all."

But it's good to hear that voice. Good to be present as it attacks. Because normally it sneaks in the back entrance, slinks up the stairs, and before I know it there it is in the control room of my brain manoeuvring me around without me ever giving permission.

I'll be distracted, lost in this or that, and then from the depths of my mind a thought arrives, like I'm figuring something out, finally recognising, that, for example, everything I create is worthless - and there's no arguing, because it doesn't feel like an opinion with which you can argue. It's more that I myself have finally noticed, or perhaps admitted, something that has always been present in reality. I have always been pathetic. Every word I write has always been atrocious. Yes, I am like that sad hopeful in every season of X-Factor, shuffling into the audition room certain of their secret ability to sing, but they can't, they can't sing, and it's clear to everyone else, and they're not the freak show or the star they're just another nobody, filled with delusions, to be summarily dismissed halfway through a long day with the judges thinking only of how long they still have to wait before they can break for lunch.

And there's always the sense of shame and despair in recognising that to be true, the feeling of all the energy seeping out of my muscles, and the voice becomes self-loathing, gathers momentum, spirals, and soon I'm actively searching out every example in my life that proves the initial thought to be true.

But it's not true. It's not reality. It is an interpretation of reality. An opinion about reality.

And, like the voice of a smoker screaming that they have to have a cigarette, that they cannot cope through the day without one, the voice of negativity has a motive. Addiction wants the smoker to smoke, and will tell any lie, warp reality in any way, to make it happen. But if the smoker doesn't take up the impulse, if they watch the craving, then the craving will rise, and peak, and fall back, and the person will be left, still there, like a beautiful blue sky after a storm.

And so it is with depression, with that voice of negativity. It wants me to give up writing, because writing is scary, and leads into unknown places. It wants me to stay small, and beaten, and not make a fuss. And so it twists truth until it has ammunition to use against me, and it deploys it, in a voice engineered to be effective. It explains, beseeches, begs, or shouts, depending on what works best. It doesn't want discussion, ambiguity, consideration of alternatives. It wants to take control, and to have its way, and everything it says works to further those aims.

But smokers do give up smoking, although the urges always stay with them. And I will give up depression, although that voice will always remain.

I'm getting better at catching the voice. Standing here, in the light of awareness, and watching the creature creep up the stairs, settle into position, clear its throat.

I'm getting better at staying present as it speaks. Hearing how what it says is not reality, but the same old voice spouting the same old warped interpretations of reality.

The creature turns malicious, thunders, threatens to smash apart the world. And I'm getting better at remaining still, giving the voice space, and letting it thunder out of steam, falter, fall silent. I stay present, and the creature sighs, retreats, slinks back into the dark.

Until, of course, thirty seconds later, when it returns for its next attack. But it has only a few strategies, it's all bluster and no bite. My approach need never alter. Be mindful. Be here. Be awake to watch the voice arriving, to not react, to let it exhaust its bag of tricks.

Negative voices can do nothing without our permission. We need only be alert enough to ensure we do not give it.

Day 194: Memories

Blog once a day? Stuuuuupid! I don’t wanna. Nope nope nope. I wanna lounge in bed with South Park on in the background and fiddle with photographs on my phone and browse indie games on my Switch and roll over and go to sleep. I’m too tired for this.

Ooof. OK. My eye is falling out. My eye is a putrid lumpy mess. My eye is… I have a stye. That’s what’s happened. I have a stye. There’s nothing to do but put warm compresses on it and wait for it to go down. Work today was grim though, I felt self-conscious, took me right back to days of my acne being bad. Struggling to make eye contact, scanning the faces of everyone with whom I interacted, noticing them noticing, fighting the constant desire to hide away. I told myself at the beginning of the day that I wasn’t bothered, although I’d woken up with the stye huge and inflamed and poking into my eye with a big whitehead on top of it, I’d said to myself that these things happen, I’m too old to care what people think, and mostly they don’t notice, people don’t; you’re the centre of your own world but to everyone else you’re just passing through, you barely register, if at all, and your embarrassments are tiny and external and distant to them.

But immediately once at work I was back into that mindset of the spotty kid shamefaced and looking down at the ground, keeping my head turned away from people, pretending to be distracted and avoiding conversations and closeness.

I spent years doing that growing up. Years and years. It’s no wonder I’m so screwed up now. It’s no wonder I have issues with confidence and intimacy.

My skin was always bad, so I always had to deal with the low-level anxiety and misery of knowing people could see, knowing it lowered you in their eyes, even if they felt compassionate you were still below them, knowing my pain and shame was right there plastered across my face for everyone to stare at and there was not a thing I could do about it. And I just plodded through it, tried to ignore it, tried to reframe my thoughts. But it was always there in the background gnawing away.

And then there were the times my skin got really bad, covered in pus-filled nodules and red raw and disfigured, painful to smile, worrying I would burst spots and spew yellow juice everywhere if I frowned or laughed or chewed food. And then the voices of shame ramped up into top gear, and I would do anything to get away from other people, from social events, from school, uni, work.

Part of the shame was not being able to talk about the shame, so I couldn’t just say “I don’t want to go to the party because I feel like a monster.” So I made up excuses. And friends came to know me as flaky, disappointing, a let-down. And I knew they felt that, and I knew I couldn’t say anything, and I hid in my room alone and festered.

… Hard memories tonight. My skin has been far better since going on Roaccutane when I was 25. These days the breakouts, regular though they are, are mild enough that I would have killed for them a decade ago. Yet still sometimes it’ll be a bit worse, or I’ll get a stye, or a rash, or something, and it’ll trigger that social anxiety response, and I’ll be right back there again, an ashamed and awkward creature, wanting to scuttle away along the sea floor and hide under a rock.

Our issues never truly leave us. Some scars go all the way down. I guess we just have to be as honest with ourselves as we can be, as caring, and treat ourselves with kindness on the bad days. We can’t help being the way we are.

And remember that other people seriously do not give a shit about the ways we think we're ugly. They are far too concerned with their own massively important pains and woes, of which we know little, if anything. And on it goes...

Day 169: Stubborn

Oh hello there. Hello hello. I am very self-conscious right now. I'm finding writing is making me very self-conscious. Well that's just the way it is. Got to put those words down. Got to put up this blog. So write and write and power on through regardless.

I was working today. I was at work. It was... no, let us not talk of it. Afterwards I came home from work, and that was good, except I was tired from the work, and my brain had turned to gravy. But that was also the fault of me staying up till half two last night editing more photos, which I didn't mean to do but then I did it, and then I'd done it and there was nothing I could do. 

Oh well. I've cooked a meal this evening, with actual vegetables, so I'm pleased with that. I've edited more photos. Put photos on Facebook for my family who don't have Instagram to see. I did my Instagram post for work earlier, and I did one for my own page after that. Did a gratitude list. I'm doing this writing now.

Small steps. One foot in front of the other. Don't look down, don't get dizzy, just keep on concentrating a foot ahead. Yes. It's a kind of vertigo I suffer from. Writers' vertigo. As soon as I start writing I feel myself to be dangerously high, and I watch myself writing, turning myself inside out for the world to see, and my head swims and I get wobbly and I panic, and suddenly I can't move forward or go back, I'm paralysed, like stage fright, like the fear at the edge of a cliff.

But I've got over this, in the past, time and time again. I was doing much better with it, then recently I was doing worse, and now I feel myself ready to face the problem again. I'll keep going, and it will get easier, as it always does.

There are things, and if you do these things you can succeed. It's true in anything. In learning the trombone or building a rocket ship or setting up your own meringue business.

For me right now writing is a thin mountain path beside a fiery abyss. Well then I simply focus on my feet, lift one up, find a good spot ahead on the ground, put my foot down, transfer my weight, repeat with the other side. Over and over, and eventually I'm back into bucolic meadows.

If you're struggling with mental health, this is my only advice to you. Find very simple tasks that you can complete, and complete them. Make a plan for how to go to the shops. Lay out the steps for getting through the shower. Create a foolproof guide for getting out of bed.

My mental health is not that bad at the moment. But trying to write, to tread the treacherous journey upwards climbing the mountain of self, has been difficult. There's been a sandstorm of self-consciousness howling at every turn.

But I can still put one foot in front of the other. I can still slowly, stubbornly stumble on.

The storm will abate. It will cease. And until then there is only this. Do the things. Keep on going. Repeat and repeat and repeat.

I hope that whatever your things are you are able to find the strength to do them, and that you are able to carry on.

Day 168: Triviality

My leg is itchy. I have an itchy leg. The computer’s fan is whirring. The traffic is going by outside. I’m home, I’ve been sat up for hours editing photos. The initial idea of buying a camera was to have something that I’m patently not good at, something to do just as a hobby for myself, to have fun with, as a counter to the stress and perfectionism I feel with writing. But of course I’ve very quickly assimilated the basic rules of photography, started taking it way too seriously, rapidly run up against the wall of my own limitations, and found myself fundamentally disappointed in my lack of talent, in the same way I am with writing, and with everything I do.

Which is so dumb! I’ve had a camera for less than a year now. I barely ever take it out. And my pictures aren’t bad at all. Most of them are bad, but I guess most of most people’s are like that, and there are usually a few from a day out that I end up liking after they’ve been edited. And that’s not cheating; maybe there are prodigies who take gorgeous shots every time, like prodigies who can play classical piano before they’re out of nappies, or who can sit and write pure poetry straight onto the page. But for the rest of us mere mortals it’s always a numbers game - creativity involves a whole lot of creation, and a whole lot of sifting through the rubbish. You vomit out rivers of puke every day, and then you wade through those rivers looking for diamonds. That’s just the job. So get over yourself and pull on the wellington boots and stomp into that sick

I’ve been feeling icky and greasy and gross again today, spotty and ugly, sweating in old grey clothes on the train. But I’ve tried to not pay that any mind. So what? I’ve said to that negative voice. Oh soooo whaaaat? Who gives a fuck? Maybe I’m the grossest person alive. Maybe not. Maybe I am. But what difference does it make? Is worrying it might be true going to do a single thing to change it? No. So might as well just get on with living. Put warm compresses on my eye to try to head off an infection. Unpack my bags. Do social media for work. Put a pic on my own Instagram. Edit photos from the trip.

And now do my teeth and go to bed and get up for the open tomorrow. Just get on with it. Stop letting something as trivial as thoughts hold me back. Fuck those thoughts. They’ve got no power here.

Day 161: Mini-Frankenstein

I had a mole removed from my shoulder this week. The doctor wasn’t worried about it when I asked him to take a look during a check-up, but he said my surgery offered a private service that would remove it if I wanted to pay, for peace of mind or for cosmetic reasons, though he reiterated that there was no need to take it off at all.

I’ve got lots of moles. I don’t mind the smaller ones. The larger ones have always made me self-conscious - at least since early adolescence, when my body became something awkward and ungainly, secreting smells and sprouting hair and spots, and I started to hate the way my moles marked me out as different - fat, dark targets all over my skin.

In theory I’m one for learning to accept one’s physical form, for loving yourself as you are, rather than paying vast sums to questionable plastic surgery clinics that convince you perfection is but one operation away. I rarely wear aftershave, don’t get my hair cut often, and I’ve long since grown weary of designer tags on clothes. I’d rather spend my one life concentrating on literature and art and the beauty already inherent in the world, in all its flawed crumbling glory, than on manipulating my appearance and persona to win some kind of approval from the countless morons all desperately attempting to win approval for themselves, all of them scrambling towards some unattainable ideal sold to them by brands owned by ugly CEOs getting rich off desperation.

But in practice it’s not always so easy, and when my doctor mentioned the mole removal service, far cheaper than the private clinics - and with a comfortable amount of money in the bank saved from not drinking and working with Steve and a tax rebate - I decided to book myself in.

The doctor who performed the surgery was old, experienced, and awkward in his bedside manner. He spent the majority of the time I was with him explaining that there might be a very small scar, initially red but fading to white, if not fading completely - repeating this over and over, until I told him that I’ve suffered from moderate acne all over my body since I was 15, and one more scar to add to the tapestry wouldn’t cause me even a moment’s thought.

The doctor nodded and looked at me a long time, then coughed and looked away.

As he was preparing his scalpel he asked me to take my top off. I hesitated, and then mumbled whether I could keep it on, “because of the acne.”

“Ahh, yes. Got some self-consciousness, have you?”

I mumbled yes.

“Well, I can probably reach the mole with the neck of your shirt pulled to the side. Yes. That should be fine.”

He turned away and continued fiddling with his tools.

He barely spoke through the rest of the procedure. I lay still, the local anaesthetic numbing my shoulder, doing nothing for my sense of shame, until I became bored, and found myself wondering whether I should make small talk, like at the hairdressers, or whether the doctor needed silence to work. I didn’t want to distract him while he had a scalpel inside my skin.

But it was over after ten or so minutes. The worst part was the noise. I could only feel a faint tugging of the skin in my back, but as the operation was happening close to my ear I could hear every slice into my flesh, every squelching sound, the scrunch of stitches being pulled through the skin, the gently horrendous rustle of the sides of the wound being drawn together. The sounds, untethered from any sensation of pain, made for a surreal, and disquieting, experience.

When it was done the doctor applied a dressing, told me to keep it on for three days, and bundled me out of the examination room with an invoice to pay at reception.

And that was that. The dressing is off now, I’ve got an inch-long line of red skin on my shoulder crisscrossed with dark stitches, what Fran is calling a “mini-Frankenstein”, and an appointment on Monday to have the stitches removed.

Since a couple of kids at school pointed the mole out, and one guy I hated made fun of it repeatedly, I’ve tended towards wearing tighter-necked t-shirts or collared shirts that covered it up. And now finally it’s gone. I don’t know if having it removed was exactly the right course of action, but it’s one I’m pleased with. It’s much easier to not care about your appearance when there’s nothing egregiously different about it.

Anyway, that’s about all I’ve got to say for the moment. I’ve been feeling low again today, but I’ve not let it get in my way. I’ve washed clothes, bought food from Unwrapped, walked to town with Mike, done writing, played Switch, and cooked a healthy tea. Got an open shift first thing tomorrow, joy of joys, so I’ll leave this here.

Take care x

Day 131: Untangled

Woke up hating myself this morning. All the usual reasons. I'd overslept; rather than seizing the day I'd rolled over and spent the last two hours feeling pinned to the bed, thinking how the healthy decision would have been to get up, but feeling unable to do so. And I was thinking about my writing, how I'm not pushing myself enough, how disappointing it all is, how simple and safe and boring. How I'm not making any progress. I'm trapped in stasis. How I've been eating ready meals and oven pizzas most nights again, and averaging one piece of fruit every other day. How I haven't been shopping at Unwrapped. How I never follow through on plans. The moment things get difficult I give up. How I'm a worthless waste of space, a pathetic ugly moronic loser.

Like I said, all the usual reasons.

And then I got up and stood in the shower. I got out of the shower and dried myself with my towel. I did my teeth, did my beard. Put on clothes. I took a bag for life and an empty Kilner jar and walked to Unwrapped, and then to the greengrocer's on the corner. I ate breakfast - cornflakes with milk, satsumas, an apple, a banana, a croissant - washed up, made a large pot of coffee.

I paid my rent, checked some dates on the calendar, did some other sorting work. I briefly felt awful that I still don't really get the next part of the story-structure stuff I've been putting off for weeks - but then I watched an episode of Community and made notes about the hero's journey, made notes about Bourne Identity, read up on story circles online... And by the time I had to get ready for work I felt like I had a better grasp on the subject than ever before.

And, OK, I know all that is not very impressive. It's pretty much the bare minimum that an adult should be achieving. But for me it was a big deal. This self-loathing I feel every day is such a weight on me. It is self-sustaining. It perpetuates itself. You feel worthless and that saps you of all energy, which makes it impossible to do the things you know you should be doing, which makes you feel all the more worthless.

I have had so many mornings waking up like this morning and letting that weight of negative thoughts crush me. Churning over in my head all the reasons I'm a failure, each reason leading to ten more reasons, which each lead to ten more, spreading outwards, forming strands between what were disparate incidents - the social failure last Thursday, the sense of loneliness in the corner of the party last month, not buying enough fruit yesterday, classmates laughing at me decades ago - the strands solidifying into a thick web that encompasses my entire consciousness, with me enmeshed in the centre, trapped and tiny and helpless, unable even to struggle, unable to move even a finger.

And once that process starts spinning up it's so difficult to halt, it carries its own energy and the energy builds as it goes, and often I'm not conscious it's begun, and then suddenly it is everywhere. And struggling only tangles me worse, the energy to fight back can so easily just go into energising the self-loathing, and then I get frustrated, and then feel helpless, and then suffer more.

So to feel the beginnings of that happening this morning, but then to gently, lightly climb over the first of the webs, to walk away and get on with the mundane work of my day, well for me that is huge. I'm going to recognise that that is huge. I'm going to feel good about it.

I'm going to give myself that.

Day 126: Coaxial cables

Well, I never showered. Mike messaged me as I was necking coffee in my boxers to ask whether I wanted to "do something" before he went to work, so I threw on clothes and walked round, and we drank more coffee, chatted about literature and politics and videogames, mostly videogames, and then we went geocaching, as is Mike's wont, and explored city centre backstreets and parks full of unconscious homeless people and cathedral grounds pocked with bird shit, and we ate sandwiches and made jokes about being depressed, and then Mike went to be a twilight file clerk and I went home, and I took photos on the walk back, got in and edited the photos, sat down to write.

And after putting down some thoughts about Zelda on the Switch I forced myself to engage with the story structure notes, and I remembered that I was stuck on the next bit, it wasn't clear in my head how it flowed, and I didn't know how to explain it in my own post.

Even yesterday this was a sign that I was a moron and a failure, but today I just went away and read up on the stuff that confused me, made notes, thought about the plots of films that overtly follow the hero's journey and how they dealt with the areas that I didn't have straight.

And it's weird. When creativity is stuck just go and work anyway. When the well is dry just do what is necessary to fill it back up. I've learnt that lesson so many times before, and forgotten every time.

And yesterday I would have seen that as a sign that I'm a moron and a failure, but from today's perspective it's fine. Every time I forget, the lesson is easier to pick up again the time after. Every time I fall it becomes easier to rise.

Negative thoughts are strengthened pathways in the brain. Neurons that fire together, synapses that have thickened their coaxial cables though use. Except they're not called coaxial cables, because those are the things that connected your TV to your antenna before Netflix, but it's a word like that, and it's late, so let's just go with it. The thickened synapses are like deep grooves worn into the ground. And when the rain of thought falls that water will run down the grooves easier than it will run across open land. So changing your mind, learning new patterns of thought, is about going down again and again and chiselling out new channels. And at first these new channels are very shallow, and the water quickly starts running back into the old riverbeds. But then you go back and dig the new channels out, and it's less effort than the first time, and you dig them a bit deeper. And then the water goes back into the riverbeds. And then you go down again and dig out the new channels...

I'll forget everything I'm saying here, and I'll feel blue again. I'll lose hope. But I'll keep remembering, and it will get easier. And one day I'll look back and find that I can barely make out those old ossified riverbeds, while the roaring rapids of healthy thought will be connected to a hydroelectric dam powering machines that change the world, and I'll dip the coaxial cables into the water and short-circuit my house and the power will go off and then I'll never be able to have a shower.

See how by referencing my mixing of metaphors and the lack of symmetry in the post I get to both show that I'm aware of those problems and provide a sort of solution to them? Writing is great.

Day 125: The right path

I’ve been drifting of late. Going to work, coming home exhausted, feeling a miserable and stubborn thing inside me refusing to engage with my writing, so I’ve spent the evenings instead watching Netflix or playing Zelda or napping, and as the night has gone on I’ve felt worse and worse, and finally forced myself to write a few paragraphs, and then stayed up too late, got up the next day on four or five hours sleep, repeated the whole process.

Isn’t it odd how we can work out precisely the course of action that will be unhealthy for us - and then go and do it anyway? How sometimes it’s like we’re wanting to punish ourselves, or wanting to prove to everyone what screw ups we are? How when your self-esteem is low enough you simply can’t accept that you are capable of creating value, can't accept that you are worthy of love. It doesn’t compute. You have to sabotage your life until external reality corresponds with the ruined reality inside you, because that makes sense.

Well, I’ve done that for so many years now. I guess it’s time I started working on it. I’ve got a day off tomorrow, and I plan to spend the time showing myself some self-care, doing the things that need to be done - showering rather than staying in the t-shirt I slept in, getting exercise rather than sitting slouched in my office chair all day, changing my sheets, putting on washing, working on that bloody story structure post and the film reviews…

Instead of lowering my external reality to make it line up with how I see myself I can put that energy into raising my inner reality up. Even when I’m tired and my mental health is bad and I’ve got very little to give, I can still treat myself kindly, I can still go ten steps, two steps, half a step in the right direction, rather than curling into a ball and letting myself roll backwards.

Now for step one: get some sleep.

x

Day 123: Slow

I’m going to finish that story structure stuff one day - that stuff that was only supposed to be preamble to discussing the story structure of Bourne Identity, which was itself only supposed to be a brief scribbled thought before I went on and watched Bourne Ultimatum, which films were only supposed to be easy thrillers to watch and review while I had nothing else right that moment to write about.

Depression always slows everything down, it’s like being encased in mud, your whole being, your thoughts get sluggish, your plans thicken and congeal, even rising from bed takes a decade, a shower takes an aeon, you focus all your energy down into an interminable battle to get one foot in front of the other, to take a single step.

All while a voice is bombarding you with criticism, with self-loathing, telling you how weak you are, how wretched, all the reasons you’ll fail, all the reasons to undo that eternity of struggle and just climb back into bed.

But, hey, considering all that I didn’t do badly today. I got up and showered. I made coffee for me and Jiggs. Chatted with Phace. I spent a few hours preparing a training session about Belgian beer to give to the staff at work, walked the 40 mins down to town, overcame the social anxiety clinging to me like a blanket, gave the training, sat with the staff afterwards and drank coffee while they drank beer, went with them for two-for-Tuesdays burgers at a nearby bar, came home before 10 and watched some filmmaking videos on YouTube, forced myself not to go down into negative thoughts, not to let the depression overtake me.

I reckon that’s pretty good. I’m going to think about how much better that was than it could have been, and take solace in that. Like I said yesterday, things are improving.

And now I’m going to bed because I’m at work for 7am tomorrow for the delivery. Toodles x

Day 122: Improving

Another day not feeling good. I’ve done a few paragraphs of writing about story structure, but I couldn’t focus on it. Other than that I’ve played Zelda, watched Matt Groening’s new show on Netflix, Disenchantment, and drunk a lot cups of tea. Drank a lot of cups of tea? No. I have drunk.

Trying really hard not to go into self-loathing mode here. It’s so exhausting doing better for a couple of days and then feeling awful again and having no motivation to write and then beating myself up for having no motivation to write and then really not being able to write anything, and all the negative thoughts and sadness and emptiness swirling into a huge storm that rumbles on and on and on.

It’s exhausting enough feeling depressed, this time I’m not going to add to it by hating myself for feeling depressed. I’m just going to feel depressed. And that is OK. And I’ll drink another cup of tea, find some simple words to write here, then watch more Disenchantment and go to bed.

I was thinking a minute ago about how pathetic I am for writing those periodic posts where I pretend to have some wisdom to impart about depression, some insight into it, into how to move past it - the posts that people get in touch to tell me were really meaningful, or illuminating, or that helped them out - and but how it’s all lies, I never learn the lessons, never practice what I preach, I don’t have the strength, I just make the same mistakes in the worn grooves of my wretched brain time and time again.

But that’s not true. That simply is not true. I will not allow myself to listen to whatever voice just said that to me. That negative voice that wants me to believe I'm weak and worthless, to keep me small.

I am improving. I am getting better at dealing with this. I'm not stuck in a loop. I'm climbing out of a deep pit. Gradually, for sure, and the path is not always upwards, but I am climbing. I write a blog post every day. Sometimes I have the energy to write things that excite me, like film reviews, or silly scripts, or discussions of story structure. And some days I only have the energy to do this. But if a couple of posts a week feel worth doing, then that’s still a couple of posts a week more than I was doing 122 days ago. And I’m still posting something on those other days. I’m still coming here and putting a few paragraphs down, which is better than nothing.

In summary then: depression, you're a moron.

Yes, yes, you're part of me, and I accept that, and I'm not going to fight you. But I am going to tell you that you're goddamned wrong.

Come in, sure, if you're standing out there berating me in the cold. Have a blanket. Sit by the fire. If you're sticking around then I'll treat you with love. But don't think I'll listen to that nonsense you're spouting.

I love you, dark parts of me, but that does not mean I have to put up with your shit. So sit there quietly and drink this cocoa, and we'll watch another Disenchantment together before bed. There's a good depression.

Day 121: Choose

I have no energy, mental or emotional, to carry on that story structure thing tonight. Home from work and done in, depressed, empty, low. Tried to write when I got in, fell asleep, crawled to bed and napped, in and out of consciousness, my brain yelling all the ways I’ve failed, every reason I won’t make it, why everything will fall apart. No energy to answer back, no energy to stand outside of the thoughts and let them be, just lying there listening to them, not sleeping, sleeping, not sleeping again.

Finally got up to make tea. Met Jiggs in the kitchen. Chatted about whatever. I put a pan to boil, emptied in handfuls of pasta, chopped onion and red pepper and courgette and garlic, fried them up and added tomato, basil. Quorn pieces for protein. Jiggs went to his room to carry on watching a film. I watched the pasta swirl in the pan. The world dark outside. The kitchen cold.

Hey. I’m not out boozing. Booze was medicine, and it made me feel good, or at least numb, and I’m not numb anymore, or good. Am I good? I’m OK. Am I?

I am. This is life. There’s so much sadness here and so much pain, and now I’m fully here to experience it. It’s harder than when I was boozing, much, much harder - but it’s also more real. To feel this pain and to not turn away from it, to stay on the path, to remain upright, to carry on going: that's the only way that matters. I choose this way. Even on goopy black nights like tonight, I choose this way.

Day 93: Day off

We've taken a day off in my house today. All of us. We've taken a day off from the world. Jiggs has sat downstairs with my old Wii U and played Breath of the Wild for eight hours straight. I've sat in the armchair beside him, giving hints, playing Switch with the volume down, eating chocolate. Phace has lain in bed under blankets and watched formulaic detective shows on Netflix and snoozed.

We all work fatiguing low-paid jobs, all struggle with various issues, and life is not easy. So today we've taken a day off from everyone and everything, we've asked nothing of ourselves, we've eaten crappy food and not showered and slobbed about in old t-shirts and baggy pyjamas, and it has been glorious. Another week of this before I face reality again, please.

I still feel down. I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like I've reached 90 days and my brain has folded in on itself. All the negative voices that had retreated to a corner somewhere have flown back out. My skin is bad again, my forehead is spattered in tiny spots. I feel small and untalented and broken.

But I'm not going to worry, and I'm not going to stress. If I feel this way, so be it. I'm not going to ask more of myself than I can currently give. And what I can currently give is: very little.

I think I need lots of sleep, and to be gentle with myself, more than anything. So I'm not going to stay up for hours trying to make this blog post good. I'm not going to work on it until it feels like something of worth.

Sometimes the worth comes from simply not allowing yourself to go backwards. From not slipping any further. From putting your feet up with your housemates and eating junk food and saying, Sorry, world, but not today. I'm off today. Try calling again tomorrow.

Sometimes that's enough.

Day 81: Speaks

Iya. Turns out it's easy to get up at seven in the morning. You just need to have a training session you're giving at work later that day to be awake for already and worrying about.

By the time my alarm went off I'd been sat up in bed for half an hour running through my presentation in my head. It was only some basic beer training for the staff, going over some fundamentals that I thought they should know, but still, I was feeling stressed about it.

I abhor public speaking. I spent ten years of my life growing up with really severe acne. My skin is still not good. I do not like the spotlight being on me in social situations. Even just in conversations with one other person I've been known to get sweaty and nervous when I sense attention shifting towards me. Having a group of people all focusing on me is my idea of absolute hell. It makes me want to crawl up inside myself and disappear.

But I knew I had to give this training session. I knew it wasn't objectively a big deal. So I tried to be as prepared as I could be in the time I had. I made sure I was solid on all the points I was talking about. I ran over the presentation again and again, muttered it to myself while changing barrels in the cellar, practised key parts over lunch. And in the end it all went fine. Yeah, I was nervous to begin with, but I settled into it, and I think I managed to teach a few things, and hopefully the staff had fun. They certainly didn't seem to hold the same opinions as the negative voices in my head, which like to tell me how pathetic and worthless I am every step of the way.

So it was good. And it was another test that I have faced down and made it through while completely sober. I wanted a slug of whisky so badly before starting, that moment when the staff began traipsing in and I realised I was going to have to actually do it, and I thought of my opening and how unfunny and lame it was and how I'd made the whole thing too esoteric and how I was going to lose my words and trail off and blush and spontaneously wee myself and cry in front of everyone. I really wanted some whisky right at that moment.

But I didn't have any. And in the end I didn't need any. Chalk public speaking up as one more occasion where being sober isn't just possible, but perhaps even preferable. I was present for the whole thing, alert, and I'm not going to wake up tomorrow with a hangover.

But I am going to wake up tomorrow. And I am going to wake up early (for me), and go to work, so for now I will leave this here, and bid you good night.

Good night, lovely people, and take care.

Day 71: Commitment

The night is hot. The city sleeps below me. I stand at my window half-dressed and look out on the many gleaming lights in the distance, each one a life, a world, a story, and I think how much I want to quit.

Today has been a day when my commitment to writing has been tested. I've felt low and empty, drained out, tired, worn thin. I'm exhausted from my day job -- I slogged up the hill a few hours ago, made it to the shop with enough energy left to pick up an own-brand oven pizza -- the self-service checkout was in need of rebooting and took an aeon to register every move -- and I stumbled home with the light fading and made my pizza in the gloom, ate in my room alone, tried to write but couldn't keep my eyes open, my brain was stretched taut, my feet throbbing, and I had to crumple into bed and nap for an hour and then drag myself back up just now despite every cell in my body screaming out for rest. I feel like that checkout, everything sluggish, needing a hard reset.

The only other writing I did today was before work, still groggy from not enough sleep after last night's bar shift and then blog, and this is my life, and this is all I have. And the writing was dumb and painful and prosaic, and I felt like I have nothing of worth to transmit, no ability to create. I fight this mental health that every day is crushing me and it feels like the only rewards for doing so are more days in which to be crushed again.

But this is the commitment I've made. To write no matter what. To write when it's good, when I'm flying, when I allow creativity to express itself in unique ways through me, and creativity in turn lifts me up and takes me outside of myself, and we soar together, to lands strange and wonderful and new.

But also to write when nothing comes, when every word is difficult and painful and frustrating. When we're lost in the wilderness just taking one clumsy step at a time and after five hours we find we've gone in a circle and we're back where we began, having discovered nothing.

This is the relationship. This is the reality.

And, boy, do I choose it.

Everything, I think, has these moments. Every pursuit, activity, calling, has these days. What you need to do is find the activity where, during these godawful times, you still look at yourself and think this is where I belong. Where when the going gets tough you put your head down and you find some way, do whatever it takes, to get through it, because you'd rather anything than lose this glorious tender thing that you sometimes have; whatever it is, whatever it means.

So that's me tonight. Stumbling on, uncertain, wounded, battered, but knowing I'm right where I need to be.

And now that's written and there's somewhere else I need to be. Specifically: bed.

Good night.

Day 69: Hammers

Well-hell-hello!

Is that a cool introduction? I think it's pretty neat. I'm going to say that at the beginning of every post from now on. It's going to be my thing.

Yeah, so, hey. I went to a coffee shop today and I tried doing some writing prompts, but nothing was coming out. My brain was all goopy and sluggish. But that's OK. That's all good in the pud. (I'm going to start saying that as well. Man, I'm like a Youtube content provider right now.)

Remember what I wrote about saying yes to reality and not being so hard on myself? About self-hatred being a Chinese finger trap? I mean it was the day before yesterday, I hope you remember. If not then you need to get your memory checked out! Do some brain training, my friend.

Well anyway, I'm going to do that. Uhh, be kind to myself. Not the brain training. It's you who needs the brain training. I bet you've even forgotten what we're talking about. It's worse than we thought! And where are your trousers? Wait, you don't even wear trousers. Your legs were amputated after that crash last year. It was a really traumatic experience. I can't believe you don't remember!

Boy, you can tell I'm tired, can't you? I waffle when I'm tired.

So, then, I'll waffle. But what I won't do is hate myself. That's important. I'm letting the fact I wasn't creative today be OK. I'm sitting down here on my tush and I'm doing a blog post anyway. And I'm feeling proud of that.

It's been a cycle of mine for so long to have a day or two of productivity, and then the first day it doesn't flow I throw my hands in the air and curse the heaves and yell that, see, I knew I wasn't cut out for this, I knew I couldn't sustain any creative endeavour.

And it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, because then the anger and frustration chases the creativity away further, which of course makes me more angry and frustrated, which makes it even harder to do anything the next day, and I get myself in such a tizz I have to walk away from it all and go and get drunk for a month.

It's like finding a beautiful deer has wandered into my clearing for me to photograph. But as soon as I start trying to get it to pose I spook it and it runs. Then I shout at it to come back, which makes it run even further.

And then I go and get drunk.

But not anymore. 69 days, by the way. That's huge. Shout-out to the number 69. Every thirteen-year-old school kid's favourite number. I reckon it's time you stopped tittering about it though. You're a grown-up. You don't have any legs. Be serious for once in your life!

But yes. I have managed to blog every day for this challenge. But the thing with the creativity has remained the same. I've stumbled into doing a Lovecraftian horror parody or a dumb film script or some writing prompts, stuff I've really enjoyed, stuff I desperately want to be doing -- but as soon as I realise what I'm doing I get self-conscious, that old negative voice starts going, "Ooh, look at him, trying to write, thinking he can write. Doing a little film script, are you? A little short story, huh?" And suddenly nothing will come. And I have to just write placeholder posts (like this), until my shadow-self eventually gets bored and wanders off, and creativity sprouts again.

It's like fighting Dark Link in the Water Temple in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Halfway through the dungeon you come across an evil mirror version of yourself that attacks when you attack, blocks when you block, gets angry at Navi's constant hint intrusions when you get angry at Navi's constant hint intrusions (little Ocarina of Time joke for you there. I know Ocarina is your favourite ever game. Though I bet you'd forgotten.).

The trick, with Dark Link, is to un-equip your sword and whack him over the head with a big hammer. Which, now I think about it, seems a somewhat confused message...

Maybe the point is that you can't defeat your own shadow with a frontal assault. Maybe you win through doing something unexpected, you win through yielding.

Maybe you don't force that deer of creativity back to your woods. You just create a lovely glade and plant the flowers and hope that the deer wanders back of its own accord.

And then you whack it over the head with a big hammer.

I don't know, I feel like hammers should be in there somewhere, otherwise I'm kinda reaching with that analogy.

But anyway, I'm going to go get a good night's sleep, give that timid deer the space and time and love it needs, and see what tomorrow brings. I just hope I'm not still in the Water Temple. That place really sucks.

I've been ya boy, Robbie P., and this is me signing off. If you've enjoyed what you've read, please remember to like, comment and subscribe, and I'll see you next time, Internets. Kablamo!

That's how I sign off now. I'm going to do it every post. You'll see.

Day 67: Traps

I'm in the bathroom brushing my teeth and looking at myself in the mirror and thinking about how disappointing I am, when it strikes me that it would be possible to not think like this.

What an insight. What a radical thought.

"You know how you always feel awful about yourself?" I think. "Why not try not doing that?"

It obviously wouldn't be easy. I have decades of experience feeling awful about myself. It's second nature.

"And well it should be," the negative voice in my head chimes in. "You are, after all, awful."

Hmm. Hard to argue with that logic. It's so... axiomatic.

But what if I perhaps pretended I wasn't awful? Just for one day. If I pretended that I'm proud of myself, pretended that it doesn't matter that I have no idea what to write for today's blog post, that when I try to do more of those writing prompts there's a wall there, that I'm completely lost and confused and afraid and miserable and...

... OK. That is exactly what I need to not do. Dammit.

So, yeah. If instead of that stuff I just pretend it's all fine. What if I try acting like everything is as it should be? Like it's all right that...

... No. Don't go down into spirals about why it's not all right. Stay here.

And I can hear you yelling, negative voice, I can hear that you want to remind me that all that terrible stuff does matter. I'm not saying it doesn't, OK? Simmer down. But just for today how about we pretend it doesn't, just as a sort of game, just as an experiment, to see how it makes us feel?

"Can you do that?" I ask my inner voice. "Can you be open enough to give that a fair go?"

"No problemo," the inner voice says, cool as a cucumber, swirling a brandy in its non-corporeal hand.

Then I go to put my socks on and the only pairs are hanging on the line and on the way downstairs I instantly forget what I'd just decided and I spend the next two hours feeling awful about myself.

- - -

I remember the plan while walking around Weston Park, and I feel awful about myself for forgetting to not feel awful about myself. Then I see the irony in this, and feel awful about myself for how stupid I am for not immediately seeing the irony in this, which is itself ironic, which...

... I mentally slap myself across the face. STOP IT. Just stop it. Just accept whatever this present moment brings. Decide to feel good about yourself. It's a simple choice. Make it.

I breathe out a long way, and look at the park around me. The sun is shining through the leaves, casting dappled shadows on the ground. The fountain is splashing loudly. The splashing is very matter-of-fact. There is a calmness to it. It is nice. Everything is beautiful.

I walk on a way, then forget what I'm thinking about and start feeling awful about myself again.

- - -

Later, in the trendy coffee shop I've begun frequenting, I see my usual table is taken.

Then I think how weird it is to have a usual table after three visits to a place, that it betrays some unique and fundamental failing on my part, a debilitating need to retreat to safety, an inability to try new experiences, and that everyone can see this in me, that it will be obvious to the staff of the coffee shop. It's good that I have to sit at a different table.

But because I'm caught up in these thoughts, and in how paranoid, not to mention narcissistic, the thoughts are, how much of a mess I am inside my head, I get to a seat and then realise I haven't picked up the wooden block that serves as the table number to which the waitress will bring my coffee.

I go back to get it. But I find I'm hemmed in between the breakfast bar and a customer's seat. There's not enough room. I start to turn around, then turn back. There might be enough room. I look. No. There's not enough room. I could ask the customer to budge in a little, but let's be honest, I'm not doing that. So I turn around again, walk back round the long way, now convinced that I look both weak for not asserting my right to pass the customer, and also utterly insane for walking to the middle of the floor, pivoting wildly on the spot, then looping back to the till.

It would be nice to make a joke about this to the waitress, to make myself look silly for the staff's amusement, to show I don't take myself seriously -- I feel that's what a normal human being would do -- but I'm on that cusp of blushing where everything is heightened and prickling, and the sweat is already running down my forehead from the heat, so I just take the wooden block proffered by the bored waitress and mumble my thanks and clomp back to my seat.

And then I remember I'm not supposed to be feeling awful about myself.

And I feel doubly awful for how awful I've been feeling about myself.

And triply awful for feeling doubly awful about myself.

And quadruply awful...

Ung. Remember the park. It's a simple letting go. A decision. It's... like a Chinese finger trap. The more you struggle, the worse it gets. You just have to relax. You have to accept.

OK. That's all you have to say. OK.

So I'm a fuck up, am I? OK.

I'm the worst person to have ever existed, not just on this planet but on all planets, and in universes not yet even created? OK.

Everyone in this coffee shop thinks I'm a loser? OK.

And then you go from there. Probably everyone in this coffee shop hasn't even noticed me, probably they're far too caught up in their own lives to worry about mine -- but if they have noticed me, and they do think I'm a loser, then OK. The truth is the truth. It cannot be argued with. This moment is already all it will ever be. You can only accept it. The next moment, you can try to change that one, sure -- but that action has to come out of the stillness and acceptance of this present moment, or it will be doomed to failure.

Reality is what it is. I am who I am.

- - -

So I sit there and think about that for a while. I work like that on every negative thought that arises -- and boy do they arise! And I sit in the afternoon sun drinking my coffee and writing, and it is good.

And, yes, eventually I forget, and I start feeling awful about myself again.

But I remembered a few times today. That's more than I remembered yesterday. Maybe I'll remember even more tomorrow.

A Chinese finger trap is the same every time. You can learn to beat it.

Day 60: Ignoring sirens

It's another hot day. There is only the haze of sky, the furnace of the sun, the bricks that are fiery to the touch. The car bodies and the rooftops in the sun are too brilliant to look upon. The air is heavy and oppressive.

Sixty days of sober blogging today. Two-thirds of the way to my goal. I'm right inside it now. I can't look up or back or too far ahead. I just have to keep my head down and keep ploughing onwards.

I'm working to fundamentally change the way I view myself, to change my relationship with the world, my relationship to my ego, to pain, to suffering, to work, to writing, to art. To change my conception of who I am and what I'm doing here.

This is not easy. There is no eureka moment, no quick fix or instant turn-around. It's just about getting up every day and forcing myself to act in a way that feels completely unnatural, but is I hope healthier than the default way I have fallen into acting over many years.

I still feel shitty much of the time. Tired, miserable, jaded, old, bored. But the feeling is perhaps not as suffocating as before. Those feelings are a fog twisting about my feet, not a maelstrom encasing me, a choking cloud out of which I can see but from which I can never escape.

Sometimes, usually the mornings, the fog creeps higher up my legs. Sometimes it's barely there at all. Yesterday was a good day, climbing trees with Mike and Zoe at Padley Gorge, making friends with regal cats, sticking my head out of the window and my tongue out of my mouth in the car as we wound back down into the city with the late afternoon sun still strong and bright above us.

Maybe I'm slowly finding more space that's me, less that's the depression. Maybe for the first time in a long time I'm finding something approaching hope.

But, like I said, I can't concentrate too much on this. Rumination spins up the negativity and makes me ill. I know this. I love thinking deeply about things, but for the moment I can't do it about myself. I have to just get up, do the blog posts, leave all those icky thoughts trying to spiral upwards well alone. Then go to bed, sleep, get up, do it again.

It's like my brain has all these warning sirens flashing on its control panel all demanding attention. When I go to them they say things like, "You've fucked up everything in your life!" or "Everything you create is shit!" Running to each of these alerts and trying to switch them off or to argue with them doesn't work. So I'm learning to simply ignore them instead. They're constantly going off, blaring, yelling out, but I just have to turn away and pull levers unconnected to them, turn cogs, do normal mundane stuff on the control panel. The warnings flash. I ignore them. They flash. I ignore them. On and on.

Perhaps they'll dim in intensity as time goes on. Perhaps they'll give up entirely. I don't know. What I do know is that I have jobs to do using that control panel. And no stupid flashing lights are going to get in my way.

Day 54: A quick question

Imagine this: your close friend comes to you and tells you that they've become interested in origami, that they've started creating origami models, but that recently someone has been messaging them saying horrible things, telling them their models are rubbish, that they (the friend) are a joke, that everything they make looks pathetic, that everyone is laughing at them, that it's all a waste of time and the friend should give up before they make an even bigger fool of themselves.

You'd give this friend a big hug, right? You'd give them a big hug and look directly into their eyes and tell them in complete honesty to ignore that prick. You'd say that that stuff all is nonsense. We're all only going to die, we're reaching no final goal apart from that, death, and if we can find something that gives us meaning in the doing of it, for a short while, then that is worth doing.

You'd say that you bet the origami models are not rubbish, that you bet they're really cool. And that even if you did personally think they were rubbish, that still would be only your opinion, that there is no one objective truth about art. That even if there was, and even if your friend somehow ended up making objectively the worst origami models the planet had ever seen, they should just get on with doing that, over and over, that they should love it all, should gather up handfuls of their terrible origami models and set the fuckers alight, torch them, and dance naked over the flames, dance and howl at the moon, spit at the stars -- then put their clothes back on and make a whole load more terrible origami models.

You'd say that we contain no permanent selves. That we are not fixed, there is nothing in us to be a failure, to be not good enough. That we are a flowing dream of a ghost passing through carbon atoms arising and falling on a rock hurtling through infinite space on its way back into the birthing pool of nothingness, and that with all that in mind if they, your friend, want to make origami models then they should bloody well go and make origami models, haters be damned.

Right?

That is what I would say. That is what I truly believe. It would be easy.

And yet when we ourselves are beset by self-doubts over our own endeavours, when that negative voice in our heads is telling us it's all worthless, everything we do is pathetic, that we should give up -- why then do we find it so hard to be similarly kind to ourselves?

If you wouldn't let a stranger say it to your friend, don't let your own head say it to you. Disagree, argue, talk it down. You are deserving of love.

I'm trying to keep this in mind tonight. It's so tough, but I'm trying.