2101: Things I Couldn't Do

I lost another three and a half pounds this week, bringing my total weight loss since the very end of January this year to five stone and six pounds — nearly five and a half stone. I may not be the sort of person who is particularly good at showing genuine-seeming excitement when speaking in person, but believe me, I'm pretty much ecstatic about this — though I have no intention of stopping here, as the initial "target" I set is still a little way off.

Back when I decided to start losing weight with Slimming World at the end of January, I was just under 23 stone. That is, quite obviously, Too Heavy. I'd always been aware I was overweight — particularly when arseholes in the street would make some off-colour fat joke in my direction — but towards the start of the year, I'd started to become somewhat conscious that more than just being roly-poly and jolly, things might actually have started becoming a bit of a problem.

I could tell this in a number of ways. Firstly and most obviously was the fact that I was terrified to know my actual weight. I wouldn't get on scales, I wouldn't even contemplate it. I just knew that I was too heavy, and I wouldn't tell anyone even what I thought I weighed. The most difficult part of attending my first Slimming World meeting was knowing that I'd find out exactly how much I weighed — and, to be perfectly honest, it was actually a little worse than I thought it was, since I'd silently estimated myself around the 20 stone mark for a while.

Secondly, I was extremely uncomfortable all the time. The chairs I sat in at the job I was working at at the time felt like they were too small for me, but I stubbornly refused to order a "special chair" like the one provided for the resident fat bloke in our department — who was considerably larger than me, even — because that felt humiliating. I was terrified of the prospect of going abroad ever again, because I didn't want to be one of the people who had to ask for a seat belt extension — that felt like it would be humiliating too. And I was still carrying around painful memories of the time Andie took me to Alton Towers for what should have been a really nice weekend — and was, for the most part — but which had at least part of it that felt utterly mortifying.

Thirdly, and somewhat related to the Alton Towers story, there were things that I felt like I simply couldn't do any more. I didn't go along to a significant part of a close friend's stag weekend because it involved doing stuff at Go Ape and riding Segways, and a bit of research beforehand indicated that I would probably be too heavy for both of those things. So instead I just joined the group for the evening's activities. I didn't feel like I could climb a ladder because I was scared it would break; I didn't feel I could even do basic do-it-yourself around the house that involved using a stepladder because there was a prominent notice on it indicating a maximum recommended weight that was significantly below what I actually weighed; I didn't feel safe standing on anything that was off the ground, in fact, even if it was quite obviously designed to hold up things considerably heavier than one miserable, overweight thirtysomething.

In short, I was utterly miserable, and I knew it was my own fault for not taking better care of myself. I'd eat crap day in, day out, kidding myself that I wasn't having much junk, just an occasional treat; I'd deal with emotional episodes by eating because I felt like I "deserved" something nice; sometimes I'd just eat because I was bored, and I felt like eating something sweet might relieve that boredom.

I knew all these things before I started Slimming World. What I wasn't prepared for was how surprisingly easy it ended up being to change those habits — and what an immediate impact it would have on both my physical and mental wellbeing. I lost eight pounds in my first week on the programme, and have seen fairly consistent losses (albeit somewhat smaller ones!) ever since. I feel happier and more confident in myself; I don't feel ashamed when I see myself in the mirror any more — sometimes I actually quite like what I see, as narcissistic as that might sound — and while I'm still uneasy to do some things such as climbing ladders, I know that even if I'm still not quite 100% at a stage where I can live life "normally", I am on the right track and that I will get there eventually, at least so far as my physical wellbeing goes. My mental health is, of course, another matter, but that's a whole other set of things to deal with that I'm not sure how to even start tackling just yet.

I've found myself thinking about the future a bit since seeing my progress. Not in a particularly grand way or anything — just thinking about the things that I wouldn't have been able to do at the start of this year (such as those mentioned above) that I would be able to now. Andie and I are having a belated "honeymoon" at Center Parcs at the very end of November, for example, and I know that everything about that holiday is going to be much more comfortable and enjoyable for me than the last time we went. (Not that I didn't enjoy last time, mind you; it was just physically exhausting to lug myself around.)

And I feel like it would be something of a symbolic "victory" for me if, once I reach my target (or perhaps even go beyond it if I feel like I want to go further), I return to Alton Towers and comfortably hop onto all the rides that I simply wasn't able to physically fit onto the last time I went. I don't feel I'm quite ready for that just yet, but it won't be that long now if I carry on at the rate I'm going. And that's a good feeling; there are many things in life that it's impossible to "take back", but thankfully the mistakes I've made with my body and my habits don't appear to be counted in that category.

2094: The New School

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "The New School."

"You get to redesign school as we know it from the ground up. Will you do away with reading, writing, and arithmetic? What skills and knowledge will your school focus on imparting to young minds?"

As longtime readers (and actual friends) will know, I used to be a teacher — initially in secondary schools and later in primary schools. In the first instance, suffering a massive stress and depression-induced nervous breakdown caused me to abandon that particular career path; in the second instance, recognising the telltale signs of Something Bad About To Happen In My Brain caused me to get out before it happened again. I still do some private music teaching, but my classroom days are well and truly over.

Thing is, my woes in the classroom weren't because I was a bad teacher. In fact, I was actually a pretty good teacher, as observations of my practice will attest. The trouble is that the way schools are in the UK today — or, at least, as they were when I was teaching back in the early years of the new millennium up until about 2010 or so — aren't particularly conducive to effective teaching by people like me who know their stuff about a variety of topics, but who aren't necessarily particularly strong on the whole "behaviour management" side of things. And unfortunately, the overall standard of behaviour in modern schools has significantly declined since I was a student myself; teachers no longer command respect and authority simply by virtue of the fact that they are teachers, and many students are able to get away with appalling behaviour, often with a ready-made "special educational needs" excuse ready to go as soon as you might want to do anything about it.

So what would a completely redesigned, money-is-no-object, Utopian school look like in my mind? Well, let's consider a number of different areas.

Firstly, I think it's important to take ability levels into account: there should be specialist teachers for different strata of ability in different subjects as well as just subject specialists. The reason I say this is that there are some teachers who are particularly adept at handling pupils who struggle to take in or retain information, and others who are particularly strong at pushing the more talented children as far as they can possibly go. Mixing both of these types of pupil in the classroom along with a bunch more who are somewhere around the middle is not conducive to good learning; the requirement to provide "differentiated" lesson plans is largely a product of the way schools work these days rather than a particularly effective, proven method of getting things done. This is particularly apparent in primary school, where classes tend to stay together for all their subjects, with one teacher expected to effectively deliver three or four different lessons simultaneously in order to cater to each of the ability groups.

When handling ability groups, however, it is, of course, important to have a little tact and sensitivity about the whole thing: there should not be a stigma attached to being in a particular group. This is something I'm not entirely sure could be prevented entirely: even if you make a specific effort to obscure the fact that groups are based on ability levels, kids, in my experience, tend to know when they're in the "top" or "bottom" sets for something. An alternative, more radical approach, of course, would be to make schools themselves more selective, with entire educational establishments specifically catering to "challenging", "gifted" or "average" students. That way the entire school can be set up to support all its pupils most effectively.

Yet another angle you can take on this is that modern youth's perception of academic success and suchlike needs to be repositioned. For many years now, it's not been particularly "cool" to perform well in school; an effective new way of thinking about school would incentivise good performance — or at least progress — to encourage all pupils to push themselves that little bit further. The con to this sort of idea, of course, is that it engenders elitism; those students who know that they are at the top of the ladder may become complacent, and this may lead to conflict. This is why I'd lean towards my earlier idea of stratifying entire educational establishments: that way, the attainment level across an entire establishment is fairly "flat" and thus all but eliminates these conflicts — though also an element of healthy competition.

Alongside questions of ability levels is the matter of the dreaded "league tables" — those facts and figures that come out each year and reduce each school down to the number of A-C grades they get at GCSE and/or A-level time. The trouble with league tables is that while they demonstrate a school's ability to prepare pupils for exams, they don't demonstrate other aspects of education such as preparation for later life and learning skills. They also don't take into account how much individual pupils improve between joining and leaving a school, which, in many ways, is a far more relevant metric than just the end results of each cohort's exams. League tables as they are, then, need to be scrapped altogether in favour of something that paints a more realistic picture of how schools are performing — and which doesn't encourage schools to be seen as "better" or "worse" based purely on a rather arbitrary number.

Now, the biggie for me would be the matter of behaviour. As I mentioned earlier, behaviour management was not one of my strong points, and this was largely because I didn't feel like I was particularly well-equipped to deal with a lot of situations that came my way. How do you handle a child who threatens to knife you because you asked them to stop talking, for example? A child who continues to beat up his peers because his parents told him it was all right to do so (and whose parents repeat this advice to you at a Parents' Evening)? A child who shows fundamental disrespect for other people's property, even when taking good care of that property would allow them to have a more enjoyable experience at school? As modern education stands, there is really very little that most teachers can do against poor behaviour; it mostly comes down to psychological tricks of various degrees: convincing children that they "want" to behave well; incentivising good behaviour; leading by example.

Balls to all that, I say; teachers need the power to punish. I'm not (necessarily) talking about corporal punishment — though I got smacked as a kid and sure as hell didn't do the things that got me a smack again after the first time — but rather a wider range of tools and support that teachers can use to keep their classrooms under control. Whether this is additional people in the classroom to help out or stronger powers to impose sanctions on poorly behaved children, I'm not entirely sure; what does need to happen, though, is that pupils need to know their place and to show the appropriate amount of respect, both to authority figures and to their peers. This, I think, would be the most challenging part of redesigning schools, but would probably have the biggest impact if done correctly.

Other ideas I've had floating around my head include some means of "gamifying" the classroom. Rewards of various kinds have been proven to provide a good incentive for kids to perform and behave well, but there's not much in the way of consistency with how these are applied between educational establishments. So how about some sort of nationwide reward scheme, administered electronically with its information stored on the Internet? There could be leaderboards and achievements, just like a video game, and these could run the gamut of the school life experience from academia to sports, thereby allowing all students to clearly see where their strengths are and have their achievements celebrated. Were money no object, these could even translate into some form of real-life rewards to encourage healthy competition or striving for clearly-defined goals.

These are all nice dreams, but unfortunately all of them would doubtless be impractical to implement in one way or another. Shame, really, since if many of these were in place, I'd strongly consider returning to the classroom. As it stands, though, I value what is left of my sanity too much to ever stand at the chalkface ever again.

2091: Singular Sensation

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Singular Sensation."

"If one experience or life change results from you writing your blog, what would you like it to be?"

I've talked about how this blog is helpful to me personally on a number of occasions in the past. It's an outlet, mostly, albeit one I've chosen to make public as a means of sharing "who I am" with the rest of the world. You may like what I say, you may hate it, you may judge me harshly or you may empathise with the things I'm saying, but you can be certain that everything I write here is the honest truth at all times, warts and all.

And, to be honest, I've already had experiences and life-changing results from writing this blog, though I didn't necessarily know what effect I was having at the time. My particularly tough year back in 2010 is something I keep coming back to, but I don't mind admitting that sitting down and getting some thoughts down on "paper" on this very site each day helped me through the worst of a terrible situation. It didn't immediately resolve anything, but it at least gave me the chance to feel like I was able to express the many, many conflicting feelings swirling around in my head at the time.

And this is something I still keep in mind when I write something here every day now. I write from the heart, without particularly planning things out or attempting to compose something with good structure; instead, this is a scratch pad for random thoughts, a place to jot down memories so I don't forget them, a place to enthuse about the things I love and a place to rant about the things I hate. I do try not to stick to the same topic all the time, but you know what people are like — everyone likes what they like, so even with the best of intentions, I know that I inevitably find myself drifting back towards the things I enjoy writing about the most.

Actually, my occasional adoption of these writing prompts from The Daily Post is an attempt to mix things up a bit; the prompts aren't always particularly appealing or relevant to me, but when they are, they can providing a good starting point for something to write about. Plus I've found that posting a pingback to The Daily Post via the link at the top of one of these posts brings in some new people who perhaps wouldn't have found me normally. Sometimes those people stick around; at other times, they may linger for just one or two posts before disappearing into the darkness of the Internet once again. Either way, it's nice to come across new people now and again, and know that I've touched their lives, even in a minor sort of way.

So, then, I don't think I have any particular grand plans for something I want to achieve using this blog. By this point, it's something I just keep around because I've been doing it for so long — and, well, I kind of enjoy coming up with something to write about each day, too. It's part of my routine now; so much so that whenever I'm away from home I always make sure I have some means of posting while I'm away. After 2,091, it's a hard habit to break — and I don't particularly want to, either.

So whether you're a longtime reader or someone who's just dropped by after seeing a pingback on The Daily Post, thank you, once again, for listening to my nonsense, and I hope you got something out of it, even it was just the hint of a smile for whatever reason.

2089: Connect the Dots

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Connect the Dots."

"Scour the news for an entirely uninteresting story. Consider how it connects to your life. Write about that."

When looking for "entirely uninteresting stories", your first port of call should almost certainly be your local newspaper. Sure enough, the Daily Echo didn't disappoint with this marvel:

BREAKING: City bridge closed due to 'police incident'

A SOUTHAMPTON bridge was closed this evening due to a 'police incident'.

The Itchen Bridge was shut at around 6.30pm but the exact nature of the incident is unknown.

And the bridge was quickly reopened at 6.40pm.

This is currently the top story on the Daily Echo website, which probably gives you an idea of the sorts of things that get posted on there. But let's ponder the actual question from the daily post: how this connects to my life in some way.

Well, okay. This is actually quite an easy one in many ways. The most obvious connection, of course, is that I live in Southampton, and consequently I know where the Itchen Bridge is. But the connection actually runs a little deeper than that: about five or six years ago, I used to live very near the Itchen Bridge in the town centre. The bridge itself was within walking distance, only about five minutes or so away. This didn't really have much of an impact on my life for the most part, as I tended to find other ways to cross the river owing to the toll gates at the other side of the Itchen Bridge. But during my oft-mentioned "difficult period" in my life — the time my first wife left and my life pretty much fell apart — the bridge became somewhere that I liked to occasionally head towards in order to just stand and reflect.

I don't think I ever seriously considered jumping off the bridge, though with my mental state at the time I won't lie to you: I certainly thought about it more than once or twice. Ultimately I knew that I'd never actually have the courage to do it, though, for all manner of reasons: firstly, part of me, despite being deeper in a pit of misery than I'd ever been in my whole life, I didn't really want to die; secondly, even contemplating that sort of thing made me feel guilty about the people I'd leave behind; thirdly, the idea of jumping off a bridge into horrible dirty water sounded both terrifying and unpleasant. And, I mean, I know killing yourself (or the contemplation thereof) isn't particularly pleasant anyway, but I kind of figured there were easier, less painful ways to do it.

That didn't stop me regularly going out to that bridge, though, noticing the Samaritans stickers on the railings every time I walked up to its highest point to look out over the water. I never called them — as I say, I knew that I didn't really want to jump — but they always gave me pause when I saw them. Perhaps they did help, in their own way.

Eventually I settled for getting these musings out of my system with a piece of creative writing. In the short first-person narrative — which was left a little open-ended in case I wanted to expand it into a full-on story at some point — the protagonist, who was very obviously me, walked out to a bridge that was very obviously the Itchen Bridge, tormented by his own despair, and jumped. At the last moment, he was saved from his seemingly inevitable demise by a character I'd created and had my own story in mind for; this particular little narrative was set after that other story, even though, to date, I still haven't written all of it. In other words, the character who saved me was the character as she was at what I had planned to be the conclusion of her original tale; as it happened, she fit nicely into this little fantasy scenario, though.

But I digress. How does this news story connect to my life? Well, my first thought upon reading the headline of the story on the Daily Echo website was "someone's probably jumped". Given that the bridge was re-opened after just ten minutes, though, I wonder whether that was really the case or not; at the moment, it looks pretty much like a non-story, despite its prominent billing on the Daily Echo website. I guess my thought process ran something along the lines of "I wonder if there would have been a story like that on the Daily Echo website if I'd actually given in to my despair and jumped back in those dark days?"

Bleak? Oh, absolutely and definitely. But, well, there you go. That's me.

2088: μ's, Music Start, and Never Stop

It's been quite a while since I watched Love Live! — long enough that I'm considering watching it again, particularly as what appears to be Love Live! The Next Generation of sorts is currently brewing — but ever since I watched it, it's been a pretty regular part of my life. Specifically, it's pretty rare that I go a day without listening to at least a few of the songs both from the show and which were released as singles and albums as spin-off products.

One of the reasons I really enjoyed Love Live! as much as I did when I first watched it was because of the music. Sure, the story was fun and the characters were loveable and memorable, but if a show about music doesn't have good music in it, then, well, it fails. Fortunately, Love Live! had great music that complemented the story really nicely, even if you don't understand the Japanese lyrics.

The reason I like Love Live!'s music so much is because each and every one of them is an absolutely perfectly crafted pop song. Everything about pretty much every Love Live! song is put into place so immaculately, so beautifully, that it's hard not to get swept up in the energy of it all. The choice of vocalists; the backing track; the melodies; the harmonies; the chord sequences — all these elements combine to make something naturally delightful and pleasing to listen to, and intoxicatingly addictive.

Here are a few favourites.

This song is only heard as an instrumental in the show itself, but I liked it as soon as I heard it with lyrics in the Love Live! mobile game. It's a wonderfully cheerful, upbeat piece about friendship or something; it doesn't really matter. It just sounds nice, has a catchy tune and is eminently suitable for singing along to, even if you just babble Japanese-sounding syllables to the rough melody.

Also I like the "la, laaaa, laa laa laa laaaaa" bit at the end. Andie hates it, but whatever.

I adore this song, partly because it's the first song (aside from the OP) in the show, and it's a beautiful moment: Honoka, Umi and Kotori all coming together to try and achieve something for the first time, even in the face of adversity. It's also another really catchy song with some toe-tapping rhythms that fit well with the dance moves depicted in the show. And come on, listen to it. I defy you to reach the end of that without cracking a smile.

This is a gorgeous song in many ways. I particularly like it as it highlights Umi's voice, which is one of the most understated yet pleasant to listen to voices in the cast — a fact that goes with Umi's rather straight-laced personality. This song also reflects Umi in another way: the fact that in many ways she's the most "Japanese" of the cast, without any particularly exaggerated physical or personality traits, and this song — particularly its calming opening — fits her perfectly.

This one… well. What more can you say about a heavy metal song about enjoying hamburgers after school? Just rock out to it.

This one took some tracking down and I wasn't sure why… until I realised that it's not from Love Live! itself at all, but actually from a disc of character songs for the PS3 game The Guided Fate Paradox. That said, it does feature Eli from Love Live! on vocals, and as such is worthy of inclusion. It's also a pretty awesome song in the Castlevania mould in its own right. So there. And now I think I actually need to play The Guided Fate Paradox because I had no idea how good its music was.

2084: Too Soon?

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Too Soon?"

Can anything be funny, or are some things off limits?

There isn't an easy response to this question, because there are so many variables involved that it's simply impossible to state with certainty that "X is always okay to joke about, Y is never okay to joke about".

There are certain topics that are commonly accepted as being "taboo" for joking about, but even these have contexts in which they're appreciated or even welcomed. Jokes about AIDS, 9/11, rape, cancer, disabilities — all of these are fair game in the right context, so part of it is a matter of knowing your audience and determining whether or not now would be an appropriate time to deliver that zinger you've had brewing in your mind for months now. By the same token, of course, one person's completely inoffensive, "safe" subject matter might be shocking and offensive to another person — this is a particularly hot-potato issue when it comes to anything involving religion.

Just to complicate matters, whether or not a joke is "appropriate" for a particular context isn't simply a matter of "don't make jokes using a subject that is personally relevant to the person you're talking to", because that ignores the existence of "black" or "gallows" humour, whereby humour is used as a means of coping with difficult, even horrific things. Just because someone has AIDS, say, doesn't mean that you shouldn't joke about AIDS with them, though naturally your relationship with that person should be at such a point whereby you're absolutely sure they won't mind you making a joke about AIDS with them. To simply make a joke about one of these "taboo" subjects without establishing whether or not your prospective (and perhaps unwitting) audience is okay with you is insensitive, and can leave you looking like a complete asshole.

Aside from this consideration, though, I honestly don't think that anything is particularly "off-limits" for comedy in general. I personally wouldn't pepper my own conversation with words like "faggot" and "nigger", but there are people out there who do, and manage to be genuinely amusing — i.e. not just provoking shock value — in the process. Louis C.K., for example, does a great bit about the words "faggot", "cunt" and "nigger", which tend to be regarded as the most awful words in the English language, at least in part due to the baggage that at least two of them carry from history.

And I say that I wouldn't pepper my own conversation with words like that; I mean I wouldn't pepper my own conversation with words like that if I was with people that I didn't feel particularly comfortable being offensive with. When I'm with my closest friends, meanwhile, all bets are off; we hurl the most hideously offensive insults at one another while we're playing games or just hanging out, but none of us mean any of them, nor do the things we say reflect the way we actually feel about issues such as racism and homophobia — it's simply something we do to let off steam when we're around each other. Modern society — particularly these days — is so concerned with the appearance of propriety and not offending anyone that it can actually be quite liberating to just let rip with a string of the most awful, horrible, disgusting things you can think of when you're in an environment where it's safe to do so. It is, of course, when you start taking those words seriously or using them in inappropriate contexts that you need to take a bit more of a look at what you're doing.

So my answer to the question, then? Yes, anything can be funny, given the right context. Nothing is off-limits — or nothing should be off-limits, anyway. Because if you can't laugh at awful things, the world would be a very depressing place indeed.

2083: Insomnia

I find it really difficult to get to sleep. I think I always have to a certain degree, but I feel like I've become a lot more conscious (no pun intended) of it in the last year or two.

My issue, I think, is that I don't really know how to make myself fall asleep. I can lie down in bed, get comfortable, close my eyes and everything, but actually getting my body to go "It's now safe to turn off your computer" proves somewhat difficult; many is the night I find myself lying awake until 2 or 3am attempting to drift off and failing miserably, even as my wife Andie succumbs to slumberland in a matter of seconds next to me.

The fact that I don't really know how to make myself fall asleep is coupled with the fact that night-time, when it's dark and quiet and oddly lonely (even if you're sleeping next to someone), is the time when my brain generally decides that now would be a great time to start thinking about all the things I don't really want to think about.

I have anxiety issues, and these manifest most clearly during the night. The exact circumstances vary from night to night, but at present the most commonly recurring one is thinking back to my last day at my previous job and remembering how awful the people there made me feel, then contemplating what might have happened if I had allowed myself to fly off the handle at those people who had made my life a misery. So vivid are the images and the feelings that these thoughts give me that they make me feel even more anxious — and, naturally, the more I try not to think about them, the more the images loop around and around in my mind.

Ultimately, I do get to sleep every night, but given how long it generally takes, I often find myself pretty tired in the morning and disinclined to get up at a "normal" time unless I absolutely have to; oddly enough, I find it really easy to fall asleep in the morning after having woken up once, and one side-effect of this that I find intoxicatingly addictive in many ways is the fact that the dreams I have during these morning sleeps are far more vivid than any I might have during the night. It's rare that these dreams feed off my anxiety, either; generally, they are interesting, or strange, or exciting rather than scary, unpleasant or upsetting. I look forward to days when I can have a guilt-free lie-in and enjoy these experiences, but I do wish I could get my sleep patterns back to being a little bit more "normal".

Still, at least they're not quite as fucked up as they were five years ago when my first wife and I had split up; my body clock ballsed up so much during that stressful period that I couldn't get to sleep before about 5am, and I would sleep through until about 5pm without waking up at all, making it somewhat embarrassing when I'd go into the local shop to get provisions and the cashier would ask how my day had been. I guess I should be thankful for that, at least.

Tonight, it may be 3am but I have been enjoying an evening of pleasant company with my regular gaming buddies, so I haven't yet gone to bed. I feel I may not have too much difficulty drifting off tonight, for once, but we shall see, I guess!

2080: Five Stones

I've finally crossed a significant milestone in my weight loss journey: I've now lost over five stone in total, a loss that also coincides with me dropping into a new stone bracket that represents the lowest weight I can remember being for a long time. I still want to — need to? — lose at least a couple more stone from here, but I've come a long way and I'm genuinely happy with what I've accomplished so far.

For those who have come to my blog more recently, I started Slimming World back in February of this year having decided that enough was enough, and that I really needed to lose some weight. This wasn't just a vanity thing; my weight had gotten to the point where I was physically uncomfortable. I was having trouble fitting into "normal"-sized chairs; I was encountering situations and pieces of equipment that I was too heavy to use — I had to skip out on part of a friend's stag night because they were doing some activities that I was significantly overweight for; and many of my clothes didn't fit any more.

More than anything, I was miserable. I suffer with depression anyway, but my weight problem was making things worse by having a physical effect on me. I was perpetually out of breath; I couldn't get comfortable in a chair or in bed; it was difficult and embarrassing to wear clothes that I knew once fit me. I felt physically repulsed when I saw my body in the mirror, I felt ashamed when I saw my stomach hanging down out of the bottom of a T-shirt I was wearing, and, to be perfectly frank, I was horrified that I couldn't see my knob when I looked down.

I had been aware of my weight problem gradually getting worse over the course of the last few years — probably at least the last ten years or so, if I'm perfectly honest — but every time I had tried to do anything about it previously, I had failed to have a significant impact. I'd tried dieting of various kinds — Atkins left me with a perpetual headache, and Slim-Fast was like eating wood chippings — as well as intensive exercise routines, and nothing had seemed to shift the weight at all. It was demoralising and upsetting; I didn't know what to do. I considered trying to be one of those people who is happy about being fat — or at least, someone who accepts that they're fat — but I couldn't do it. I was too ashamed of myself.

It's not an exaggeration to say that Slimming World has changed my life for the better. I first came to it because my wife's sister had had a considerable amount of success with it. Skeptical, I went along to a meeting, found out about their "food optimising" methods — a surprisingly flexible, enjoyable plan that doesn't really restrict you so much as make you think about making sensible choices — and stuck carefully to it. I lost a big chunk of weight in the first week, and have been losing weight pretty consistently ever since; with only two or three exceptions since February, I've lost at least a pound pretty much every week, and I certainly don't feel like I'm starving myself or anything, just being careful about what I put in my mouth.

Changing the way I think about food isn't the only way it's changed my life for the better, though. I'm more positive about myself and feel like I have more self-esteem as a result. I would still describe my sense of self as "somewhat fragile" if pressed, of course, but I no longer repulse myself when I see my reflection, which is progress. Now, when I see my body, I can think "yes, that's going well, but there's still a way to go" rather than "ugh, that's disgusting, who would ever want to look at that?"

Since that February, I've had a difficult time. I was ousted from the job I had back when I started under circumstances that, on reflection, actually feel somewhat "traumatic", for want of a better word — I keep remembering my last day, and how horrible those bastards made me feel; it stops me from sleeping quite often — but my progress with my weight loss has helped keep me sane even as I struggle to scrape together some meaningful work and income to survive into the future. And I don't think the importance of that should be underestimated; feeling like one thing is going right in your life helps you to believe that other things can eventually go right, too — you just might have to work at it a bit.

Five stone, then. That's a hell of a lot. Our previous Slimming World consultant used to bring in these little sandbags that weighed a pound, half a stone, a stone and so on; a stone is actually pretty heavy, and I was carrying five more of those around with me all day every day back in February. No wonder I was knackered and uncomfortable all the time. I hope I never get back into that situation — and I don't think I will, either.

2077: Narrative Media

Since I've become particularly interested in Japanese popular media, I've often found myself pondering which particular aspect is my favourite — in other words, what do I feel is the "best" means of enjoying a story that, in many cases, spreads its tendrils across a number of different forms of media with varying degrees of success?

There's not really an easy answer to that, but I feel my own personal attitude towards it is inclined towards whatever the original version of the work was composed in, where available. This isn't a hard and fast rule, by any means — on balance, I think I slightly prefer the anime of High School DxD to the manga, for example, and there are a number of interesting spin-off games that tell a completely different story to an anime or manga series, making them worthwhile in their own right — but I do tend to find myself preferring to experience a story as originally intended.

Part of the reason for this is enjoying a story in its original medium means that you don't "miss out" on anything. In theory, anyway; that theory runs that a creative work is composed for a specific medium, and then adapted to other media at a later date. The adaptation process often involves editing, changing and even cutting content from the original, usually as a means of ensuring that the important beats of the story fit into what may be a more restrictive format. Consider an indefinitely running manga series that is adapted into 20-minute anime episodes, for example; you're going to lose some detail, like it or not, unless you want the pace of the show to slow to a crawl. (Some long-running shows do indeed take this rather leisurely pace to their ongoing storyline, but for the most part, manga-to-anime adaptations tend to try and get through a significant amount of printed content over the course of 12-13 episodes.)

That said, different media are more or less appropriate for different ways of exploring material. Anime, as the most visually flexible of these media, allows you to outright depict things happening without having a narrator explain things (as in a visual novel, manga or light novel) and take a more subtle approach, implying things rather than making them explicit. At the other end of the spectrum, a novel relies almost entirely on the reader's imagination, perhaps stimulated a little by illustrations here and there. The nature of text means that the inner thoughts and feelings of characters can be explored in much more detail than in an anime, and even from multiple perspectives.

Visual novels, meanwhile, tend to unfold from a single first-person narrative perspective. This allows for in-depth exploration of a specific character and their responses, feelings and attitudes towards various situations — as if you "were" that character. It's not quite the same as a full-on game where you take full control of a character, mind; most visual novels give you relatively limited choices as to how they proceed, and the protagonist otherwise has a mind of their own: you're just along for the ride. Some visual novels do experiment with multiple perspectives — The Fruit of Grisaia's various routes each feature a sequence where the main heroine of that route narrates an important event in their lives, be it to the reader or to protagonist Yuuji; Deus Machina Demonbane, meanwhile, features a first-person protagonist narrator, but occasionally slips into third-person to depict things happening elsewhere when appropriate. For the most part, though, when you come to the end of a visual novel, the character you almost certainly understand the best is the protagonist.

Video game adaptations — i.e. those that aren't visual novels — present their own challenges by allowing the player to control iconic characters and perhaps make them behave in ways that aren't necessarily in keeping with their character as depicted in other media. This is partly a matter of attitude, though; someone who is already particularly engaged with a series and comes to a video game adaptation after reading the manga/visual novel/light novel or watching the anime may well find themselves "method acting" as the character they find themselves in full control of, even if the game mechanics do provide the opportunity for them to do unexpected and strange things.

In other words, I don't really have a concrete answer for the question. At the moment, I'm particularly enjoying reading The Fruit of Grisaia's visual novel, and after hearing how the anime adaptation packs the VN's many hours of narrative and interesting happenings into just a single season, I feel that the VN is probably the best means of experiencing this story in full detail. At the same time, I'm enjoying the video game of Sword Art Online, the manga of Monster Musume, the anime of Himouto! Umaru-chan — there really isn't a straightforward answer as to which one is "best".

It sometimes pays to explore a single work in different media, though; the unwritten rules that "the book is usually better than the film" and "video game adaptations are universally terrible" don't always apply!

2073: Night and Day

In response to The Daily Post's writing prompt: "Night and Day."

Have you ever had an experience that was amazing the first time, but terrible the second time around? Or vice versa? What made it different the second time?

I had to think pretty hard about this one, because by now I have a fairly firm grasp of what I do and don't like in a lot of aspects of my life, and consequently I'm inclined to seek out things I know that I'll enjoy while avoiding things that I know I'll dislike. There is value, of course, in trying something outside your usual comfort zone, but while this can sometimes pleasantly surprise you, often this ends up just confirming or reinforcing your existing perceptions.

One thing did particularly come to mind, though. I don't know that I'd describe it as "amazing" and "terrible" for the first and second times, and it's more of an abstract thing rather than a specific incident, but it otherwise fits the description.

I'm talking about playing a new piece of music for the first time, specifically — for me, anyway — on the piano.

I'm good at sight-reading. This still surprises me a bit, as it was always the part of the graded piano examinations that I hated the most (with the possible exception of aural tests, which still seem somewhat sadistic) but I think I can trace my ability to pick things up quickly back to my habitual place on the piano for the school orchestra and various other ensembles, including a local choir. Certainly in the case of my school, I was (arguably) the best pianist there, so I was often recruited to play piano parts that would otherwise go unplayed; more often than not, then, I was expected to pick up a new piece of music and be able to immediately play it.

And for the most part I can do that pretty well. However, one thing I've noticed about this is that the first time I play a piece at sight, it always feels like it sounds a whole lot better than any subsequent time I try to play it without sitting down and doing some intensive practice on it.

To be honest, I'm not entirely sure if this is actually the case or not — it may well be that my first attempts to sight-read something are a horrendous noise, with subsequent attempts only marginally better owing to the fact I at least have a vague idea of what to expect — but it certainly feels that way. Playing a new piece of music for the first time is enjoyable and exciting, assuming it's not one of those pieces that demoralises you from the get-go by being ridiculously difficult and completely unplayable without months of intensive, low-tempo practice. As such, I wonder if that "high", for want of a better word, that you get from trying out a new piece for the first time makes that first attempt "feel" better than subsequent efforts, when you know you "should" be able to do better.

I guess the above description could probably apply to a whole lot of things in life, now that I think about it. Trying something for the first time gives you that satisfying buzz of "I'm doing something new!" but after that, assuming you stick with it, you settle into more of a routine, and mistakes start to become more frustrating. At a certain point, you have to make that difficult decision as to whether you're going to continue working on the thing in question in detail, or set it aside and try something else.

It's a tough call with no right answers; no-one likes to feel like they're "wasting" their time!