A lot of people come to the weekend, and ask this question because they’ve been so busy, and time has just flown by.  I really can’t say this, in fact, this just feels like another week that has been wasted, even if it all started with hopes of making a fresh start at the beginning of the month.

Where did it all go wrong?

The week before was a bit of a mixed bag, having had a really good run of things for most of the week before that.  Last Saturday was generally a good day out at the cricket, even if England lost, and even if I turned up so late.  On Sunday, I was making some very good progress through various household chores, but suddenly seemed to lose all energy and about 9 p.m. and slumped to bed.  It seems that any hopes of getting this week off to a good start faded after the night of pointlessly disrupted sleep which followed on from this, after I got up at about 1 a.m.

TV – Help or Hindrance?

It feels like Monday soon blurred into Tuesday, and after that, the rest of the week, just went by, with far too much time spent either in bed or watching TV as a way of passing the time and avoiding doing anything which actually required some effort.  One of the bipolar disorder management books  I was scanning through last night actually suggested cancelling the TV subscription, but I guess I’d also have to get rid of all of my DVDs (especially the ones I haven’t watched yet) if I wanted to cut out the TV altogether.  I’m not sure this would really be so wise anyway - TV in moderation is a good way to relax, and if I think back to when I’m usual self, I’m not really that much of the TV watcher anyway, except for occasional fixations to truly addictive drama such as Prison Break. Also, if the TV serves as some kind of numbing during low periods, isn’t that better than having nothing? 

What I really need to do is get back on a decent daily routine, which allows me to do some useful work at the same time that everyone else does, so I can reclaim my evenings for social activities.  This really shouldn’t be that hard, and the more times I say it, the closer I should get to actually doing it. 

This time, it’s all going down here in the blog, so there’s documentation as well as idle promises!

A bit of food poisoning never helps, but..

To add to this week’s general malaise, I was sick on Wednesday, and again yesterday.  I don’t know what caused this, but I’m sure I could find a few suspects in the kitchen if I scratched just below the surface.  However, I really don’t want to dwell on this — this kind of thing happens from time to time, but actually, in all honesty, not that often.  Trying to research a bit more into this, and then work out if there was a particular ingredient that caused this upset, could take several hours, and this time has got to be better spent elsewhere, especially now that I feel like I’m functioning again and returning to a more even keel*.

*At the time of writing.

My immune system can’t be helped by states of lethargy and depression, and I’d really rather fix the latter than worry about a bug, which I hope has now passed through.

Away next week

After weeks of dithering, I have finally decided to join my brother, his wife, her mother and partner in the South of France for a few days, and after that, to finally get to visit Paris, the city which I’ve somehow managed to avoid visiting, despite having travelled to so many other different places around the world. 

I’m hoping that this will give me a chance to refresh myself, although as with last time I went away, I’m not exactly feeling like a holiday is what I need.  A decent outine is what I need, and I am desperate for a break from lethargy, rather than from work, of which I have been doing very little of late. 

Having said that, I should get the chance to visit some really exciting places, and hopefully this will make me feel much more energised when I get back. 

I might also take with me a couple of the books I have recently acquired, and see if I can get some useful advice from them.  In all probability, they will just repackage what I already know, but I’ve always tended to find that if the message is hammered enough times, it will finally get through.

Time to move on?

I’ll have to admit that I’m still struggling to come to terms with the ferocity of the manic episode which I went through late last year.  As someone who had talked so much about the mantra of prevention rather than cure (that is after all what my dad has spent a lifetime devoted himself to), it really was humiliating to end up in hospital, the very place I had put in so much effort to avoid. 

Despite what happened then, the last six months have perhaps been even worse, characterised by lethargy and depression.  This just is not the usual me — although I’ve always struggled to get started in the morning, I’ve usually spend the rest of the day being pretty full of energy and drive.  It just doesn’t seem right that I could have gone from being so highly productive to doing next to nothing, and this still seems too hard to explain to most of people I know. Considering that I am supposed to be a highly resourceful internet entrepreneur just makes this even worse!

Over the last few weeks I have gone through several cycles of feeling some encouraging signs of getting things back in order again, only to find myself rapidly returning to a state of despair and hopelessness.  Of course, I want to move on — nobody really wants to live in a state of permanent malaise, unless they want to sell themselves out as ‘Johnny Yen’, the tortured artist* – and that’s certainly not for me.

*As mentioned by Iggy Pop in “Lust for Life” and the James song of the same name.

I still have a few excuses I like to make to myself, or people I’d like to blame for my current situation, and I guess I’ll elaborate more on that later.  For now, I think I’ve had enough blogging for one evening, and bed might just be calling.

[c-v]

I get up in a reasonable mood, but I still needed a highly indulgent 12 hours of sleep.  After a quick breakfast, which thankfully stays down this time (unlike yesterday), I decide it’s about time I picked up my bike wheel, which has been with the shop for two weeks.  This requires a short drive over to the nearby town, and by the time I’m back.  It is raining heavily, and I have little motivation to get out of the car.  Instead, I find some old magazine to pass the time for half an hour, before working out what to do next….

6:30 p.m.

Shall I go up to the office and try to do something useful, or shall I go to the gym first?  Either of these options means getting rained on, as soon as I leave the car, and my negativity is allowing far bigger focus on this than is really justified.  At the end of the day, what harm is there in 30 seconds of rain, we’re all over 70% water anyway?  Last night, a whole load of new material came from Amazon, and I had a quick browse through each of the books.  One of the recurring themes from both the general self-improvement titles and from the bipolar management literature was to focus on things, which created the greatest mood enhancement for the minimal risk.  It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to work out that exercise has to be very high up any such list, so the gym won the toss.

11:45 p.m.

Going to the gym has certainly helped elevate my mood, even if I only had a 35 minute session.  Normally, I think I go for longer than this, but following a psychiatrist suggestion last week of only doing 20 minutes each day, I don’t want to overdo it.  Having said that, I don’t know if he knows how much exercise, I used to be previously, and I just can’t see any point in only doing 20 minutes.  Sure, if you aren’t used to exercising regularly, and need to start somewhere, then three sessions of 20 minutes each week might get you going, but I feel that I need much more than that, and I think that anyone with an overactive mind who wants to keep them self physically and mentally fit also needs to do the same.  There are several different reasons for this:

Medications such Depakote and Quetiapine have weight gain as a common (but seemingly underreported) side effect. Doing more exercise should help counterbalance some of this problem.
A mind that is naturally restless is always going to be much harder to calm down at the end of the day, so a good exercise regime should make sleeping much more easy.  Last year, I was finding that on days when I did no exercise, I could almost certainly expect some restlessness before going to sleep, whereas I could usually expect to be asleep within half an hour.  On days when I’ve done at least 90 minutes of cycling.  Other forms of exercise, such as swimming, or an intensive gym session, might only require 45 minutes to one hour, but I don’t think that they are as enjoyable as cycling.  I enjoy playing football even more, even though I’m not very good, but I’ve always found it much more hassle to get a game going.
Exercise releases endorphins, which are well known for their mood enhancing properties (also known as a runner’s high).  It naturally follows that a more intensive exercise session will produce better results, as long as you don’t overdo it.

Right, where was I?  Oh yes, next time I do some exercise, it will be for a bit longer.  I come into the office to clean up a few bits, and if I can have a bit of catch up on where the week has gone — but I don’t think I’m going to try to do any ‘ proper ‘ work right now.  To be honest, the week has been a bit of a disappointment, and that’s something I’ll review in a moment.

Missed three alarm clocks — seeing a pattern here?, but still up bright and early
9:30

(To the sound of clapping hands in the back of my head).  This might seem normal for most people, or even half an hour late, but I get to the office bang on 930 — the earliest I’ve got here for a very long time.
10:15

I am realising just how difficult that is.  Looking through my notes over the last few days, I might have enjoyed almost a week now, stable mood, but I’ve overslept three times in a row.  Hitting the alarm clock and going straight back to bed is one thing, but I have no recollection or even hearing alarm clocks this morning.  I had the same problem on Saturday morning.  How can alarm clocks make so much noise, but not get heard?

Somehow, I managed to awake naturally at 8:40, and decided I’d give myself five minutes together, rather than trying to go back to sleep again, and accepting defeat.  I might have set a target to get to the office for nine, but 9:30 would still be perfectly respectable.  I try to take him a little bit of what Tony Robbins had to say about diet.  I don’t think it’s so easy to cut out everything he says, should be got rid of — after all, that includes all meat and dairy products, not to mention a few other things, which should be used to replace these daily staples!  Taking his advice of eating lots of fruit, and starting the day with nothing other than fruit, seems to be a lot easier, so our glass of orange juice first thing, and have already gone through a a punnet each of raspberries and black berries.  I know that Subway will be calling, but even their so-called veggie delight contains two of the big no-no’s — cheese and bread.  I don’t know if it really can be remotely realistic to eat such a restricted diet, but I’m sure there can be some big benefits and making a few small changes.  I just have so much more research to do to get a full understanding of what really is the best food to eat, especially as there’s so much conflicting information out there.  One thing I do know is that getting food intake right isn’t just about maintaining a good physical shape, eating properly really should help me feel a great deal better in the mornings, and this is so key for the rest of the day.

 
4:24

It looks like any fears about getting up without are fully solid night’s sleep or unfounded.  Yes, I was getting a bit tired.  By mid-morning, but I soon perked up after a sandwich and a caffeinated soft drink.  I’ve managed to breeze through around 4000 words of content, so I’m just shy of my 5000 word target, it should be able to complete this and still be on the way by about 5:30.  This really will be an exemplary day, and exactly what I’m trying to achieve every work day from now on.  How difficult will this be to keep up?

4:30

All this might seem like a big fuss about nothing, but I have bought myself down with so many irrelevant details before, and got so worked up about little trifles, that it is better to continue noting down which small changes help, and which do not, however insignificant they might seem.  The whole day can stand or fall on the slightest distraction, so it is important to keep everything as focused as possible.  About 10 minutes ago, the computer crashed, in a way which I’ve only seen it do once before.  I didn’t get it a chance to note down the full nature of the error, but I run a few diagnostics, and I think seems to be wrong.  I hope it doesn’t occur again soon, although I have been having some problems with this voice recognition software, and it could start to get irritating, and this is the linchpin of my attempts to stay on track.

My trip to the market was pretty successful, I managed to pick up loads of fruit and veg, and my mind myself, that in these times of high inflation, there is such good value out there in that market, if I can just get into a good enough routine to go there more regularly.

I’m already an hour into the train journey back, and spent most of it.  Half asleep.  Now it’s time for a little bit of a notebook session.  As with a trip down here, I might not produce that much, but it’s all about quality rather than quantity.  Continuing on from where I left off earlier, I contemplate the advantages of making a fresh start at 9 a.m. each morning, and think about how I can get over the huge mental block that have about actually succeeding in this really quite basic task.

Why do it?  Should be pretty self-explanatory.
Just how much of a boost will this give?  A very massive one
can it be quantified?  Thousands of pounds.
Why so much?  Just look at the possibilities it creates.
So how much I want to ‘ spend ‘ on this?  It’s all about money, it’s about caring enough to get into a decent routine.
Is it all down to Monday — get this right, and the rest take care of itself?  Pretty much — gain start writing some of the most important.
What else?  Not to get too lax towards the end of the week — Thursday morning, and any overlap between Thursday night and Friday morning meets, particular attention.
Why is it so difficult?  Have I done it before?  When I laid it previously, was exactly 9?  How about the start of 2005?
Wasn’t that the intent gave up at seven stop out onto that last few weeks?
So is there any excuse?  Yes — loads — see below:

Excuses for not being in the office for 9 a.m.

• Didn’t have time to prepare the night before
  didn’t hear alarm clocks
  Berks/irritations in bed
  clothes not ready
  don’t have breakfast ready.
  Don’t have the motivation to get to and from work
  I can make it to the office, will be so tired through the day
  I had everything laid out, but it then took me three hours to get to sleep
  I’ve already had too much caffeine today to go to sleep properly.
  I haven’t had enough exercise today.
  No motivation to get up in the morning
  TV to watch tonight
  it’s just too hot to sleep properly
  I still do a lot of chores to do before going to sleep
  there’s too much noise out there (especially windows open.)
  I’m still feeling overwhelmed by this medication

Countering this

• Just get straight up and take a shower
  music at the ready
  visualise — how good will it feel at the end of the day, with 5000 words.  Having been reached, money in the bank, feeling a tidiness.
  Juice
  to produce
  fruit
  positive attitude can carry me through

After last nights, mammoth session, which included over 5000 words and content, divided between some useful commercial content and a major update of Mind Pilot, I didn’t arrive home until 5 a.m., and it was about seven by the time I managed to finally get to sleep.  Therefore, although it is way off the routine I’m trying to get onto, in this context, getting up at 3 p.m. was perfectly reasonable.

4 p.m.

Was anything particularly zero the office before five, or would I be better off trying to get a long overdue bike ride in?

7 p.m.

I chose a bike ride option, and had an excellent three-hour ride, even if I would normally expect to cover a lot more distance than I did.  Possibly, this didn’t matter, after several weeks of being out of it, I was, quite literally, back in the saddle.

I could, and should have got up much much earlier today.  I was always starting to feel awake, just after midnight, having spent almost all of the previous day in bed.  But I just felt he washed out.  Tui comes around, still washed out.  Then it starts to get light, but I don’t think I’ve got the energy to sustain anything more than a bit of reading. 

At last, at six, I decide to get up and have a bit of breakfast.

7 a.m.

Breakfast should energise, but I’m still feeling dopey.  So it is back to bed.  An hour or two a proper solid sleep might have done some good, compared with a half sleep that I had been getting over the last few days, but instead I doze likely before finally starting to sleep a little bit more solidly.  Perhaps around midday.  By about 3 p.m., I’m finally starting to pluck up the energy to get up, and take a shower, but this hardly invigorates me.

4 p.m.

If there’s one thing that I think will help me get kickstarted out of its malaise, then it is the right medication in the morning.  Ritalin worked so well, until the eruptions of late last year, so it isn’t rocket science to contemplate the benefits of having it back.  It just requires one phone call to the right specialist, but his lines are always busy.  Try three more times.  Still busy.  Maybe it would help if I tried making these calls much earlier in the day, but right now, this is easier said than done.  Ritalin provides the very jumpstart, which I need to get me going in the morning, and without this, mornings become afternoons oh so very quickly.

(Thursday 24th July) 1:46 a.m.

At last, I found the motivation to come into the office, and have produced some decent content, having spent a few hours doing the research necessary to manage it.  Now trying to work out whether to go straight to sleep or not.  If is on any kind normal routine, this should be obvious — going to bed at 2 a.m. would already be late, but I have spent the best part of the last two solid days in bed, so I’ve already had more than enough sleep of late.  If I did try and get to bed now, there is a slim chance of go straight to sleep, and be offered a good time tomorrow morning, but it still far more likely that the restless, and that I won’t go to sleep several hours — even if I’m starting to feel pretty tired now.

Perhaps the best thing is to carry on making a few more notes for now — nothing technical owner has, just continued Mind Pilot updates which I haven’t been doing for a few weeks, and then maybe try and hit the sack in another hour or so.

2:02

Posting raw waffle as a blog post – hopefully putting some kind of order into these thoughts. Can always expand on this later. At least there’s something going up there. Now I’ve made it into the office, the day has been quite productive. Just need to get that Ritalin – fast. Really want to make that fresh start next week.

Overall: **—-

Yes, it is 6 a.m., and I’m getting up entirely voluntarily, with no help from my alarm clock — that isn’t set to go off for another hour. 

Even this might sound extremely early, but with my sleep having been getting increasingly out of sync last week, I ended up staying awake through the night on Saturday, and still didn’t manage to sleep much on Sunday morning until the house cleaners had gone at about three. 

I then slept until 9 p.m., got up for some food and to watch Family Guy, and then started winding down to be in bed again by midnight.  I think the crucial reason why I am able to get up so early today is that I have been very careful with my medication.  I’m on risky ground here, but I can no longer afford to take the doses at the levels I have being prescribed — they simply knock me out for too long, and make me waste hours each day to needless extra sleep.  On the other hand, I don’t want to stop entirely, as there is no way I want to risk going anywhere near the territory I was in late last year. 

 It looks like I got the balance just right last night — I had put on a Radiohead album, and was just about to sleep by the end of it.  Although I didn’t sleep as heavily as I usually do, I still slept solidly until six, and these two periods of sleep seemed to balance quite well and make up to the sleep I missed the previous night. 

I’ve been up plenty of times lately at 6 a.m., but mainly due to mix up sleeping hours or insomnia.  To be getting up at 6 a.m. and feel fully ready for the day ahead was a completely different experience, and something I haven’t felt for a very long time.

When I’m getting up in such a bright mood, there can be only one soundtrack to this, so I stick on the Best of James.  This starts with Come Home, which might not sound like the most appropriate track for wanting to get out and about bright and early, but I feel like I’m ‘coming home’ to the kind of mood and routine that I have been working on for so long.  Next comes Sit Down, but of course I am wanting to dance all over the place — except that I can at least enjoy this energy while sitting down on my bike in the not too distant future. 

As the stereo belts out ‘ I swing from high to deep, extremes of sweet and sour ‘ I am thinking there right now I am swinging from deep to high, extremes of sweet and sweeter, but an energetic bike ride should keep this energy under control.  If there is an aviation analogy to how I’m feeling, then I am like a little commuter jet with four Boeing 747 engines attached to my wings.  Perhaps Oasis put it far more succinctly — I really am feeling supersonic – where’s that gin and tonic?

8:30

After revving myself up on bagels and grapefruit, I charged off on my bike, and completed a 21 mile circuit in pretty much dead on an hour and a half. 

As I was heading towards the edge of town, there were two main circuits I could have opted for, the shorter 40 mile one, or the longer one I went for.  The shorter one would be given a better chance of being at the office for bang on nine, but the longer one has some much better downhill descents, so I opted for that one instead.  I still managed to leave the house at dead on nine, and thanks to excellent integration with the local bus service, was in the office at 10 past.

9:10

Well, this is how mornings should start, in fact by far and away the best start to a morning I can ever remember.  So good in fact, that I didn’t bother competing my ‘from the cockpit ‘ notes, and went straight into doing some proper work.
 

5:30pm

So it’s now just gone 5:30, and I feel more than ready to go home, having felt like I’ve done a very solid day’s work.  I would say that my previous ‘business as usual’ will involve finishing at about 10 p.m., without feeling like I was remotely near doing everything I wanted to do.  I can always have more ambitious targets, but my main one at the moment is to write 1000 words of useful content each day.  By the time I have finished this brief update, I should be well over 2000 for the day, and I’m already well into my A-Z update  for my website (well, completing ‘A’ anyway, and the first letter is always the hardest).

Today hasn’t just been about content, there have been various technical updates have had to do on page templates, numerous e-mails and MSN chats I’ve had to get sorted, as well as some financial stuff.  My biggest concern now is to carry on with the excellent start that I have made to the week.  I think tonight’s fish and chip night, but I’ll enjoy a slow stroll through the park on the way home first.  Then it’s definitely off for a well earned pint at the local, and an early night, so that I can arise bright and early and ready to repeat the same again tomorrow.

5:50

About to leave my desk now I’m winding down, but today really has gone so much like a dream that I’m wondering if I can keep this momentum up all week.  So just a quick note to remind myself that with a big concert on Wednesday, a trip to London on Thursday, and then the start of a week in the sun on Sunday, keeping spirits high should be easy, but the challenge would be to stay in focus organisationally.  Having a tidy house should certainly help with that, but hopefully I’ll be able to work on making the office a bit tidier either tomorrow or Wednesday.

It’s now clear that I’m not going to get to sleep on the first attempt, and a missed approach procedure is coming on.  Wah-Wah starts as quite a peaceful album, but it’s now coming towards the end, and with the start of the track Honest Joe, I’m feeling a massive rush of energy.

Eventually get to sleep after second album – can’t remember what it was at the time of finally taking this post from note to blog form a few weeks later.

Saturday 6:05 p.m.

I finally got up and had breakfast.  Not quite sure why I needed a full 12 hours sleep, but this one is definitely down to lack of physical, not mental energy.  There might be a fine dividing line between the two, but I am raring to go, and continue on from where I left off yesterday. 

Now that I’m starting to put everything down in type, I’m hoping to have enough reminders to myself so don’t forget the basics which make it easier to get up and stay organised.  So the first of these is to restock the upstairs fridge with small cans of Coke — this might not seem like the obvious breakfast drink, but as I don’t drink tea or coffee, this is my best source of early morning caffeine (note — since writing this, a trip to the local Tesco’s had has been made, and three boxes of said cans have been acquired).

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.

Depression has no relation to explicable factors

Right now, I have no real logical reason to be feeling down.  I may have had a serious outage at the end of last year, but that was almost 6 months ago and I should be well out of the shadows of that episode by now.  Business is going extremely well — last week we had a record number of visitors at just over 80, 000, and where due for an exciting new site relaunch in mid-July.  On a personal front, I’m living in a house that is more organised than ever, at last we got to the stage where all the major rooms in the house were completely free of clutter — something that should feel like quite an achievement for someone as disorganised as myself!  Next week, I am part of a group of competition winners who are heading off on affiliate future’s annual Barbados trip, which should be just as good as it was last year.

So why have I been feeling so down this week?  To be honest, I just don’t know, I can’t really explain it.  All I do know is that I want to move on, and develop a reliable way of getting through each week without having to waste so many hours in bed, because I don’t have the energy to get up.  It’s not as if I don’t have work to do — there are plenty of things I could be getting on with related to running my main website (Flightmapping.com).  However much the business is being carried by my brother Mark and colleague Dan, I want to get back in the driving seat, but that date just doesn’t seem any closer.

Right now, I’m stuck in a typical, but completely unnecessary, vicious cycle of making a very late start to the day, finally getting into the office after everyone else has left, and leaving no time to even consider a social life.  This then brings on even more feelings of loneliness, further increasing the cycle of depression.  This much I can explain, but there is still no reason to be completely flat out for two days this week (yesterday and Wednesday).  In fact, on Wednesday morning, everything was going very well — I’d slept extremely comfortably the night before, had gone up, had breakfast and stuck on some energising music, but for some reason reached a stumbling block when I can decide whether to go to for a swim (will the goggles leak again), go for a run (do I have the energy for this) go for a bike ride (why haven’t I got that spoke fixed yet).  Instead, I just crawled back to bed.  It all sounds so pathetic to say how the whole day can collapse on one tiny detail, but this is the reality of what I’m dealing with at the moment.  Motivation can come and go in an instant, and am at least buoyed on by the hope that when I pull out of this, I will feel better than ever, but that time still seems a long way off at the moment.

For now, much as I have a great deal of other ‘ proper ‘ work to be getting on with, I’d rather spend time on my blogs, as I feel that publishing these sorts it gives me a much greater impetus to get and then keep spirits high.

Mood Arsenal

• Lists — isn’t this the first?
• Music
• food
• exercise
• people
• images
• inspirational stories — books, TV, film
• inspirational rumour?
• Photos walls?
• Quotes
• remembering what worked before
• how do I want to feel in one hour?  How do I want to feel this time tomorrow?  At the end of the week?
• How can I help someone today?