Home from a day with the Van-Shallows, playing videogames with Jake, nattering with Missy, getting my hand and jumper and zip and bag straps gnawed by Hagrid. The pup is splitting his time between chewing everything in sight and weeing on the floor at the moment; Jake and Missy looked tired.
We drank cups of tea, hung out in the front room around their drawings and baubles and trinkets, watched old episodes of Friends on Netflix.
We didn’t have anything exciting to say. Anything new to do. We sat and spent time. Missy went out to her GP appointment, came back, went to her play rehearsal, came back. Jake and I ate pizza and looked for a co-op game to play together on the Switch.
It was a nice day. I’m really struggling to stay on top of my mental health at the moment, but stay on top of it I think I am. It’s a beast that’s thrashing beneath me, inside me, and I’m trying to give it the room to thrash while not letting it take control. (I have a different analogy for mental health every day. That’s because it shifts forms every day. And because it’s a great shrouded thing that has to be approached from many angles to get even a loose idea of its shape, its heft.)
I had moments today when I felt like everything was empty of joy and worth. When I thought about how I’ve got so little vibrancy inside me to write with, to interact with friends with; that there’s nothing in my heart or in the wider world but habit, routine, and ash.
But those are only thoughts. Scary thoughts, but only thoughts. Not reality, but judgements about reality. Sometimes I think they’re true, and then later I see that they were nothing but shadowy spectres, dissolving in the light of awareness.
I’ve seen that before. So I allowed that that was a possibility today. "I feel that everything is broken, but that doesn’t mean that that is so."
And other moments, more moments, I played with the dog on the sofa, shot Rabbids on the Switch with Jake, laughed with Missy about Joey’s antics on Friends.
We drank more tea. The night swept in. Another day passed on Earth. Not the best day. Not the worst. But another that my negative thoughts did not win.
The brighter column is filling up.
Friday, 26 October 2018
Thursday, 25 October 2018
Day 180: Gloom
Loose in soft skinned motionless shadow the room bends and churns. Wind rattles the skylight’s frame’s bare pine. One bulb spills its soupy glow.
I sit in the gloom and play on videogames. My phone by my arm mumbles with notifications for work’s social media accounts, bought interactions calling into the void.
My desk: 47 pence in coins, a bar blade, a coffee mug, my camera, a LEGO dinosaur, keys, cotton wool pads, dust, drugs, empty space.
My mind: post-migraine syrupy emptiness, lethargy, an inability to feel content.
I can hear the housemates downstairs home from the cinema, I can hear the wind outside doing its thing. I should sleep soon. I shouldn’t stay up halfway through the night. Frosty spectral hours with pulsing screens and walled-in noise and in the stretched deep-lidded fatigue the voices stop. The anxiety stops. Too tired at 4am neck dropping in front of phone light to be depressed.
But this is not a solution. Not a way through. Only holding pain in stasis. Only getting comfortable at the bottom of a pit.
I shouldn’t stay up halfway through the night...
I sit in the gloom and play on videogames. My phone by my arm mumbles with notifications for work’s social media accounts, bought interactions calling into the void.
My desk: 47 pence in coins, a bar blade, a coffee mug, my camera, a LEGO dinosaur, keys, cotton wool pads, dust, drugs, empty space.
My mind: post-migraine syrupy emptiness, lethargy, an inability to feel content.
I can hear the housemates downstairs home from the cinema, I can hear the wind outside doing its thing. I should sleep soon. I shouldn’t stay up halfway through the night. Frosty spectral hours with pulsing screens and walled-in noise and in the stretched deep-lidded fatigue the voices stop. The anxiety stops. Too tired at 4am neck dropping in front of phone light to be depressed.
But this is not a solution. Not a way through. Only holding pain in stasis. Only getting comfortable at the bottom of a pit.
I shouldn’t stay up halfway through the night...
Wednesday, 24 October 2018
Day 179: Who???
Dear The Liberal BBC,
I have been watching the opening episode of the latest series of your popular family science-fiction fantasy programme Doctor Who, and I wanted to write to you to tell you how disgusted I am.
I am very disgusted. I am very disgusted indeed.
I consider myself a reasonable man. A cultured man. But this episode has made me sick to my stomach. Beside myself with fury. Chewing on my knees with chagrin.
How dare you? I ask. Do you not understand that tradition holds value? That things mean what they mean, and to trample that in some rushed pursuit of the "youth" demographic is to laugh in the face of everything that our society, nay, our United Kingdom, holds dear.
I keep hearing that it's not a big deal. That's what they keep saying to me on buses, in Greggs, outside the library where I'm stopping people in the street to tell them. They say I'm overreacting. But where will it end? That's what I want to know.
I'm just a humble man, I suppose, who thinks that some values are worth fighting for - because once you let this slip it won't be long before hardworking folk like myself have nothing.
It's "Hathersage." "Hah-the-sidge". Not "Hath-er-sage."
Nothing clues a Sheffield audience in to the fact that you've hired actors from London for your Sheffield-based series and told them to put on a northern accent like filming them mispronouncing the word "Hathersage" (during a scene on a train that looked suspiciously like a London train, might I add!).
And I'm pretty sure the same woman called Grindleford "Grinford". It's not a fanciful imaginary place, you know? It's where we go for our chip butties from famously cantankerous cafe owners after walking the dog down Padley Gorge, I think you'll find. This stuff matters to us.
Now, I liked the rest of the episode. I thought Jodie Whittaker made for a fabulous Doctor, full of humour and humanity and vivacity and heart, and by the end of the episode she completely and comfortably embodied the role. But unless something changes to make your overpaid television executives start taking my fair city and the names of its village environs seriously, I'm afraid to say I shall not be watching your channel any further.
Sort it out!
Yours,
A Disgruntled Yorkshireman
I have been watching the opening episode of the latest series of your popular family science-fiction fantasy programme Doctor Who, and I wanted to write to you to tell you how disgusted I am.
I am very disgusted. I am very disgusted indeed.
I consider myself a reasonable man. A cultured man. But this episode has made me sick to my stomach. Beside myself with fury. Chewing on my knees with chagrin.
How dare you? I ask. Do you not understand that tradition holds value? That things mean what they mean, and to trample that in some rushed pursuit of the "youth" demographic is to laugh in the face of everything that our society, nay, our United Kingdom, holds dear.
I keep hearing that it's not a big deal. That's what they keep saying to me on buses, in Greggs, outside the library where I'm stopping people in the street to tell them. They say I'm overreacting. But where will it end? That's what I want to know.
I'm just a humble man, I suppose, who thinks that some values are worth fighting for - because once you let this slip it won't be long before hardworking folk like myself have nothing.
It's "Hathersage." "Hah-the-sidge". Not "Hath-er-sage."
Nothing clues a Sheffield audience in to the fact that you've hired actors from London for your Sheffield-based series and told them to put on a northern accent like filming them mispronouncing the word "Hathersage" (during a scene on a train that looked suspiciously like a London train, might I add!).
And I'm pretty sure the same woman called Grindleford "Grinford". It's not a fanciful imaginary place, you know? It's where we go for our chip butties from famously cantankerous cafe owners after walking the dog down Padley Gorge, I think you'll find. This stuff matters to us.
Now, I liked the rest of the episode. I thought Jodie Whittaker made for a fabulous Doctor, full of humour and humanity and vivacity and heart, and by the end of the episode she completely and comfortably embodied the role. But unless something changes to make your overpaid television executives start taking my fair city and the names of its village environs seriously, I'm afraid to say I shall not be watching your channel any further.
Sort it out!
Yours,
A Disgruntled Yorkshireman
Monday, 22 October 2018
Day 178: Who taught you meteorology?
“Thunder only happens when it’s raining,” sings Stevie Nicks in Fleetwood Mac’s inimitable 1977 hit Dreams. But the truth is that thunder does not only happen when it’s raining. That is not how thunder works, Stevie Nicks! In actual fact dry thunderstorms are a major cause of wildfires in the American Southwest, occuring when mid and upper level moisture, drawn into the region from the subtropics, forms convection currents in the intense summer heat, producing cloud to cloud and cloud to ground lightning! At least according to the /askscience Reddit, which I trust a damned sight more than a band whose most famous work is the hearsay and conjecture filled album Rumours.
A trifling mistake, though, you say? Well it turns out that the more you look, the more you find that popular music is riddled with such factual inaccuracies, spurious and oftentimes slanderous statements furthered by irresponsible artists lost in the avaricious pursuit of poetry and rhyme. Here are the first ten examples I found. You don’t want to know how deep this rabbit hole leads…
1. “The change has come, she’s under my thumb...” - Under My Thumb, The Rolling Stones - Now, people can’t fit under other people’s thumbs, even when the thumbs belong to that famously beef-handed cockerel-man Mick Jagger. Unless there exists a race of faerie folk that Jagger has been keeping locked in mason jars in his garage, trading crusts of bread and another day’s supply of oxygen for spoonfuls of the creatures’ magic dust, which the preening septuagenarian imbibes to provide him with the requisite energy to continue his campaign of printing red lips on pieces of tat and selling them at disproportionately marked-up prices as an alternative to writing any good music since 1978. Is that what you’re telling us, Mick Jagger? Is it?
2. “We could be married, and then we’d be happy…” - Wouldn’t it Be Nice, The Beach Boys - No, The Beach Boys. No, it wouldn’t be nice. You would not “hold each other close the whole night through.” You would lie in bed pretending to read on your Kindle while actually seething with fury about how your wife undercut the punchline to your story at dinner with the McCallisters earlier in the evening, screeching in that moronic tone of hers, “No you didn’t! You only thought of that in the car later!” without even a basic grasp of the demands of storytelling and entertaining a crowd. Meanwhile, your wife would pretend to be reading on her phone, while actually scanning the Instagram feed of the bloke from her office who regularly works out (your three press-ups once a month don’t count) and holds her gaze in the coffee room in a way that makes her feel like an object of more allure than the comfy yet de-elasticated winter socks you've started picturing when you think of her face. And then you both turn away from one another and fall into another lonely, dissatisfied slumber. Because that’s what marriage is, isn’t it?
3. “I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song, I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long…” - A New England, Billy Bragg - Billy. I'm a big fan. But are you telling me you took a break of a year between writing the first and second lines of this breakout hit? I like the lines and all, they’re good lines, but it’s no wonder you’ve never achieved the heights of pop success with a productivity rate like that. Get the content out, Billy, or YouTube's algorithm is going to eat you alive.
4. “There are nine-million bicycles in Beijing, that’s a fact…” - Nine Million Bicycles, Katie Melua - Katie. Katie, Katie, Katie. I love you. I love your mellifluous name. I love how unperturbed you look about being dragged by your ankles away from a quiet picnic with your lover and across the entirety of the globe. But no one knows how many bicycles there are in Beijing. Do us all a favour and admit that your song is fake news. This declamation as unquestionable certainty of something about which we can at best only hazard a loose guess is precisely the kind of irresponsible songwriting that I’m talking about. You’re paving the way for Trump and the return of fascism, Katie Melua. I hope you know that.
5. “What’s my age again, what’s my age again?” - What’s My Age Again?, Blink 182 - I mean, you say your age is 23, right there in the song. But those Dickie’s board shorts and primary-coloured sweat bands aren’t fooling anyone, Mark Hoppus. You’re the oldest man alive. You’re even older than Mick Jagger. You’re even older than Tom Delonge, whose head is staying the same size while his face gradually shrinks into nothing. Even in 1999 you were old. Now it’s just pathetic. Put on an M&S sweater and learn how to do cryptic crosswords and let it go. You'll feel so much better.
6. “Played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of ‘69…” Summer of ‘69, Bryan Adams - In these lyrics Canada’s answer to Ryan Adams, Bryan Adams, claims to buy an electric guitar, learn to play, form a band, hang out at the drive-in, and fall in love, all in the summer of 1969. But during the summer of 1969 Bryan Adams was nine years old. Now, I’m not saying that one of his bandmates didn’t quit the band, while the other got married - I’m just questioning Ottawa’s matrimony laws that led to a primary school child making it to the altar.
7. “Well I stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand…” Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Jimi Hendrix - That didn’t happen, Jimi. You took some bad acid and rolled your trousers down to your socks and squirmed on the grass shouting “Earthworm Jim doesn’t need his spacesuit to have a good time”. It was embarrassing for all of us, and we try not to talk about it. Please stop bringing it up.
8. “You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on… You don’t have to be rich to be my girl…” - Kiss, Prince - The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince was romantically linked with many women over his lifetime, including Madonna, Kim Basinger, Carmen Electra, and a sixteen-year-old dancer to whom he became a guardian until she turned nineteen, at which point he put her on birth control and threw her in the sack. All of these women were either beautiful, rich, or both. Words are easy, Prince. We can all say things. It's your actions that count.
9. “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” - Ironic, Alanis Morissette - Anyone who thinks rain on your wedding day is ironic has obviously never spent much time in the UK over the summer months. “Isn’t it a depressing inevitability?” more like.
10. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear…” This Charming Man, The Smiths - No you wouldn’t, Morrissey. Who do you think you’re kidding? Fresh wardrobe or no, you’d stay in your room and eat four bags from a six-bag multipack of Lidl-brand pickled onion “Monster Claws”, scroll way further than the acceptable amount down the Facebook photos of that girl you used to work with, and write in your journal about how you’re not racist but you just reckon that all Chinese people have weirdly malicious eyes. The same as you do every night, Morrissey. We’ve got your number.
A trifling mistake, though, you say? Well it turns out that the more you look, the more you find that popular music is riddled with such factual inaccuracies, spurious and oftentimes slanderous statements furthered by irresponsible artists lost in the avaricious pursuit of poetry and rhyme. Here are the first ten examples I found. You don’t want to know how deep this rabbit hole leads…
1. “The change has come, she’s under my thumb...” - Under My Thumb, The Rolling Stones - Now, people can’t fit under other people’s thumbs, even when the thumbs belong to that famously beef-handed cockerel-man Mick Jagger. Unless there exists a race of faerie folk that Jagger has been keeping locked in mason jars in his garage, trading crusts of bread and another day’s supply of oxygen for spoonfuls of the creatures’ magic dust, which the preening septuagenarian imbibes to provide him with the requisite energy to continue his campaign of printing red lips on pieces of tat and selling them at disproportionately marked-up prices as an alternative to writing any good music since 1978. Is that what you’re telling us, Mick Jagger? Is it?
2. “We could be married, and then we’d be happy…” - Wouldn’t it Be Nice, The Beach Boys - No, The Beach Boys. No, it wouldn’t be nice. You would not “hold each other close the whole night through.” You would lie in bed pretending to read on your Kindle while actually seething with fury about how your wife undercut the punchline to your story at dinner with the McCallisters earlier in the evening, screeching in that moronic tone of hers, “No you didn’t! You only thought of that in the car later!” without even a basic grasp of the demands of storytelling and entertaining a crowd. Meanwhile, your wife would pretend to be reading on her phone, while actually scanning the Instagram feed of the bloke from her office who regularly works out (your three press-ups once a month don’t count) and holds her gaze in the coffee room in a way that makes her feel like an object of more allure than the comfy yet de-elasticated winter socks you've started picturing when you think of her face. And then you both turn away from one another and fall into another lonely, dissatisfied slumber. Because that’s what marriage is, isn’t it?
3. “I was twenty-one years when I wrote this song, I’m twenty-two now, but I won’t be for long…” - A New England, Billy Bragg - Billy. I'm a big fan. But are you telling me you took a break of a year between writing the first and second lines of this breakout hit? I like the lines and all, they’re good lines, but it’s no wonder you’ve never achieved the heights of pop success with a productivity rate like that. Get the content out, Billy, or YouTube's algorithm is going to eat you alive.
4. “There are nine-million bicycles in Beijing, that’s a fact…” - Nine Million Bicycles, Katie Melua - Katie. Katie, Katie, Katie. I love you. I love your mellifluous name. I love how unperturbed you look about being dragged by your ankles away from a quiet picnic with your lover and across the entirety of the globe. But no one knows how many bicycles there are in Beijing. Do us all a favour and admit that your song is fake news. This declamation as unquestionable certainty of something about which we can at best only hazard a loose guess is precisely the kind of irresponsible songwriting that I’m talking about. You’re paving the way for Trump and the return of fascism, Katie Melua. I hope you know that.
5. “What’s my age again, what’s my age again?” - What’s My Age Again?, Blink 182 - I mean, you say your age is 23, right there in the song. But those Dickie’s board shorts and primary-coloured sweat bands aren’t fooling anyone, Mark Hoppus. You’re the oldest man alive. You’re even older than Mick Jagger. You’re even older than Tom Delonge, whose head is staying the same size while his face gradually shrinks into nothing. Even in 1999 you were old. Now it’s just pathetic. Put on an M&S sweater and learn how to do cryptic crosswords and let it go. You'll feel so much better.
6. “Played it till my fingers bled, was the summer of ‘69…” Summer of ‘69, Bryan Adams - In these lyrics Canada’s answer to Ryan Adams, Bryan Adams, claims to buy an electric guitar, learn to play, form a band, hang out at the drive-in, and fall in love, all in the summer of 1969. But during the summer of 1969 Bryan Adams was nine years old. Now, I’m not saying that one of his bandmates didn’t quit the band, while the other got married - I’m just questioning Ottawa’s matrimony laws that led to a primary school child making it to the altar.
7. “Well I stand up next to a mountain, and I chop it down with the edge of my hand…” Voodoo Child (Slight Return), Jimi Hendrix - That didn’t happen, Jimi. You took some bad acid and rolled your trousers down to your socks and squirmed on the grass shouting “Earthworm Jim doesn’t need his spacesuit to have a good time”. It was embarrassing for all of us, and we try not to talk about it. Please stop bringing it up.
8. “You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on… You don’t have to be rich to be my girl…” - Kiss, Prince - The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince was romantically linked with many women over his lifetime, including Madonna, Kim Basinger, Carmen Electra, and a sixteen-year-old dancer to whom he became a guardian until she turned nineteen, at which point he put her on birth control and threw her in the sack. All of these women were either beautiful, rich, or both. Words are easy, Prince. We can all say things. It's your actions that count.
9. “Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think?” - Ironic, Alanis Morissette - Anyone who thinks rain on your wedding day is ironic has obviously never spent much time in the UK over the summer months. “Isn’t it a depressing inevitability?” more like.
10. “I would go out tonight, but I haven’t got a stitch to wear…” This Charming Man, The Smiths - No you wouldn’t, Morrissey. Who do you think you’re kidding? Fresh wardrobe or no, you’d stay in your room and eat four bags from a six-bag multipack of Lidl-brand pickled onion “Monster Claws”, scroll way further than the acceptable amount down the Facebook photos of that girl you used to work with, and write in your journal about how you’re not racist but you just reckon that all Chinese people have weirdly malicious eyes. The same as you do every night, Morrissey. We’ve got your number.
Day 177: Windscreen
It's past midnight. I've been asleep. I got in from work, turned my computer on, then passed out. It was 10pm when I awoke, lost and lonely, knowing I needed to eat. I cooked a pizza and ate in front of YouTube, my plate lit by the glowing screen.
But if you’ve got faulty windscreen wipers then the dirt starts to accumulate. This dirt isn’t necessarily worse than for anyone else - although the windscreen wipers may have initially been damaged by too much dirt early on (in fact this is the number one cause).
So depressed people have to reach out of the window continuously and rub off the dirt. It’s difficult to reach. It’s cold. It’s hard work. You clear the windscreen and almost immediately it needs clearing again. You look at those other cars and they seem to function so effortlessly. And nothing for you happens easily. It’s all a slog.
It’s exhausting. And here’s where I’m at now. You’re working long hours, you’re trying to do as much as possible (less than most people, a lot for what you’re used to), and it’s so hard to find the energy to reach out and clear that windscreen of the dirt. So you drive along in the gloom behind a filthy pane of glass, and everything you see is clouded, murky, undefined. You go slowly, in low gear, gripping the wheel, and still objects loom from the fog, and you have to swerve to miss them.
All your attention goes on just staying on the road, and it’s even harder to find the energy to reach all the way up and outside and scrub the windscreen of that ingrained muck (knowing if you do it’ll just be back soon anyway). So you resign yourself instead to just coping like this.
Eating oven pizzas. Dozing in front of YouTube videos. Sleepwalking through work.
And of course without forcing yourself to clean that windscreen the dirt only gets worse. The view out darker, lonelier, any beauty impossible to see. And so it’s even more effort to simply stay on the road. And even harder to clean the windscreen. And the dirt gets worse…
So I guess it’s good at least that I recognise this? Good to be aware of myself on these terms.
The writing helps, sometimes a lot, sometimes only a little, but it is building structure and routine. Many days (most) it’s not a full wipe of the windscreen, but it’s at least bringing my awareness to the glass, checking in with myself, remembering where I keep the cloths and soap.
I just need to stay the course. Keep turning up. And be aware that this is not an easy ride. This is not a nice thing to go through. It's no surprise I don't achieve as much as some people, that I'm tired absolutely all the time. But others have it far worse, and in a trillion ways I'm lucky, getting to drive this vehicle of being through life.
So a reminder: go at the pace I need, relax the fingers on the wheel, keep cleaning that glass.
Sunday, 21 October 2018
Day 176: Howling
In bed. Home from a ten hour Saturday shift of three deep at the bar, monstrous crowds jostling, reaching for you, yelling at you, clawing, pawing, cackling, howling. Pour and serve and note and till drawer and change and thank. Pour and serve and note and till drawer and change and thank. Pop a bottle. Empty mint leaves from the sink. Pour and serve. Scan fifty people and work out who is next. Have forty nine people screech at you that they've been waiting longer. Correct staff mistakes. Float the tills. Wash glasses. Pour and serve and change and thank. Cut fruit. Run upstairs to connect a new barrel. Run downstairs and grab glasses on the way. Have men in identical shirts and bald heads yell orders at you while you head back to finish pouring your pint. Want to scream at them all to fucking die. Pour and serve and change and thank. Pour and serve and change and thank. Pour and serve and change and thank. Pour and serve and change and thank. Serve two groups at once. Pour three pints at once. Clear glasses from the front bar while filling the Pepsi. Pour an extra cider because you hear your colleague needing one. Wipe the bar top while the cider fills. Cash off your order with one hand. It's never enough. More and more and more and more. Screaming cacophony. Everyone taking from you. Stemming the tide. Standing in the breach. Slack jawed blurry eyed sallow skinned complacent slabs of meat spitting orders at you. Uhh excuse me. This San Miguel is flat as a fart. I'm not drinking this. Swallowing down the anger, breathing slowly out. No worries, let me sort that for you. Uhh I saw that you just poured it into a new glass. I wanted a fresh drink. Swallow down the anger. It just needed refreshing. It had been served in the wrong glass is all (by an exhausted inexperienced staff member, because every lager glass in the building was being used). It should be fine now, but I'll be happy to do a fresh one if it is flat. Well, we'll see. Huffs and head into the crowd. There goes one of the richest most lucky, what, 10% of people on the planet, middle class and white and English, drinking freely on a Saturday night, and just so very thrilled to be alive. Ten, fifty, a thousand more like him. Who's next? Pour and serve and change and thank.
Limp home and collapse in the dark and body gone but mind still keyed into that bar zone, can't turn it off. Falling asleep and wake with a jolt, realising you haven't finished the Tuborg, you need to reach for a gin globe. Then realising you're in bed. Drifting off, then jolt awake, you need to pass the change back. No, you're in bed. Drift, and jolt. Over and over. Mental torture, while muscles yowl in fatigued pain.
And back tomorrow for Sunday morning shift, brain mushed like roadkill. But at least now, for a few brief moments, there is only silence, and the empty whiteness of the page.
Limp home and collapse in the dark and body gone but mind still keyed into that bar zone, can't turn it off. Falling asleep and wake with a jolt, realising you haven't finished the Tuborg, you need to reach for a gin globe. Then realising you're in bed. Drifting off, then jolt awake, you need to pass the change back. No, you're in bed. Drift, and jolt. Over and over. Mental torture, while muscles yowl in fatigued pain.
And back tomorrow for Sunday morning shift, brain mushed like roadkill. But at least now, for a few brief moments, there is only silence, and the empty whiteness of the page.
Saturday, 20 October 2018
Day 175: Recuperation
Quiet day of housekeeping, of cleaning, of recuperation and regaining lost energy. Took apart my PC and blew the dust from the insides with a can of compressed air. Did the same with my keyboard, then cleaned the outsides with damp cotton wool pads. Edited photos for social media for work. Put clothes to wash. Bought drain unblocker from the shops, poured it down the drain in my shower. Hung out clothes. Hoovered the floor.
Been feeling low - my mental health is a step forwards, a step back at the moment. I have a day feeling better by a few degrees, then the next day I feel worse again. It’s like I’m trapped in limbo. Like nothing really changes. Yet it is changing slowly. Steps forwards and steps back, so I seem to be getting nowhere - but over the months I am shuffling forwards. I can’t sense the movement, but, like the growth of fingernails, like the rising of mountains, it is happening.
Some things can’t be seen, yet are there nonetheless. Trust in the process. Keep on not drinking. Do the writing. Gradually the landscape will change.
Going to get an earlier night tonight, I can feel a cold coming on and want to be rested for work tomorrow. At least I’ve got plenty of clean clothes, a tidy bedroom, breakfast for the morning in the cupboards. I’m not soaring right now, but I’m doing OK.
Been feeling low - my mental health is a step forwards, a step back at the moment. I have a day feeling better by a few degrees, then the next day I feel worse again. It’s like I’m trapped in limbo. Like nothing really changes. Yet it is changing slowly. Steps forwards and steps back, so I seem to be getting nowhere - but over the months I am shuffling forwards. I can’t sense the movement, but, like the growth of fingernails, like the rising of mountains, it is happening.
Some things can’t be seen, yet are there nonetheless. Trust in the process. Keep on not drinking. Do the writing. Gradually the landscape will change.
Going to get an earlier night tonight, I can feel a cold coming on and want to be rested for work tomorrow. At least I’ve got plenty of clean clothes, a tidy bedroom, breakfast for the morning in the cupboards. I’m not soaring right now, but I’m doing OK.
Sometimes that’s enough.
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