Sunday 5 August 2018

A Life In The Year

Hello dear readers!

It’s been a busy old week.

I’ve gotten upset at buses, drunk entirely too much gin, driven to Chester and back, sampled afternoon tea, and had a lovely dose of a drug that leaves me feeling like one of those cartoon characters that’s just been run over by four cars, a steamroller, and a marching band.

Yup, it’s been busy, and it’s been particularly wearing, and at this time of year especially, that is something to reflect on.

It's A Date
The last few weeks of July and the first couple in August are always a period of the year that holds special significance for the Seated Perspective tribe, and the reasons for this are a complete mixed bag of mixed up mixy-ness.



On the one hand you have Myself and my lovely wife, Tina, celebrating our wedding anniversary (28th July) and myself celebrating my birthday (10th August). So far all good. Then you have a couple of less auspicious anniversaries. There is the 23rd of July which is the second anniversary of Tina suffering a functional stroke. Then there is the 19th of July, which is a year to the day since I received some equally bad news.

That was the date that I was told I have MS.

Change My Dear...
The date itself doesn’t stick in the mind if I’m honest. In fact I’ve just had to check with Tina that I was getting it right which, when you think about it, is a little odd. Saying that I’ve never had a great head for dates and am slightly infamous for forgetting birthdays. Sometimes I’m surprised I remember my own.

Anyhoo, it’s fair to say that both these events have had a profound and lasting effect on our lives. From a work perspective, Tina has had a change in job (to one she loves), and a reduction in hours, to try and lessen her stress levels, and hopefully reduce the risk of another attack. Physically she’s not too bad, with some pain and loss of mobility in her left leg being the major lasting symptom. Once something has happened once though, well I think you become just that little more wary of it happening again.

As for me, well, the last year has seen perhaps the biggest changes in my life to date the chief of which is my current status as a work-shy, benefit claiming, jobless, feckless, scrounger-off-the-state. 

To put it a little more succinctly, I no longer have a job.



(Dis)Like Buses
It’s taken a little getting used to, not that I think I ever properly will. I’ve worked since my late teens, you see. Pretty much constantly; and it’s always given me that structure to my life, even when working shifts. The decision to give it up was harder than I thought it would ever be. The decision to not go back (so far), even harder.

This week, however, firmly puts the lie to any thoughts of returning to work at the moment. It has, as mentioned, been a reasonably busy week, but it’s not been all that busy. Yes there’s been a long drive (An hour and a half each way). Yes there’s been a particularly frustrating commute (A bus, that picks you up at a certain stop, apparently terminates about six stops before that on the return journey meaning that there’s a 45 minute wait… to get back on the same number bus. Yeah, it’s beyond me too). And yes, there may have been a surfeit of alcoholic beverages (the result of that particular experiment was that I like gin. It does not, however, like me). All of that would be reasonably normal though, and there would be a 40 hour working week on top of that.

The Moving Finger
No, I think, when looked at with cold hard logic, such a routine would be beyond me at the present. The last year has highlighted this. It takes ridiculously little to make me ridiculously tired. Coupled with the challenges that I already face as a man with Spina Bifida, and a wheelchair user it is a bridge too far. It’s time to back it up. Time to look, perhaps, for a different route. A change to the old routine.

I’ve always enjoyed this. The act of putting words together in a way that might occasionally form sentences and impart meaning. I find it strangely compelling, oddly fulfilling. Of course, being me, I also enjoy avoiding it and finding something (anything?) else to do. Concentration has never been my forte, it not even been my thirty, and given a task my brain will naturally start to wander to the point of… Oooh Shiny!

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, the search for something to replace the working day and the problems caused by my butterfly brain, that was it. Well, I think I might have a solution to both of these. Something to occupy me, to add routine and structure to my somewhat freestyle existence and, at the same time not be too tasking. I’m going to write a book.



The Write Time
No, stop laughing. I know. It's hilarious, ridiculous, and unlikely in the extreme, especially when you take into account my only slightly passing acquaintance with grammar, and rather scattershot approach to punctuation. In truth, though it's something I've always wanted to do and it is, in fact, a project I actually started a couple of years ago. One I was always too busy for. One I've always put off.

Now, though, with literally nothing better to do, the time could not be more right. To that end I’ve set up a schedule. Two sessions a day. Six days a week, 300 words a session, and I’m going to try my darnedest to live up to it, despite the siren calls of the telly and the Xbox. I'm going to utilise Twitter to try and keep me honest on this, and I have, of course, written this, confessing my ambition to one and all, or possibly, with this blog's readership, just the one (thank you so much for reading). Making me accountable

I might never get that bucket list item of seeing my name on the spine of a book ticked off (without a bit of sticky backed plastic, and a blind eye from the staff at Waterstones, anyway,) but it gives my days that structure, it gives me that something to do, and to keep on doing. It gives me a goal to set out for. A road to travel and I think that, for the moment at least, that could be enough.

Until next time...

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