Goodbye 2023 Hello 2024

 Well, here we are again.  Seventeen years on and whilst the Cancer is gone and I'm looking back in vivid flashbacks at other stuff in my life, it's easy to see why New Year can be a line in the sand and you can move on from one thing to another.

Damn it though I feel sh1t at the moment.  A whole series of things playing around.  I find my car isn't compliant with some twisted megalomaniac of a mayor of London who has brought in an Ultra Low Emissions Zone right out to the borders of London.  It's £12.50 per day to go there and where I go, surrounded by fields and so on it's London!  REALLY!!! So after having spent a shed load on my car on its service including the new elastic band thingy that synchronized the engine components and stops them from exploding, I'm a bit stuck.  My car is an SUV, it is an all-wheel drive vehicle and if you drive around here, you'll soon find out you need the traction and the power.  Obviously, this bloke hasn't set foot outside his natural habitat of central London.

Then to top that I've got the entitled, narcissistic idiot who wants to charge me for all of his business problems that he's brought down on his head through sh1t planning and has no idea how to deal with real people or negotiate.  Every time we get near, he does something more ridiculous than the last time.

I've lost confidence in myself as a DIY handyman - I don't seem to be able to do anything right but maybe that's bad luck, I don't know, maybe I'm being a bit hard on myself.

I'm having flashbacks to certain periods in my life and incidents that arise in a random order sparked by things that I am encountering and that's bizarre as they are vivid daydreams.

Then there's this feeling inside that is melancholic and I feel nauseous with it.  I doubt myself and my mind to make rational decisions (although don't make irrational decisions).  It's this lack of confidence and not wanting to do anything that's so annoying.

I've got out a few times but that was a struggle and the weather has been awful so I've only been able to do a couple of jobs before getting soaked in the rain and wind that seem to have been around for months.

I'm hoping that I can push my way through all of this, I'm rereading my Eckart Tolle book, A New Earth, and hope that I can once again get rid of these inner demons that are caused solely by my inner pain body and ego.  Easy to say isn't it.  Last time, it was like a switch and everything was lifted.  Of course that then led me to leave my wife and set off on this journey.  

I should be enjoying my retirement and I should be doing a lot of things but my head isn't letting me do that at the moment.  I've given up Social Media, I don't watch the news and I watch very little TV as I am sure they aren't helping me.  I prefer to go sit those out if I am watching TV and pick up my reading or listen to music.

2024 is around the corner, the same challenges will be there, I just need to work out how I'm going to break this cycle of depression and anxiety.  I think the Black Dog needs to go away pretty soon and I need to work out how I'm going to break free of its claws.

Christmas Over, A New Day Has Begun

 I feel a lot better now that Christmas and Boxing Day are over.  As usual, it's a big anti-climactic event.  I do get down a bit at this time of year, always have done but more so of late.  I haven't hosted by my own family since I split up what must be 11 years ago now.

I used to host around 14 for Christmas Lunch and it's nice now with just a few of my new family but it isn't the same and I don't get to see my children or grandchildren much around Christmas.  It shouldn't play on my mind but recently I've left that chink open for the pain body and ego to run amok in my head which really hasn't been pleasant at all.  

The thing is you know what is going on in your head but stopping it is actually quite difficult to achieve.  I've picked up a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle again and I'm around halfway through it.  Somehow, I've detuned myself down to about half my anxiety levels of last week and I am intent on doing that some more.  It's hard work to get back to my real self, taken over, as I am, by stupid thoughts and burning resentments and other nonsense all being cooked up in my brain.  I have no doubt that I'll get past this and the only thing I am not sure about is quite how I'll achieve that.

Today, my other half is out and off to London for the day to see the decorations and other stuff, she does this every year and that's her thing.  It interests me not at all.  So I have the house to myself and I can just sit back and relax at last.  Just me, my thoughts and perhaps I'll get the fire on and just enjoy a day of leisure.  

Whatever I do, I intend to get my head back into a good place and not allow these thoughts the room to nag and annoy me.  Obviously, you have to keep your guard up against this stuff coming back to haunt you.  

Snatching Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory

 The idiot, which is a nice way of referring to him, has excelled again today.  So I finally talk to a Solicitor and it looks as if we settle a way out of the problem the idiot has caused and blow me down. the silly bugger goes and doubles down on demands which take us all the way back to where we were two years ago.  What an arsehole!

I went for breakfast with my mate, that cheered me up, as did this morning's chat with the solicitor but I'm feeling a bit down now that the silly sod has gone and done something stupid again.  It just prolongs the agony when we had planned to actually get it all wrapped up.

I'm now combatting my ego and trying to stop it beating me up because I can't control these events and it will be what it will be.  Using this too will pass isn't working with me at the moment.  I hope that the Christmas period will cheer me up a bit.  I need to take a complete break and then start anew.  I hate dealing with stupid people but this guy is arrogant, narcissistic and totally without honour and I find that difficult to deal with.  His idea of negotiation is to make up imaginary costs and invoices but it won't work with me.  

So getting back to the mundane.  Somehow I've got to rise above all of this :-) Wish me luck.  

I hate Black Dog

 Damn it I hate Black Dog.  Luckily my friend is coming over and we are going for Breakfast at a local Cafe which should help my humour and attitude, he's a great listener and he and I go back a long way, were both "ill" at the same time with different Cancers but were both in Hospital around the same time and had long slow recoveries.

What I dislike is how ill I feel all the time.  I feel slightly feint and shaking too.  My hands (right mainly) shake now and then and I can feel a sort of twisted feeling in my stomach.  I absolutely know it is stress and I know that it isn't anyone else doing it other than myself.

I feel a deep dive back into the "A New Earth" Book to get the ego under control is necessary.  

It can really just stop you in your tracks and just stare away and not get things done.

The Trouble When Dealing With Idiots

Being an INTJ can be somewhat difficult.  All my life I've had to deal with people who are, well, to put it bluntly, f*****g stupid.   The best one to wind me up is to actually not be stupid but to treat me as if I am and boy, does that boil my piss too.

I'm dealing with a precocious knobhead at the moment, a full-on narcissist who thinks that what he has done and how he is acting is perfectly acceptable.  He lectures me on commercial and contract law and rattles on about how he's got all these problems and how he's going to make me pay for it and on and on he witters about this and it's his very own actions that have brought this about on himself.  Now he's cornered he's thrashing out with the most ridiculous stuff you've heard and he doesn't seem to realise what a complete bell-end he's making of himself.

I dislike that inwardly I'm reacting to this and it's affecting me when none of it is my fault or my making.  Additionally, whilst the bloke is a complete idiot I can't really tell him that either.  The best strategy is to point out that he needs to sort it out, not me but a narcissist really doesn't see it that way - all his problems are me and yet I've actually done nothing.

So, I am trying like mad not to let it affect me whilst I'm in my current strange state of mind.  I really don't need him and his pettiness inside my head.   It's easier said than done when he is such a blithering idiot.  I'm playing a strategy as you cannot reason with people like this and slowly backing him into a corner where he must work out what he is doing.  He has no limits on his stupidity and only by exposing him will this go away.  

Anyway, another thing floating around in my head when I really don't need it.  As if I haven't got enough silliness in there already :-) 

This Too Will Pass

 This Too Will Pass.  I know it will but I am not in a perfect place at the moment.  I've a neighbour from hell who wants us to sign up for something we don't want to and he just gets angrier and more extreme when we tell him NO.  A narcissist is always difficult to deal with and his sense of entitlement and one-sided opinions are tiresome as you can't actually deal with him, I've tried twice and he's a complete arse as he doesn't do a balanced analysis of a situation.   Money is a passing issue too and it's Christmas coming up and I've scaled that back this year.

It's been that sort of year.  There's no one thing that I can put it all down to but a series of events and situations that are affecting me.  I absolutely know that these things should not affect me (if that makes sense) for what are they?  They are life's inconveniences thrown my way and instead of saying this too will pass I'm wearing these troubles and my head is in constant movement attempting to make sense of it all.  For that is also part of this, it just doesn't make sense and it plays on my mind as such.  I really don't need to do this, all the situations are out of my control and they will be what they will be but I find this difficult.

So today I need to work on strategies to avoid these thoughts and to also stop sitting down and analysing these and writing lots of notes.  I spent 4 hours last night going over in my mind the crazy sh1t that the narcissist sent through and I have still come up with the same answer, he's lost the plot and I need to stop reacting to it.  I absolutely know this but my head throws doubt in and the Ego is getting louder, so it needs to be destroyed again.  There's a book I've mentioned many times by Eckhart Tolle called A New Earth that really sorts this out and so today I will go find my copy and re-read it as it makes so much sense and if I can harness the lessons from there, I will get rid of all this nonsense I am carrying around in my head.  Last time, I got to a point where almost instantaneously I got rid of all the demons in my head and then saw a lot of things clearly.  Sure, it resulted in me leaving my wife of 32 years and getting a divorce but at least after that trauma things were clearer and better.

I must remember that in all this pain (and it is painful - the stress tightens my chest and increases my tinnitus. My hands shake, I feel nauseous and so on) there is a way out of it and that's the present moment.  At this present moment, right now, is this idiot attacking me, are these things actually affecting me now?  The answer is no of course.  I just need to stop my head thinking about it all.  I know what is happening, it's happened before, it doesn't make things easier to know that.  Anyway, This Too Will Pass.