#oneaday Day 876: It's okay for all this to bother you

Apologies for the Rage Explosion yesterday, that just needed to come out. So I let it. Because you know what? Sometimes it is healthy to do that. Sometimes it is good to acknowledge that Shit Going On In The World is actually bothering you, even if it's not something that is necessarily happening to you, directly.

This was the primary subject we talked about in therapy this week. I have been struggling with a general sense of fatigue and depression for a while now, and since there's not really much going "wrong" with my personal or professional lives right now, the only thing I can really attribute it to is a continual sense of being completely and utterly fed up with, as the cliché goes, "(waves arms around) ALL THIS".

It is easy to get yourself into a mindset where you start telling yourself that you should not waste time and energy worrying about things which are not directly and immediately affecting you, personally. Focus on your own general wellbeing and being a good person, the conventional wisdom goes, and you'll be happy, even if no-one else is.

Except that isn't true. No man is an island, and in this interconnected modern world, it is very fucking difficult to disconnect completely from What Is Happening In The World. Not just because we are perpetually bombarded with it thanks to a combination of traditional and social media, but because What Is Happening In The World is having a marked, measurable and demonstrable impact on the basics of human interaction: the way we are with one another, the way we treat one another and the way we talk to one another.

Part of the reason that All of This™ is so exhausting is because it often feels like there is no escape from it. These days, even small, private little communities primarily drawn together for friendship and mutual support reasons often end up devolving, at some point, into arguments about politics, AI and all the other shit. I have a few spaces online that have remained mercifully immune to that — but just as many where I simply don't want to raise my head and show my face any more, because I just cannot be arsed battling my way through all the yelling and the arguing and all the inexplicable water carrying for big corporations who very much do not have our best interests at heart.

Sociologists often suggest a lot of today's problems stem from the lack of A Third Place for most people: somewhere you can go that is not your home or your work. For many of us now, our home and are work are already the same thing, which has its own issues, of course, but with the massive decline in Third Places for people to go and do things and interact with other three-dimensional people, it's perhaps no surprise that the overall feelings of unrest that everyone is experiencing come out in the way they talk to one another online. After all, the person you're yelling at isn't "real", are they? They're just text on your screen.

Anyway, my thoughts have meandered through that somewhat, but the upshot of it all is simple. It's okay to feel run down, burnt out and fatigued by What Is Happening In The World, even if it's not something that appears to directly affect you. Because it does affect you. It affects where you feel safe, where you feel comfortable, where and how you want to express yourself. And if you find that The Way Things Just Are Now makes you feel like the number of places where you feel safe, comfortable and able to express yourself has contracted… well, you're not alone. That's very much where I am right now. And I'm not going to pretend it's otherwise.

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#oneaday Day 783: Nothing compares 2U

When you are attempting to better yourself — particularly if you know said process is going to be a long, drawn-out affair — I have learned, over the years, that one of the worst things I can do is compare myself to others. This may not be universally true — hence my use of "I" instead of "you" — but as time has passed, and I have taken on numerous such attempts to varying degrees of success, I have come to realise that it is definitely true for me.

You see, in my case, comparing myself to others inevitably leads to feelings of inferiority and frustration when really there is no reason for me to be comparing myself to anyone other than… well, myself.

Take one thing I'm always very conscious of when I go out for a walk, as I did this evening: because of the size I am, and because of my general overall fitness level, I walk quite slowly, even when in my head I am thinking "I am walking quite briskly". I can be walking at an exertion level that makes me slightly out of breath, and people who are just out for a casual stroll will be overtaking me without any evident effort on my part. Were I to pay attention to this — like I have done in the past, which is why I can say all this at all — this would be frustrating! Why can't I walk as fast as a "normal" person? Am I annoying the "normal" people who walk much faster than I do? God, I'm such a waste of space and energy!

But no. The sensible part of my brain, which I am growing better at listening to, reminds me that I have absolutely no reason to be comparing my walking speed to that of anyone else, because I am not, in fact, getting in anyone's way. The Common is a big place, and its paths are more than wide enough for anyone who wants to go faster than me to just walk around me. And, moreover, I am not walking with any of those people, meaning that my overall speed is not causing anyone to have to wait around for me to catch up.

(This is, however, something I am conscious of any time I am out and about with friends or work colleagues, and we are all walking somewhere together. I simply cannot keep up with most of them under many circumstances. And that is frustrating, from a combination of people showing me an often unintentional lack of consideration, and my own annoyance at not being able to do things like a "normal" person.)

When I'm by myself, then, the only thing that really matters is me. The only thing I should be comparing myself to is myself, because it's quite nice to see gradual improvements in your own performance — and even with the fairly casual nature of my walking excursions over the course of the last couple of weeks, I have already seen a slight improvement in terms of the amount of time it takes me to cover the two kilometres of the route I habitually take.

But then there are times when you don't even need to know that. It's not a competition. It's not a race. There is no way you can speed up this whole process. It is something that happens gradually, through building good habits, and thus, when it comes down to it, the only really important thing is that I am just doing the thing at all. Have I successfully got out of the house into the fresh air and got some exercise? Yes? Then great. That's a success.

This is the thing. When attempting to improve yourself — particularly if you are neurodivergent — the temptation can be to give up when you can't immediately fix the problem you're trying to solve. But it doesn't work like that. Instead, you should allow yourself to celebrate those small victories, even if they are much smaller than victories you have had in the past.

I'll give you an example. A good few years ago at this point (2011, to be exact, since I was blogging here at the time!), I successfully "ran" (and I use the term loosely) the Bupa 10K in London, along with some friends I have since, sadly, fallen out of touch with. (Miss you, Vee and Gracie!) This was, for me, an incredible achievement — and one that only came about because I had successfully followed the Couch to 5K and Bridge to 10K programmes over a long period.

I cannot run a 10K now. I cannot even contemplate walking 10 kilometres right now. I cannot even really contemplate walking five kilometres. And that's OK! 2011 was fifteen years ago. I wasn't in amazing shape then, but I was in considerably better shape than I am now, and I was also fifteen years younger. As such, it makes absolutely no sense to try and compare myself against that yardstick (or should that be 10K-stick?) because so much has changed in that intervening period. Yes, it would be nice to be able to get back into a state where I could contemplate surviving a journey of 10 kilometres on foot — be it by walking or jogging — but right now, it is an irrelevant target for me.

Right now, my target is just to get up of the sofa, get out into the fresh air and just do something, at least a few times per week. I have given myself the arbitrary goal of two kilometres because that just happens to be the exact distance of a "lap" that I do on the Common right now, and because that is something which, in my current state, feels attainable but still challenging — in other words, it's a level of effort that I feel is actually doing something.

I was tempted to write "even if that might not seem like very much to some of you" after that, but stopped myself. Because, as I say, what it seems like to anyone else doesn't matter. Everyone's circumstances are different. I'm sure I know plenty of people who can jog 5K, 10K, even more, without even thinking about it. And, right now, it achieves nothing for me to compare myself to them because they are simply operating in a completely different league. And that is, once again, fine.

So I will continue muddling along at my own pace. At some point, I will up the distance and/or time that I will be walking, but I don't feel ready for that just yet, so I'm not going to do that just yet. I will do it when the time is right, not when anyone else says that I "should" do it — but when I feel I want to do it.

And, with any luck, this will build itself over time into a healthy habit that will be of great benefit to me. That's all that really matters!

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#oneaday, Day 164: Healing The Mind, And Flying Spiders

Sometimes, whatever else is going on in your mind, it's good to sit down with a friend and talk things over. Even if you're not a big "talker" for the most part, there's bound to be at least someone out there that you can open up to. Some lucky people can open up to pretty much anyone. Though that often leads to the whole "too much information" problem I alluded to some time back, when a former music performance partner decided to announce at the dinner table to my then-housemate whom she had never met before that day that she was suffering from considerable vaginal dryness and was there anything she could do about it as it was a little concerning?

No. Talking with someone you respect and trust is always good. So that's what a friend (who shall remain nameless to spare her blushes) and I did today. We spent most of the day (well, afternoon) sitting and chatting over various beverages and sandwiches, starting with an enormous caramel latte (which my companion added at least three sugars to just for that "extra kick", making a smiley face from the sugar and then stabbing it in the eyes because it "didn't deserve to be happy") and eventually moving on, having harassed our AV salesman mutual buddy at his place of work, to a large pitcher of delicious, summery, fruity cocktail atop the roof of Vodka Revolution.

We also saw a flying spider. This little dude, whom we christened Harold, had been attempting to crawl up the side of our pitcher in an attempt to get at the cocktaily goodness within, but was failing miserably. By about the fourth or fifth time he'd slipped down the side of the pitcher, he was obviously ready to give up. So imagine our surprise when he floated off the side of the pitcher and then whistled past my head at high speed.

We both blinked and looked at each other.

"That just happened, didn't it?"

"Yeah."

"That spider just flew."

"Yeah."

"What the fuck?"

"I have no idea."

There's probably a perfectly rational explanation for it. Harold was only a tiny money spider after all, so it's entirely possible he was just blown away by a passing breeze. Or perhaps there was a thread leading far away that we couldn't see. But it's a much nicer story to think that Harold was the one spider in the world who had learned to fly. I don't normally like spiders, but I have plenty of time for a tiny little one that has learned to fly.

Anyway.

The day was technically completely non-productive, but after a few days of feeling something of a decline in my mood, it was exactly what I needed. I wouldn't dream of speaking for my companion, but I certainly hope it helped her too. By the time both of us went our separate ways at the end of the afternoon, both of us had pleasant smiles on our faces; something which neither of us were sporting when we met up with each other around lunchtime.

So if you're feeling low, take a day out. Call up a friend, perhaps one you haven't seen for a while. Meet up. Drink coffee, beer, cocktails, whatever. Sit in the sun. Chew the fat. Set the world to rights. And you'll find that things will feel much better. For a while, at least. And sometimes, that little perk-up is all you need to keep going a little while longer.

So a hearty thanks to my companion for a lovely day.

#oneaday, Day 99: One Away

This is not me.

Tomorrow marks my centennial on the #oneaday train. That's pretty good going. I know some people are ahead of me already, but we should all celebrate each others' milestones. And the way I choose for you all to celebrate my own milestone is to buy me cake. Particularly as it's my birthday soon.

Anyway, cake aside, what I wanted to talk about today is exercise. I've managed, through some serious mental reconditioning that may or may not have involved an electric cattle prod, to get back into a gym routine. I've been every day for the last few days. That may sound like a lot to some, but the last time I jumped in with this intensity it had a noticeably positive impact on my body. I felt better and I looked better. I mean sure, I was still a tubby bitch, to quote Mr Kevin Smith, but slightly less so than before. Then various things happened, I left my job which was conveniently five minutes' walk away from the gym, got depressed, ate too much, took on a job that was so far away from where I lived that by the time I got home of an evening I wasn't able to get to the gym before it closed and finally quit that job. Clear? No? Never mind.

Now that I'm in that weird sort of "uhhh… what now?" phase without having a full-time job, I have plenty of time to get to the gym. Even on days when I do have some work, I've managed to get home, have a quick rest, maybe a quick blast on WoW and then head out to the gym before dinner. This time around, I feel like I've made much quicker progress than before. The day before yesterday I managed a 10-minute non-stop run on the treadmill, which I can't normally do. I can't do it consistently yet, as I need to be full of energy to pull it off, but it's getting there. And I can do 5 minutes non-stop without too much difficulty now.

Experimented a little with some free weights today. Rhiarti has said she's going to give me some suggestions for a Geek Workout using weights rather than machines. The machines are all well and good, but apparently the free weights actually work more muscles because you have to support the big lump of metal you're lifting as well as, you know, lifting it. And certainly after I tried a few bits and pieces I'd looked up online today, my muscles felt like they'd had a much more solid workout than if I'd used machines for equivalent exercises. The side-effect of all this, too, is that I feel rather more positive about my body image. I know there's no way that my shape would have changed over the course of less than a week, but I feel better about myself. I think it's just taking the positive step to do something about it that makes me feel better. I have a lot of work to do, but I feel like I've got into a good rhythm now. Let's hope I can keep it up.

No idea whether I'll be working tomorrow yet. The irritating thing about supply teaching is that you have to get up super-early for no guarantee of work on most days. But even if there's no work, I have some articles to write and some potentially paid freelancing gigs to chase up, so it's not as if I'll be short of things to do. I also applied for three jobs today, so hopefully something will come of one of those. Though going on past experiences with my saying "hopefully something will come of one of those", I fear it will be unlikely I'll hear back from them ever, my application lost in the Netherstorm for all eternity.

It's time for bed. Before midnight! Good job, me.

Also, to the shouting drunken morons outside my front room window, kindly jump in the Solent.