It was a course on therapeutic storytelling that I had asked to go on. I seen a poster for it in the college holidays and had time to vet it all, look it over on the writer’s blog to check for some semblence of sanity. The college had the same day decided to pick up the bill. Perhaps I would have to review my hatred of certain key people in the organisation who judge people by their spiritual credentials, ensuring that they fulfil certain criteria before extending to them some kind of empathy, or indeed, even greeting them.
I stood around once I had signed in, drinking my green tea and looking out of the open window as others formed into chatting couples and groups around me. I was determined to be standoffish, a writer, as much out of defensiveness, anticipating the social mess I can make out of talking to strangers, something that doesn’t come easily to me, as anything else. Read the rest of this entry »
…Ema and ondrej came soon after, and as is usually the case with me I made a great effort at first, going out and taking them to the local, coming back fairly drunk on the few I had already had before decampling with them to the summer house at the top of my parents’ garden with a couple of snails we raced on the glass table, drinking Becherovka, a Czech spirit.
Soon though I tired of it all. I couldn’t take Ondrej and his constant chat, his incessent questions about English pronunciation, and, just being around people. Read the rest of this entry »
I found the one credit card I haven’t given M to curb my spending and ordered myself some generic Modalert/Modafinil a little while back. I wrote a piece on this before, but my experiment with the drug last time was inconclusive. Indeed, though I recall thinking my head was clearer for the first few days, I don’t remember anything about it at all now. Certainly there were no ill effects. Read the rest of this entry »
I’ve just gone down for a smoke, rolled it while listening to an all-too familiar uninspiring rock song, the kind I flick away from while driving in to work or to go for M, usually flicking through several such desperate to get something out of the moment. I was feeling like I needed one. Needed a break from the computer at any rate having just finished the last post on The Crop. I had two breaths this time before recalling a brief thought this morning, an idea about structuring and organising my life that I have had numerous times before, that I would write down every day the number of days I have been without gluten, without dairy, without alcohol, smoking etc, a simple string of numbers that would not then allow for lapses and those little exceptions and get-outs I give myself, that avoiding wheat, for example, is not unanimously considered a part of an anti-Candida diet, or that green tea wouldn’t count for one day, or that smoking will help me see it through. I stubbed it out and came back up. I remembered too the thought that came to me on driving back from the airport where I dropped off M yesterday for the expensive few days back home she has opted for to get away from things here when I was going for my second fag that evening, tired as I was, that the highs that come from smoking drop down to lows and precipitate them, soemthing I have always known, but rarely acted on. Read the rest of this entry »
It must be five years ago now I started a piece entitled something like “Araf” after the Welsh word for slow painted on to so many of the tight bends of the roads around Snowdon. I was between jobs. Between two of the same jobs, underemployed with my first class honours degree, working in a Wilksons first in my home town and then in Scab City, my university town. I had organised a transfer. Or rather, since I was incapable of doing anything so proactive, so profound was my difficulty with concentration at the time, my manager organised it for me, trying no doubt to earn brownie points. And with a little time in hand I decided to go away with a friend, travelling in Betsy, my first car, a Toyota Corolla I had inherited from my Mum (I have since inherited my second, also Betsy, although not so emphatically, a Corolla identical but for the colour and its prepensity to rust, from my brother). Read the rest of this entry »
1> Rounding on a certain person at work due to his hostile stance when I load up the bus. I have been trying to put my finger on what I dislike about him [discussing same dislike at a peer supervision session] [slamming door of minibus when asked, in a straightforwardly hostile tone the guy has not yet produced, whether he can go, punching minibus walking down to narrowboat to sit, in some takes person in question coming down to apologise… crying now… being tearful in morning meeting and unable to respond or walking out. Key individuals I would like to feel more warm towards me seeing this. Asking kitchen staff if I could see the stock cube box they use to make the soup and the like. Doing so in an apologetic tone, ‘this might seem silly but…’ This after wondering whether it could have been the soup I had at lunch as opposed to the potato and celeriac mash that has made me so dreamy… My immediate boss making another comment about my ADD and me kicking and punching the new partition wall. This after wondering whether his comments earlier today could have had a negative effect on me he said if I don’t pay attention he can’t do anything for me (I had asked for a pay rise, saying I hadn’t received one. He told me today I had received one. I hadn’t checked my pay slips. Nor indeed could I find them.) … Me beating up wall again and going round to pick up students for the Woods bus after crying then splashing my face with water in the toilets. Jaffa asking where have you been? Me, having a fucking shit, now come on.] …for most of the day. Indeed, for the last few days when I have been working down the farm. I could in fact say, he has been one person I have been trying to [crying a lot now after a reverie in which I was queried about the broken partition wall, a workmate asking which student had done it, and me replying I had done it myself, and ‘coming out’ as ADHD saying that our boss had annoyed me by referring to my inability to pay attention, saying he wasn’t likely to do it again, this leading to our boss apologising in the morning meeting and praising me up, something that in the reverie I felt I could not deal with well, walking out of the meeting in tears, this a reflection of a statement about one student in today’s morning meeting, that he takes praise as being patronising] [This missing out a reverie in which I tell my next psychiatrist whom I’m hoping to get a referal to see in a few weeks’ time, that I have not been helped by anyone and have no reason to trust him; I forget the detail of this one].
Read the rest of this entry »
/ one hour or equivalent
> significant breakthrough
~ wavering
< significant hold-up/stall
* prioritised (de facto)
.. slow steady
# external glitch
October 2005
In Progress
Job Searching
Nutrition:
Potatoes not Prozac
Website – autism
Other
Food Diary
HTTP **///////
In the Black ..,..,..
Brick by Brick ~,~,<
Unforgiving Minutes <,~,..
Czech
exercise
Targets
Czech three times a week
