Things on my mind

Neighbours

I came home late one day this week from work. I went to the gym and did a long session and it was already dark as I came in. I saw two 'to let' signs on my neighbour's house. I felt a bit of a gut wrench - I'm not sure why. Something about my neighbous moving out upset me. A lot more of the houses here are lettings. I feel like the housing crisis of London is really weighing heavily on me, it's something that shits on me and I pretend it doesn't stain me.

The neighbours on this road have changed over the years. I'm not even that old, but I feel like so much changes that I dont recognise the world around me that's changed, and I don't recognise myself in the world that has changed.

I'm a bit slow today

Today I changed my routine. I normally spend saturdays getting up really early, going to the gym. After gym I have a long lunch and then hulk in bed and sleep until about 4-5pm as my brain and body feel completely fried.

I did something different. I decided to stay in. I have done a bit of house work today. I've felt a bit low and my back is in a lot of pain. I had a realisation just earlier. The realisation is: I've learned to try and accept things as they are and get on. It means giving up on my expectation of the perfect outcome.

I met an old uni friend this week, we were talking about another mutual friend who had some troubles in love.A girl was really into him but he didn't make a move even though he knew a relationship could have happened and she liked him back. Our friend didn't do anything because he was afraid of failure. I said during this discussion that he was afraid of succeeding too. Because it was so unfamiliar to him to be close to someone and to be in a relationship and to actually 'win' for once, he became inert to making a move. My friend then replied: that also counts as fear of failure, to not take part because of the fear of succeeding.

I was thrown by that comment and it's one of those things that I have been sitting on for a while.

I can relate a lot to the sense of inertness. I feel like things need to be a certain way for me to get things done. My desk is organised in a very specific manner and almost every item on my desk performs a function, if one of them were missing or moved, I'd feel very frustrated and I'd feel that I couldn't function.

My body feels very tired and my mind feels very slow. But I realise that some things that I've set myself to do are important that I need to get over myself and get over my body woes to get things done.

My old gym instructor (she's away on surgery) used to often say: we are always tired, it's called life.

Memories

Memories always have a place in my mind and way of thinking. Memories form such a big part of how I view the world - as I hve a very efficient memory and recall. I've been recoding some aspects of the past. I used to do Aikido. Back when I started this blog I was regularly doing Aikido, and then I did it less regularly, and then stopped.

I have lots of memories of going to aikido class on fridays, being in excruciating pain and getting fish and chips after class and feeling sweaty. I had a lot of trouble doing very ordinary house tasks like cleaning my clothes properly and cleaning the house.

I find keeping the house tidy a form of emotional labour. I can sort out subediting shifts and keep several departments at work in order in my professional life, yet the thought of vacuuming or tidying up the dust behind my desk fills me with a unique kind of fear. I dont know why that is.

Since working full time I've gone into a pattern of behaviour and living. I did this 3 month body transformation workout plan and my body has changed a bit. That ended at the start of April (I'm still working out by the way).

I am now thinking of trying a 10 week mens health 'beach body' transformation workout. Since I was quite satisfied with the results of my initial workout plan, I figure I'll try this one.

I have set up week one on my google drive. They consist of 5 workouts this week. They all look pretty small if I'm honest. One or two of them do frighten me, though, the pull ups scare me as I have very little upper body.

Today after work I decided to go to my desk and catch up on admin stuff. I always say to myself - I'll do it later, I'll do it when I have more energy. The realistic thing is - I don't have that time later and the time is now. I normally made a routine of going to bed, laying down on skype and half arsedly do some admin on my phone using google keep. Tonight I sat at my desk, set up the dual screen and grafted through som admin.

As it turns out, I didn't get everything done, but I got a good whack done. As its getting close to midnight I figured to myself: I'm only going to do two more things now, one of them is that I tidy my room (not done yet) and the other was to set up this workout plan.

I was thinking about planning the rest of my week on gcal/gkeep, but I will put that on the laterbase. Tidy room is a priority.

I think I'm different now. I was watching a documentary today, it was the latest Louis Theroux documentary on people who have experienced head injuries. One friend of mine who is a nurse comes into contact with people like this regularly. The thing that is often reported about folks who experience these kinds of injuries is that they are changed as people. I saw some really powerful changes in people in this documentary. The married couple especially was upsetting.

I think I'd like to end my post by writing 5 things I would like to be ambitious about achieving in the future:

• No more night terrors 
• Having more money
• Reading my book pile
• Getting my receipts processed
• Having more energy

Is it boring that I spend my blog focussing on how I find daily life challenging? I wish I could say cool intellectual stuff or talk about fanciful sexual adventures. I supopse none of those things can happen without a tidy room or proper administrative processes.

To past me (of 2006)

Hey you,

It's 2006, summer is coming. Exams are worrying you. Your cousin W is getting married, your sister just announced she's getting married too (but you don't know when) and another cousin is set to get married soon.

You have anxiety, but the depression has lifted temporarily. You are starting to make friends at uni and starting to find your tribe.

Unfortunately, you thought you saw the worst of it. That tribe eventually falls apart and they leave you. Your health does get better, but it gets worse first. You don't meet a girl for another year and a few months and by then you already went to a mental hospital and attempted suicide, plus you have anger issues that still affect me today.

What I want to say is: don't sweat some of the small stuff, or even the big stuff. Just keep being you.

You are going to make some mistakes along the way, some small, some big, some really big. Some are life changing to such a degree that I still regret them. But I am not writing to you about that.

You will not find much luck or fortune and life won't be fair. You will find a place, maybe for a while, not forever, but you do find places that you belong. Your pain and the shit that stuck on you makes you a pretty special person. You don't realise that now

You don't realise that you are also quite an attractive person inside. Eventually you become quite a sexy man (and its not just the hair). But don't worry about that, don't even look forward to it. What matters is who you are now and what you are aiming for. That is so important to who you are now, it became fundamentally important to who I am right now.

I know that you miss the past. You miss belonging somewhere, having a name and being someone recognisable and someone who felt special. You will learn that you can find those things in other aspects of your life.

20 things that have happened to me in recent months

Instead of an 'I'm sorry I haven't posted' post. I thought I'd list 20 things (an arbitrary number I came up with while thinking about this blog post while having a shit) that I've been through recently.

1. My brother got married
2. My contract at work got extended for a month, then...
3. My contract at work got extended for another 6 months
4. I did a 3 month mens health transformation programme and it did transform my fitness
5. I keep a regular (maybe strict) gym routine
6. I work full time now
7. For a year since June I was working as a syndication editor (really!)
8. Since the start of this month the syndication service got cut down significantly to just one day a week
9. Until the start of this month I was doing 3 jobs at the sentinel
10. Now I'm just doing two
11. I am earning a bit more money
12. This also means I have less personal time
13. ...less time to blog
14. ...less time for friends
15. ...less time for family (sadly)
16. I've got a to do list that is so long I dont know if I can actually do it all
17. I have less physical and mental energy after work
18. I also regularly go to the gym after work
19. I'm still doing badminton regularly
20. I have a big pile of books that I have swiped from work that I haven't read yet

I thought that would be hard to write. I was brimming with more things to write.

But maybe I should stick to the target of 20 and leave you guessing what I do with the rest of my life and energy.

TL;dr - I'm doing alright. I never thought I'd be in this kind of place in my life. But I still have my problems.