Following on from my earlier post about how I was feeling extremely low this week, things seem to have perked up over the last few hours quite considerably. Putting my previous thoughts into type was certainly a great start, and then a nice Thai meal with friends and family, bumping into a former work colleague in the process, has put any thoughts of woe out of my mind.
When things are going well, decision making time around 1 a.m. is a very simple process — be thankful for the day that has passed, and knock off to bed. The worst things are going, the harder this is to do, especially as a day lounging in self-pity in bed is almost certainly going to be followed by a restless night. Today has been a mixed bag — although I had breakfast at a reasonable time, it took until 3 p.m. to finally get going and leave the house. This might be the time on a Friday afternoon that most people are thinking about packing up for the week, but compared to the previous two days, this was actually quite an early start!
Unfortunately, the lethargy continued as I tried to go for a swim, but instead went up to the pool cafe and spent a good hour reading the paper. Normally, I don’t bother with newspapers, as I can’t see that much benefit in getting bogged down with a daily minutiae of current events. I can get the daily snippets from the news headlines and ticker tapes, and if I want to find out what’s really happening, I can always check an online reference source for the juicy details. However, when I’m in lethargy mode, I will usually end up spending a good hour scanning through the different news channels, not to mention watching the same dramatisations recycled over and over again on the History Channel or National Geographic. Today’s paper indulgence might have left me nicely opinionated about the David Davis resignation, but this will only end up with generating another rant elsewhere — hardly top of my priority list right now, but at least it is keeping those grey cells ticking over. Unfortunately, the lethargy continued when I finally decided to go down to the swimming pool. Having fallen for a baguette to accompany my paper reading, I needed to give it a bit more time to settle, so I opted to go for the jacuzzi before having a swim, although once I made myself comfortable in there, I again couldn’t be bothered to leave. By the time I finally did get myself out, I could only be bothered to dip my toe in the water, deciding it was too cold to have a swim. This might mean reasonable in an outdoor pool, but the leisure centre in question is extremely well heated. Normally, plucking up the energy to have a swim is hardly an Everest conquering task, but when the lethargy has set in, it seemed like enough of an achievement to get there in the first place, let alone actually do some lengths.
As I was saying, the time around 1 a.m. is usually very straightforward, when I’m back on a normal daily routine. Tonight is going to be a tricky one. Trying to go to bed too soon will be like trying to land a plane with full tanks of fuel — just as the plane will be too heavy to stop, I’ll end up being restless, and twitching all night. Simply sitting down and watching TV is going to feel like passing time for the sake of it — just like I have been doing for the other nights this week. The only way forward tonight was going to be to go back out again, an attempt to ‘land’ a little bit later. By the time I had dropped my brother back in Warwick, it had already gone midnight, and my local pub had closed its doors, but I did at least manage to sneak a quick pint in one of the pubs round the corner, even if I didn’t feel like staying. Coming here to the office just seemed like a much better idea — firstly because a 25 minute walk in each direction would finally give me some exercise for the day, and secondly because I was finally feeling like I had enough worthwhile stuff to write down. This might seem like a bit of a verbose description of one very uneventful day, but hopefully it gives a first ‘picture from the cockpit’, and provide some idea about what I’m hoping to achieve with the Mind Pilot website.