Journey before destination.
Start how you mean to finish.
Ok. Today, I have got this.
Biography of a nobody day 14. January 14th 2021.
So far this morning I have played with Rusty, I have had breakfast and watched the latest 2 episodes of Re:Zero (awesome anime) and I have written up how shit/lethargic I felt yesterday. Now I am going to be productive. I am. Its 10:20 am and I going to go do some man grooming to look better for myself and I am going to have a shower. By man grooming I mean shave my neck, shape my now growing beard and see what exactly I can do with my hair. I am trying to grow both the beard and the hair but the interim stages always look crap and feel worse. Especially when hair dressers are closed so I am doing it myself. I figured I would go for a Ragnar Lothbrook, from the prime show vikings, for now whilst the top grows by just shaving the sides of my head with a beard trimmer. It looks fine from the front but even though I can only see the back from the reflection of an awkwardly held mini mirror... I know it looks shit. I have then taken to wearing a hat round the house... which probably looks worse.
Anyway, procrastination aside- I am going to do that. I am then going to check the rain and perhaps take the van to the tip with the collection of Christmas waste I have built up outside. Partly because I produced slightly more waste than usual and I have a tiny stupid bin. Partly because the bin days change over Christmas and I forget the bin day half the time anyway... so the changing days thing didn’t help with that. As much as I would like to say absentmindedness started with when the stress did, it didn’t. I have always had a somewhat ... lackadaisical approach to things like bin day... washing up... cleaning my car... answering questions... washing clothes. The sorts of things that you know are important in the long run, but forgetting it once doesn’t do anything. I then forget that I didn’t do it last time then it snowballs into about 12 bin bags outside, 2 days of washing up, a car which is so dirty I couldn’t tell my lights were on this morning (cleaned them now), and no clean underwear to wear. I also put the washing machine on SOOO many times then forget to hang it out because I put it on 3 hours ago and ... oooh look a butterfly...
as I said, this has always been part of my character. The getting lost in thoughts that perhaps aren’t positive or productive plus being stressed and lethargic hasn’t helped, but hasn’t particularly made it worse. Yeah that reminds me I need to do a load of washing. Putting that on now before I go upstairs and shave/shower.
Ok. Its 10:38 now... time to stop procrastinating more.
Washing is on, its only 10:41... I can do this!
10:55. Ok. Had a poop, thought of an investment idea for Dan... that I copied from a youtube vid I watched whilst having that poop and called him about it. He was pooping too.
10:59. Beard done, hair I am going to leave because I am trying to grow it though I did notice an inch wide patch behind my ear I missed when shaving the sides last time... hopefully no one noticed that...
11:14. Showered, dressed, bed made and I even contacted my solicitor to see how the settlement for the matrimonial house money is going. Yep... thats still going on.
11:18. I wasn’t fully dressed before, I had no t-shirt on. I found my favourite T-shirt and feel like I look good. I am on fire!
11:19... its still absolutely pissing it down outside- the bins can wait. Opting to do the pots instead.
11:39. Pots done. It took longer than it should have because between every utensil I was having to chase down a squatting dog hoping to direct his poop towards a puppy pad. If he has done one, I cant find it or smell it. I have been told dogs sniff for where they have done it before and there is an enzyme their wee/poo leaves behind even when cleaned- thats why they go to the same place. Apparently the only thing to clear that is methylated spirits. I have known this for a few days but have yet to get some. A mixture of lethargy, not wanting to leave the house and my brain farting out all that is useful every time I am out the house in a shop and forgetting to get some.
11:43. Its still raining so I have made a brew and I am going to work on the computer instead. My brother asked me to research a decent desktop computer for him for run AutoCad on- so I will do that, then have some lunch and if its still raining I am going to post more on my site!
12:09. Ok, thats done and the rain outside has evolved into snow! Please settle! I love snow!!! Computer sorted for my bro, and now I am going to play with Rusty and make some lunch!
13:16. Hmm. Got carried away with lunch and watched 2 episodes of Black Clover. 2 episodes I attempted to watch yesterday morning but fell asleep on the sofa. I also chatted to my Mum about Rusty and life in general for 15 minutes. A chat with my Mum always cheers me up, she is certainly the one I get my optimism from. Regardless of what she has faced she has always seen the next day at a fresh start. She has a saying “don’t spend all your todays waiting for tomorrow”- I love that. It is still snowing and although my brain is telling me to suck it up put a jacket on and get the job done, my body is saying why do today in the snow what you can do at the weekend in the dry. Pathetic is likely an apt description for that.
Back to being positive. I will then instead opt for writing! That is productive, dry and I will encourage myself to do some home exercise afterwards even if I have to slap myself in the face to get myself worked up.
17:38. I am literally so fucking furious right now. F*CK. I have spent from when I wrote the above paragraph until now writing one of the best things I have ever written. I wrote it directly into a page on Wix. Hours. 4 hours. OVER four hours. I published it. It deleted itself. I cant revert it to draft and find the text. Everything I wrote was super personal and I was super proud of it. It is all gone. All of it. 4 hours of productive writing and being happy and now... fuck. Im am so angry. F*CK F*CK F*CK. The entire time I just wrote. I stopped for about 3 minutes to attempt to find a puppy poo I am convinced I could smell but I couldn't find. He probably ate it. BUT FOUR F*CKING HOURS WASTED. FOUR. It's not even that the time is wasted. I have more time. It's getting back what I had. F*ck me I am furious.
I am using all the self control I have to just sit down and write this. Now I am going to attempt to write it again. F*ck I am so angry.
I didn't write any more of anything last night- but here is how the rest of my day went.
An hour passed and I had sent the same tirade above to a couple of friends in a group chat. Both had text me back saying concentrate on the fact you had been productive, not the fact the evidence had gone. That was a fair point, but it didn't calm my fury. I did note however that feeling anger was better than feeling nothing, deleting the site, and giving up. The hour I had spent trying to remember the best sentences I had written, trying to remember the positivity I had expressed, but my anger made that very difficult. My friend then FaceTimed me. At first I didn't want to answer, the only reason I did at first is because I knew that would then result in worried texts which I didn't want or need. I am glad I answered, though the first thing I noted was how rough I looked. A drastic change from how much I felt I looked good in the morning to the tired looking husk my camera was picking up now. Weird how a happy day makes you look better to yourself. At first my friend talked about how its ok, its journey not destination sort of stuff, then he dropped the charade and took the piss. This made me smile, then laugh. I made a few quips back then his wife got involved and we just had 10 or 15 minutes of fun. It really helped dissipate my frustration and I realised that the hour I had spend trying to recover what I had lost was actually just me angrily scrolling through my instagram because I had lost all energy to write. The resulting advice from my friend was to try and do something else for a bit, maybe even the rest of the evening then face it fresh and write it even better. Take this version that has gone as draft one, waiting to be improved upon. He was right. I was proud today of how little I wanted to engage in the TV, games or my phone but perhaps I had actually earned some escapism now. Especially since progress was so limited anyway.
I spent the rest of the evening playing Octopath Traveler on the switch, occasionally remembering a well worded sentence from my post and writing it down, drinking tea and playing with Rusty. I felt better, I felt relaxed, I still couldn't see a bright side of losing what I had written, but I felt better. I know losing a bit of writing is such a little thing, tiny even, compared to some of the actual shit I had faced lately. It hit me hard though, not for the loss, but because it represented to me a day of clarity for the first time in so long. A day of productivity for the first time in ages. A full day of feeling myself. Until 17:38 when I deleted a lot of my evidence.
As Kaladin Stormblessed would say:
"Strength before weakness, journey before destination"
The destination of what I had written may have been shit, but the journey I went through has helped me massively. I am strong enough to write it again, write it better. It didn't create me, I created it. I can make a new one, a better one. Still feel bloody ridiculous and annoyed that I didn't make a copy! I ALWAYS save a copy because when doing work in the web sometimes the publish button acts as a refresh button. For no reason. So all your work disappears.
The moral is: write on word or keep a copy.