Just give me one fine day of plain sailing weather...

Sad Sundays and un-medicated clarity.

Sad Sundays - Sundays bring me to a place that I think I have pegged. Its the brink, of a new week, a new set of issues and bullshit and work and life and in the same place the exact same week as the last and the several hundred before that. I have to sit here and think about everything that's coming, everything I have to do and tackle and take on and deal with and I automatically start sorting it all into piles and imagining various challenges that may or may not appear. And as I walk among these piles, quickly turning into mountains, I am reminded of how alone I am in this so called struggle, and all of this anxiety and planning and aloneness begins to drag me down. I cant breathe, I cant think, I can no longer see the light at the end of the tunnel or any of the big pictures I have painted inside my head. I am lying on the floor in a room full of troubles I have made for myself complaining of a fat stomach and a lonely heart. And its happened again, I have completely lost my point. Fuck. Sometimes writing helps, sometimes it just makes me feel like I've lost something else I once believed I was good at.

I hate happy, talented people. Mostly for their happiness and their ability to just be good at stuff. That probably makes me a bit of a bastard. I remember not being like this you know, I can remember being happy and not this crazy, I can remember conquering worry and all the things that now consume me. I can remember being free, unburdened by the knowledge that I am currently a pathetic wreck of the human being I want to be.

Shoot for the moon and land amongst the stars. Be Better. Let nothing hold you back. Accept nothing less then what you deserve.

This stuff is plastered across the internet and saved inside the file I have aptly named Project Happiness. Motivation for the unmotivated. Funnily enough it reminds me of Mulan, the training scene in which that are told to retrieve the arrow from the top of the pole, and when they go attempt to climb in unimpeded they are handed two weights with the titles of discipline and strength. At first this seems to make the challenge harder until Mulan uses both strength and discipline as tools to help her make the climb and retrieve the arrow. That's generally how most people live their lives, we carry the weight around that can accept. Some people carry morals, some honour and dignity and those people generally thrive. But those of us with anxiety and or depression we carry more then what we want. We cannot simply drop these weights we must tackle every day carrying them and everything else we believe in.

I cant concentrate tonight, im sorry. Once again this has turned into something I didn't want it to be. I hope this doesn't make me lose you, if I could ask one thing of you, it is that you keep reading, the next post and the one after it when they come. You don't have to call me or text me or care just keep reading this. I need that. If anything, to survive.  

Give me one fine day of plain sailing weather...

As usual it has been an eternity since I have posted on here. That has been largely to do with my brain shutting down and rebooting in depressed mode, the hard drive spins up and makes this constant sighing noise and I have to click all the icons seventeen times to get anything done. But I seem to finally be getting some functions back, like the one that lets me hook up to this ridiculous blog and spit out all my crazy and the one that lets me change the font.


Plain Sailing Weather - Frank Turner


I have a lot of things that I think express who I am in some way; Prints, books, Movies, CDs. This is all stuff. I think the monks got something right when they gave up all their worldly possessions for inner peace and a little inner knowledge. I say this because I can quote almost every season of scrubs and I know what type of cauldron Harry Potter bought in the first book of the series but I cant give you an accurate description of myself from the inside even if you give me a good solid hour.

(I love how people describe time that way. Solid its so completely ridiculous but it defines us so well as a species)


But! back to the point, I'm starting to think our penchant for nicknacks and artwork and all of those things that make us happy when we see them are really just a reflection of who we are as a person. Which is kind of obvious I know but when you zoom out from that it brings what seems like a crazy complex life down to simple terms. Life, getting older, collecting stuff is just finding more and more things that express parts of ourselves. You chuck something out because you have outgrown it you are showing the world that part of you is gone. You grow up and what you believe changes, your taste changes, your values change and with all of that so does your stuff. And with that comes the idea that maybe if you are misunderstood or feel like someone just doesn't get you, share your passions with them. Show them a piece of your soul you purchased of Ebay and let them into a world of you that maybe they couldn't see before.

So with all of that in mind I have a challenge for you. Tell me who you are, straight off the top of your head and then, take a deep breath and have a good long look at the stuff around you and then have another go at telling me exactly who you are.

If you have managed to stay with me until this point I tip my oversized and clearly fake hat to you. I know sometimes my psycho babble shit can be tiring but sometimes the writing isn't for you, in fact most of the time its for me. I hope I have made that pretty clear many times before. To say I haven't been well lately would be the understatement of the year. I went darkside very quickly and I scared myself how far down that rabbit hole I went. It almost got the call an ambulance levels, when you are afraid of yourself there is nowhere you can go to hide. The good news is that I'm on the mend for once and finally starting to take some big steps forward. I have officially started my diet, did all the grocery shopping today and set myself up for two weeks of stomach kicking excellence. If you work with me and your reading this, no I wont shut up about it. Because if I do I'll stop caring and then I'll quit and go back to getting fatter and the cycle starts all over again.

I have also come to accept my permanently single status as somewhat of a good thing. I spend to much time working on other people as it is, mostly because its a distraction from what's happening inside my own head. I have also come to the decision that the fact I cant find someone who will put up with me for more then five minutes probably has something to do with the fact that I've been a miserable bastard for the better part of a year. Ifsofacto the more I work on me the happier I am, the happier I am the more I smile, the more I smile the more people get to see my handsome face instead of my cranky one.

It feels good to be back here, I've missed it but it is getting late and I have a long day tomorrow of kicking ass and being awesome so to you who have made it all the way to the end I say goodnight and farewell, hopefully it isn't as long this time before we meet again.

Peace.

I'M STILL HERE

Rid me of all sense and senses, take away the joy of touch, taste, sight, sound and smell. Lock my mind and soul in a box and leave my heart be for everything in these days reminds me of you. Every moment of happiness, every second of smiles brings me back in time to a place where you actually existed, a place where you weren't merely a painting of my own imagination but a thing of substance, something I could grasp with both hands and pull towards myself.

If you have found yourself here, contemplating which woman I would speak so boldly of then I would tell it plainly to you that I speak not of a woman at all. Nor of a man for those of you who would immediately take such a simple trip of thought. No, it is not a person but it was an idea. An idea I had so perfectly created in the eyes of my mind that it had truly become a physical possibility, it had grown depth and weight and a gravity that would constantly pull me to it would my mind slip away for the merest of moments.

The obvious question then of course is, what is the idea?
The more interesting question and I would suggest more important one is, how did an idea escape you?
For surely once an idea is had then it is yours forever is it not? It can be brought out and changed and polished and recreated time and time again whenever you need it? This is true for most men and most cases, but alas it is not for mine because this idea that I created is not so simple that it can be owned, it is an idea that is holey unique, this is an idea with wings and as anyone who has truly flown will know, with wings comes freedom, and with freedom come the release of any and all shackles, even those of the mind.

This is the story of Project Pegasus, of how it started, how it fell and how it found freedom from within...

Where was you?

Her twin lip piercings shone white under the industrial light of the utility room. They followed her mouth up into the curve of her cruel smile now as she muttered "bring it on you bastards."  Egging on her courage as much as she was the slowly shuffling forms of the undead with her smile and her command. She had backed herself into a corner, incorrectly identifying a storage cupboard as the door to the fire escape. There were only three of them but she preferred to run rather then fight, less chance of getting blood on her leathers that way and less chance of dying. They were nearly at the doorway now, only a foot away from where they needed them to be. She would almost feel sorry for them if they weren't trying to kill her and feast on her still warm corpse. The weapon slid out of its holster with ease, the metal cool against her grip, she held it comfortably in front of her, the butt and trigger in one hand the grip in the other. "boom" she whispered quietly to herself as the three ragged figures all entered the doorway at once. The shotgun rang out like thunder and two and a half heads were gone. Buckshot. Big fucking buckshot. She would have smiled were there any joy in living these days. The world was gone and it had taken happiness with it. 

She made her way out of the industrial district pretty quickly after that, there weren't many infected left in this part of the city but they were attracted to real noise and seemed to be able to sense their own truly dead. They moved in packs, attracted to the smell of the living, any groups left alive bigger then fifty were soon found disbanded or very very dead. They had hunted humanity to near extinction, the only options left were extreme security, extreme secrecy or constantly being on the move. She had lived on the road for too long, the company of a shotgun and a warm leather jacket hadn't done her sanity any favours. She knew she must find others the day the voices in her head had made their way to her mouth and started speaking aloud, accents, afflictions and all. She had done well to cure herself of that when she had joined Middleton's "resistance." A group of twenty strong survivors living out of some old storage units. Insanely strict and a little overbearing as a group but mostly harmless as long as you had a pulse. They didn't appreciate her little trips as much as she'd like but they were thankful enough when she found what they needed which of course this time she hadn't. Socket wrenches, a full set. Tyson their impromptu mechanic had lost his running from a pack of  the undead. It wasn't the most obscure thing she had been asked to find but it was one of the harder things, most stores and shops had been picked over many times by now so she had to move further and further out from the compound each time.

She was halfway back when she saw it. Sixteen of them in total, shambling forms huddled in a group in the middle of two intersecting streets. Some clothed some not. Years of walking had literally worn the clothes off them. When you did find them this wasn't an odd way to do it. Without real stimulus they simply stood, waiting for some indication of the living, movement, noise, Anything to give them a direction to run in for their next meal. She crouched low behind an old brown station wagon, planning her path before them, studying there forms and looking for any unknown threat. "URGATT" screamed a large brutish looking zombie in the half light of the afternoon causing shivers to rake down her spine. Two others shook violently, then turned and ran down the street, directly towards her. They hadn't heard her, they couldn't have, she thought quickly to herself, unslinging her shotgun for the second time that day. What were they doing? She flattened her body against the wagon and waited, two barrels loaded and ready should the worst occur. They grew closer, their bare dead feet slapping roughly against the broken asphalt, now only metres way from her concealed position. They brushed harshly against the rusted metal panels of the wagon, coming around the sides and continuing on. They hadn't heard her, that hadn't even seen her as they thumped down the main road. It was almost as if they were responding to the others noise as a command. She almost laughed, what a ridiculous idea. They didn't communicate, they couldn't talk let alone give commands. She let the two runners grow out of sight before she moved, the larger group still standing in the intersection, silent and unmoving. Manoeuvring herself around several abandoned cars she made her way to the building line at the edge of the street, moving three blocks down before turning back to the direction of the compound and heading home.  

Home. A strange idea when most of your friends and family were dead and still wanted to kill you. But she had one, if that's what you'd call it. A storage locker, big besa brick walls and a single roller door lockable from the inside and out. It was about as safe as things got in today's world and she had made efforts to make it her own. Band posters and clothes everywhere, an old army stretcher in the corner and a ragged armchair opposite. "ah, home sweet home" she said sliding off her pack and into the chair. She organised her haul into groups on the ground next to her. "four tinned meals, some more out of date antibiotics and a case of shotgun shells, nice" she thought to herself quietly. She needed rest, patrol duty for half the day and then her trip into Middleton had taken its toll. She stood slowly, easing her weary body out of the chair and then stripping down. Loading the last two of her batteries from the night stand into an ancient CD player. It had one speaker missing and most of the buttons gone but it still played her music. The others sneered at her for it but she always believed it was the little things that kept you sane. The music did that for her, fast, loose and loud. It drowned out the thoughts of the undead and the tension of the day, as loud as it was it helped her sleep. The compound was safe, the storage unit was locked. Her scratched and worn Korn CD echoed off the walls and kept the noise out as she slowly fell asleep.

She was forever getting in trouble for not checking in. They all knew she was back, anyone who walked past her "unit" could hear the music seeping through the walls but it didn't matter. Protocols were protocols. Blake was an ex army sergeant who always seemed to forget the army had disbanded three years after the mass infection. He was their leader of sorts, making the small day to day decisions for their troupe and taking his place at the head of the table when it came time for group meals and major meetings. He was also the one currently tearing her a new one for not informing him of her return. "You are one of the few we send out alone! You are supposed to be setting example to the new recruits, show them how it's done and how to stay alive. Not to slink back in without a word and hide away in your cave!"
He smelt like pickles. "Yes Blake, sorry Blake" she could barely keep her eyes from rolling
"So you should be, you have two extra shifts of patrol this week, and I expect it done without complaint. "
He smelt like pickles and he spat when talked. "Yes Blake" she answered again.
"You're dismissed"
She walked out without another word. It was almost time to leave this hellhole, she had had enough of the false democracy and bullshit rules. With the rations and ammo she had stored away she could leave when she wanted, and Blake had just given her the perfect excuse.
I finally decided to post this after I realised I was never going to finish it. It was fun to write but it was never really going anywhere, so here it is for all of you to see and hopefully comment on. Positive or negative, some feedback is always better then no feedback.

Like the dead sea...

Keep away. The lighters, the woman, the feels, the people, all the things that drive me crazy. Lock me in a room and leave me there forever. Its what I need. Time? Maybe. Peace? Definitely. Some quiet in the one place I cant turn the volume down.

So do you turn the music up to block out the screams and the confusion or do you turn it off and sink into the insanity that waits. A bit overdramatic Lee. Definitely that too, its what I'm good at. I've tried explaining it. maybe you get it, maybe you don't, but ill never be able to believe anyone truly gets it. Maybe one, but they are a long way away from where they need to be. That's selfish and still true.

Paragraphs are hard. This isn't going to flow the way I want it to so each time it stops in my head I'm going to end it and start down another track before I get really bogged down.

Its go time people, Lee the great motivator! that's what they'd call me if anyone actually felt inspired by the ridiculous shit I sprout at work. I love the idea of getting every geed up for work or anything really. Caffeine and chocolate does it sometimes but I wish words were enough. One of them told me to stop being so energetic today, I told him I wasn't energetic I was keeping myself moving, that's how I have to work. the same as it is here, if I get bogged down I end up somewhere else, somewhere dark and fucking scary and I cant function there, so I roll my sleeves up and work as hard and fast as I can, maybe not physically because at the moment if one thing isn't broken it feels like another will be soon, but mentally I'm always on the move in that place. always jumping form one task to the next and then back to something I picked up and forgot about. Its not a perfect system but its the only one I have that works at the moment. Hopefully after tomorrow I'll start getting better again, either way there are tough times ahead. I need to push harder and just cop whatever comes my way. Its going to get interesting quick but I've always been able to handle it in the past.

So the infamous A.P. just rang and distracted the hell out of me but I'm trying to reign the wild horses now crashing through my headspace in.

An oddly good friend of mine recently made me realise some things I've been doing when it comes to any form of romance in my life.

"Can I say one thing tho? You are too available. We don't want dicks. We just want someone to treat us like we are different. The things you are doing for these girls is nice but a girl has a way of sensing if a guy is doing something because there is a crazy connection or because the guy just does this for women. Dave treats me like a princess and says he would do anything for me...he would do anything for me...but he would do anything for any woman he was dating...he falls fast despite personality's. A girl shows him love and says a few nice things and he would follow them to the ends of the earth. And that's easy to sense" - A person who is way way way smarter then I am.


and my exact response to this was

"Fuck

...

So that's what's going on.

...

That makes a lot of sense.

...

Goddamnit"

 

Of course the information blows, because it shows that I am the problem... which actually didn't come as much of a surprise as I wanted it to. But in a way it is also good because if I am the problem I can fix it.

Which brings me to the other thing I keep telling myself, I need to work on me. Its one of those things I think people say a lot and never stick the but the problems and evidence are stacking up really quickly that I am causing the majority of my own problems, which is okay, but only if I am working to fix them.

 

Its funny in a really dark way how similar working on myself and joining the army are in my head. What happens if I find I am too broken to be fixed? I'm functional but by no means am I happy. The same thing occurs to me for the army, what if I am simply not cut out for it?

One of my favourite pieces of internet are says fear makes the wolf bigger. You are damn right it does, but what are you supposed to do when the thing you fear the most is yourself? What if I'm not the man I want to be, what if I cant be that person? What if the world throws its will against me and I shatter into a thousand pieces, if I break down again. Become this husk of who I am every time I'm challenged in my head.

When life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Well I'm shit out of sugar and I've got more then enough lemonade to drown in.

Warning: author completely full of shit.

                                 Warning: author completely full of shit. - Bigford Smeckler's Cool Ideas

I lose my place quite often, I will write something brilliant up in my head, I'll turn it on the lathe and polish it until its smooth and shiny and then I'll lose it to the next piece of shit idea that jumps in the way of my thought train. I wish it didn't, I want a vault for all the brilliant ideas that I would write out and an auto save function so I never lose out on the tiny bits of progress I make in this life.

I have been being more honest with myself lately. Trying to sort out my bullshit from my real shit and convince myself they I can actually tell the difference. Its a hard thing at the moment as both mountainous peaks are showing signs of collapse which will almost certainly end in my own demise due to lungs full of crap instead of oxygen. I recently achieved some form of a goal as you may have read, I passed the are you smart and healthy enough tests to get into the army, which to my former reckoning would have given me access to clean slate and fresh playing field for my emotions and life goals. You have one mission, get you ass moving and your stomach shrinking. Push, push, push. How I convinced myself it was ever going to work that way I don't know. It doesn't, just in case that wasn't clear. There are still two mountains of shit that I need to scale before I get where I need to be to make this work. They are big, they are shaky and they smell like three month old hobo vomit. its a little graphic I agree but if you cringed then you get the point. I don't have climbing gear, I have mentally stability, there are no ropes only confidence that I can get the job done. There is no falling back on anyone this time, the only person that can fuck this up is me.


Step 1 - Hide under blanket
Step 2 - Continue hiding under
blanket for the rest of time

Which brings me to the second shittiest realisation of my life. It doesn't matter who is here and who I have and who cares about it all. This, all of this is on me. The rest of my life is on my shoulders.

"Well" you say "Lee that's just what being an adult is about."

No. Fuck you. See getting a job, that was on me. Finding a place to live, that was on me. Doing the washing, that's on me. BUT and it is a big but, they were problems of a repeatable nature. If I didn't get the job at JB then I would have somewhere else, if I didn't get the house I did I would have found somewhere else to live. THIS, this is the rest of my fucking life. This is the one shot I have to get where I want to be going. "So go out there and do it?" Ah no thanks, I'm going to stay here and hide under my blankets until life starts knocking on someone else's door. See in my head I'm out there kicking ass and taking names, I'm doing all of the things I need to be doing right now in the moment, and then I get home and I sit for a moment in silence and I can hear it. That little voice in your head, the one that tells you, you are doing something wrong. You are killing your life one day at a time.

So why write it here? Why not just change it if you have noticed this thing about yourself? Ah well there it is, the real conundrum laid out in plain English. I am a stubborn fool. I deny and lie and cheat and fight with my own brain until I am comfortable sitting on the couch for the weekend smashing out Watch Dogs eating ice-cream and pizza. So I plaster my bullshit here. For all the world (so like six or seven people) to see, and more importantly for me to read. Over and over and over again until I have got it all sunk it and learned and shit. Until I am ready every day to get on my bike and ride to work instead of driving. So that the packet of chips in my cupboard doesn't look more desirable then cams and a slouch hat.

I am never entirely sure how this will affect me. Some days it brings the biggest ups, it lets me think nothing for a few moments and have peace and silence in my head and other days it brings out all the very best fears I have. Tonight it has done a bit of both, it clears me up and then shakes me down, the end scene, song and credits bringing with them a torrent of eclectic emotions. Sadness, loneliness, freedom.

                          We are infinite.

I have had moments like that, moments of where the world fades away and everything is still alright. moments that played back would appear in black and white with the perfect background music. Where nothing matters, not even what is on screen only whatever it is you are feeling right in that moment and to make it last as long as is possible. I miss those moments as they can very rarely be made, it takes a special place in my head that I cant get too at the moment. It needs a key that I no longer have, lost somewhere in the house of my mind. Not stilling, or missing but lost and I know I will find it and I wait for that day. Where my confidence is not a fleeting thing and my emotions are stable enough to walk on again. I am limping most days and running the rest, but I would give up the run if I could just have the chance to walk tall again and trust myself. I don't see that coming around again soon unless I can kick off this rut I seem to be standing in. Gym, work, home, work, home, work, home, gym, home, work. It is a bad loop with too much work and not enough gym. The pattern up stairs does not look much better.

I am growing tired of my own duality. I want to be the better half but the weaker one holds my strength for ransom. He has no demands only the want to see me fail and finally have an excuse for my own impending depression. I would cast him aside like a poorly fitting organ if he wasn't sown into my insides. I hope I get through this alive, without more burns or insanity, without hurting anyone else, without losing myself again.

All the right moves...

I wonder about timing a lot. about how things happen at random, always random but often seeming so very not random. I think that is an important part of human life, knowing that things aren't on purpose but believing they are anything.

I think the quit smoking campaigns can be applied to any part of your life. This whole every time you quit it gets a little easier idea. Its simple brilliance. I wake up every morning thinking today is the fucking day, lets get in and smash it. Get it done. Simple as that, and each day I do it gets a little easier to do it the next day and the next. Motivation is a bar of soap in the prison room shower, if you let it slip you are going to get fucked in places you don't like.

My point tonight is that I have a new ridiculous goal. Something completely absurd, but I don't care. Its about time the completely ridiculous started working out for me, I have been dealing with its negatives for so long I think I've earned some positives. You see my Internet friends, I just got out of Captain America - The Winter Soldier (Its ridiculously awesome and everyone should watch it... twice). Chris Evans of course returns to his role as the Cap with a figure one could only describe as just a little awe inspiring. He is one of the only people I have ever seen that manage to look that ripped without looking the slightest bit grotesque. Now whether it is movie magic or not doesn't matter, that is what I want. I'm about three centimetres taller than that man and without all the muscles my shoulders are just as wide as his. There is no reason what so ever that I cant manage that. It wont happen tomorrow, hell I can tell you now I wont manage it in six months. I'm too lazy. in a week I will give up. but in a month I'll be back, and in three months I'll be back again and I will keep fucking pushing until I have the things I want. It doesn't matter if its the army or the girl or the body or the money, it honestly doesn't matter what it is because in these moments, where my whole consciousness is focused on achieving my goals. I am unstoppable. I am the motherfucking batman of my life. I will swear to me and anyone who says I cant do it, doesn't know me and doesn't want to. I have a lot of people to show the things I will do and I think I'm going to start right now.

That is where I will leave it tonight.

It is not the falling down that matters, it is simply the getting up. no matter how hard you are hit. No matter how badly you are broken. I will be standing tall tomorrow. Will you?