“Time and words can't be recalled, even if it was only yesterday” - Yiddish Proverb

Very, very briefly,  it's time for bed, Thursday, actually Friday (and work in a few hours!).

I just wanted to say something (er, nothing in particular, just something, anything at all). 

Week two back at work and things are still difficult (although only for me), I just can't seem to interact with colleagues (although it is easy to have a facade with patients) and I feel constantly on the edge of panic. 

Though apart from this minor trauma, very little else is happening. 

Now the year is rushing towards Christmas, won't somebody please put on the brakes? 

"I wish I could think of a positive point to leave you with. Will you take two negative points?" - Woody Allen

"Things are going to get a lot worse before they get worse" - Lily Tomlin

Well hello again, it's been quite a while, hasn't it ?

Simply put, I neither had anything to say or the desire not to say it. Frankly I'm bored with myself, and my life, but don't worry (as if you were) I'm not seeking to end it any time soon.

Nothing has happened,  except me returning to work, I suppose that counts as something?

Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. It wasn't an easy week, by any means, in all honesty it was quite a struggle for me. The work itself wasn't the problem, I was. Every second was a struggle for me, a struggle to seem normal and personable. Every fibre of me just wanted to leave, and never return. All I was living for was home time. For the life of me I can't explain why, at least not fully.

Everyone seemed genuinely pleased to see me, and to some degree me them, but I felt so detached from everything, I simply couldn't relax, as if constantly on the edge of panic. It will get better, I'm sure, but without a fundamental change in who and what I am,  I'm worried that another crisis is simply a matter of when, rather than if ?

“In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o' clock in the morning, day after day.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald

 

 

"My one regret in life is that I'm not someone else" - Woody Allen

“He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food” - Raymond Chandler

Two, yes two, almost interesting things happened today!

I had what I believed to be my first counselling session today. Sadly after, it turned out to be more of a history taking session, to check I was fit to return to work, but it was with an occupational health consultant. It looks like any counselling will have to be funded / sourced by myself, I'm still waiting to hear from my GP counsellor (do they even exist beyond a sign on a door?). But I do feel a lot better, at least today. In all honesty that may be down to my second 'event' of the day, I actually booked that long threatened Holiday for Billie and Myself. Yes next April, We shall be off to Orlando. For me it's maybe the seventh or eighth time, but the first since 2001 (final 'family' holiday was to California in 2003!), but Billie has been several times since. I just wanted to go one more time while she still wanted to go (with me at least). One final blow out for me before she finally grows up (thanks MasterCard!).

p.s. I've just noticed that it was my 4th anniversary on last.fm, last week. It's a wonderful site, I'm still quite obsessed with it, not as much as I once was of course. Plus, most importantly it was the conduit that led me to Barbara, and no matter what transpired, that will always be one of the most precious times of my life.

“First the doctor told me the good news: I was going to have a disease named after me.”- Steve Martin

“I liked things better when I didn't understand them.” - Bill Watterson

It's 9am on Sunday morning. 

Last night I had rather a lot to drink, imagine that (I finally opened that bottle of Jim Beam Black Label, I'd been saving). Consequently there was a bit of a rambling, and frankly embarrassing post half written at 3am, in vino veritas eh? 

I soberly read it this morning (pun intended)  and decided it was not fit for general (i.e. mine) consumption, so you've got this rubbish instead.

Although this is a personal, and practically unread blog, I've never really let rip with honest emotions here. It's after all a very public forum, open to anyone with the whim to look. I usually just write enough to jog my memory at a later date, and it's quite amazing just how poor memory actually is. Often I can look back at a year old post and it can uncork forgotten detail and feelings. 

Now I'm rambling in quite a different way - boringly (that's a word, isn't it?).

I forgot to mention that Billie and I went to the cinema earlier this week to see the 25th anniversary re-release of  'Back To The Future'. We've seen it a couple of times together, and both love it, but we couldn't resist it's rather limited return to the big screen. It was the first film I saw with my ex-Wife, way back in 1985, but there's no bitterness when I write that , just a simple fact.  (by the way the film has been rather fabulously restored!)

We usually watch a film together at home, a couple of times a week, and I recommended 'United 93' to her. At the end we were both in tears (one of my very first blog posts, mentions me crying the first time I saw it). I actually 'enjoy' being upset/elated by a film, it reminds me I'm still a functioning adult (and I don't get many reminders these days). 

I told my mum I'd bought a theatre, "Are you having me on?" she said "Well, " I said "I'll give you an audition but I can't make any promises." - Tim Vine

 

“You know an odd feeling? Sitting on the toilet eating a chocolate candy bar” - George Carlin

What a dull, dull week. All of my weeks are dull, but this one takes the biscuit, it takes the whole packet, in fact. I've been doing a lot of thinking this week, well maybe contemplating is a better description, maybe. To the casual observer it would look like me lying on the floor whilst listening to a lot of music (including old, old vinyl), but I call it contemplating. The usual suspects I'm afraid, the past, the future, but mostly the past (read into that what you will, but you are almost certainly  right).

I can't remember how long it is since I've had a conversation. Of course I talk to people, in shops, or brief words with my family, but to sit down with an adult and talk about things, any bloody thing is something I miss, miss a lot. How I miss those endless phone conversations of old (now I remember the last time I had a conversation!).

“Conversation has a kind of charm about it, an insuating and insidious something that elicits secrets from us just like love or liquor.” - Seneca

“I find my life is a lot easier the lower I keep everyone's expectations.” - Bill Watterson

What a bouncing ball my mood is. Weekends seem to find me at my worst, and strangest of all, Monday morning seems the most optimistic part of the week - go figure.

My beloved projector is on the fritz, so I'll be staring at a blank 10ft screen for a while until it's repaired (thank goodness it came with a 3 year warranty - I never get extended warranties!). Time to catch up on my reading.

A lot of dreaming was done last night. All that sticks with me is something about Orlando, and somehow Barbara was involved. 

Maybe that's why this particular Monday morning I was feeling almost 'upbeat'?

“Enemy fighters at two o'clock!
Roger. What should I do until then?”

“Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit.” - Oscar Wilde

“Beware of the door with too many keys” - Portuguese proverb

I've nothing to say (though it now seems that I have), as usual, but this time I'm drawing a complete blank. I just wanted to post something, back 'in the day' I used to really enjoy posting. Sometimes they were actually funny, or opinionated. Recently posts have fallen into a self parody of bemoaning and tedious minutiae, with the occasional TV review (speaking of which, the new series of "House" has been a little [a lot] disappointing - that was both a fact and a self referential joke, see?).

As soon as my new credit card arrives I'm going to book a holiday, no really this time, for Billie and myself. We plan to go to Orlando (it'll be almost exactly 10 years to the day since I was there last). I reason that spending all my savings on one last proper holiday, is better than the rainy day I'm currently waiting for. It may never arrive, but if it does at least I'll have a credit card, eh? (I suddenly feel part of a much bigger community!)

{I finally read Cybill Shepherds Autobiography this week, and it was, (dial a cliche alert) unputdownable, I read it in maybe three sessions, which for me is remarkable (see, I just did). It's so honest and frank (er, that's the same thing isn't it?) and unstarry.}  

“First our pleasures die - and then our hopes, and then our fears - and when these are dead, the debt is due dust claims dust - and we die too” - Percy Bysshe Shelley