Every Glove That Laid Him Down...

I hate to say this, but I'm not in the happiest of moods again right now. I really don't like blogging about such topics, because I don't want to come over like I'm some sort of mental case, nor do I want to chase readers away. After all, we've all been at parties where someone's been sitting on their own looking rather unhappy, and what have we done? We've all avoided the person. We're there to enjoy ourselves, aren't we? Well, in the party of the internet, I think I'm that person at the moment. I'm not sure if it's the comedown from London, or winter just taking it's toll again, or whether it's just the fact I feel physically wrecked at the moment, or what it is - but I'm not feeling too good right now.

I've been hibernating a lot recently, and that's probably because of the lack of sleep that I got when Groupie and I were in London (no - nothing like that! Get your mind out of the gutter!! It was a twin room, for a start!) Monday in particular was a hell of an experience at work and I just about managed to get through the day with the tiny amount of sleep I managed to snatch Sunday night. And with hindsight I think drinking a half litre of wine that evening wasn't the best idea either... but there you go.

Physically I've been feeling pretty bad at the moment, walking around like a washed out rag. My knees were really sore on Tuesday, and I've been getting nosebleeds again - one came on when I was riding home from work today, for no apparent reason! And I've not exactly got a positive body image at the moment either. I was having a shower, and afterwards caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror - and thought "you're really not attractive at all, are you?" I've felt this for a while to be honest - having looked through pictures of myself it's rare to see one that I'm happy about. Usually I look drunk or fat-faced or really ugly. When I first started social networking my avatar of choice was the 1950s BBC test card, and it took a lot of soul searching to actually post a picture of myself up when one of my (female) followers on Twitter asked me what I looked like.

I'm not particularly proud of my appearance right now - and I know that sounds really shallow, but it's the way I feel. It's not helped by the fact that mentally I still think of myself as about 19 or 22 or something - and there's an obvious discrepancy between that and the age of the guy I see in the mirror, and that's just going to get worse as the years go on.

Maybe I should just get myself in shape, or maybe I should lose a couple of kilos or so. My weight's been on a sort of V-curve during this decade- I started it about 70kg or so, which is roughly where I should be, and started losing weight for no apparent reason till I was down to about 57kg. I eventually got it all back though, and it was nice to stuff my face with pizza all I wanted without worrying about the side effects! Now I'm about 73 or 74kg - maybe slightly high, but I'd rather like to tone my waist up.

Not opening the curtains doesn't exactly help, does it? But I really don't care about that any more. I don't particularly want to be confronted with the view outside, being what it is...because it isn't a pretty sight. Much better to concentrate on the inside of my little house, which I can make look much nicer. Except it isn't - it's a bit of a mess right now and I need to tidy up - but I've not felt up to it recently, I'm too tired, and that doesn't help me either!

I'm a bit of a news junkie, and that doesn't exactly help matters right now, as the world is in a hell of a state, isn't it? Groupie's always wanted nothing to do with newspapers or the TV news, and when I asked her about it, she told me "they always tell you the bad things about the world". I'm beginning to think she has a point... the credit crunch, the recession - or possibly even depression, some commentators are now forecasting - and the rumours that jobs are going to be cut at my workplace... it's a bit of a black time right now, isn't it? Like the 1970s, except I was too young to care about such things back then.

Anyway, I've rambled on enough. Hopefully the next entry will be happier. I sometimes think I shouldn't mention these things here - but one of the reasons we always think the past was better than the present is because (apart from the really traumatic experiences) we tend to forget the bad things and concentrate on the good, and so we only remember the good things about our past. I don't want to do this with this blog - if I'm going through a bad patch, I want to write about it, because maybe in the future when I read this back I can take something from the experience.

Someone posted this track to Twitter (via blip.fm) and it seemed somewhat appropriate right now...

SIMON AND GARFUNKEL - THE BOXER
(from the album "Bridge Over Troubled Water", 1969)