Slow But Steady Progress

 You know, it isn't that bad I tell myself.  I know people who are in a very bad place indeed and so in reality I am doing OK.  I'm Climbing out of the ugly nasty place I was in but it is still an effort I have to say.  The mind is a bastard sometimes when it gets into self destruct mode.  I dislike it in as much as I should know better and it's happened before but the relentless doom mongering is quite annoying to me.  I suppose it is catching it up to it's old tricks before they can get a hold on you.

I've had quite enough of it these past few years.  The worst scar of all is the claustrophobia, it is irrational of course but nonetheless it feels very real and it then brings on either an anxiety or panic attack.   I can of course take action if necessary on that. I can walk out of the room and excuse myself.  

So I rebuild slowly at my own pace.  The coming weeks will be the test.  

Retirement - Crept Up On Me - I Feel Ambushed

So much of what I am going through is down to suddenly retiring and unlike me, not having a plan to see what was coming and how it would affect me.  That added to the Legal (not Legal) shenanigans and the disgusting treatment from the business "partner" all added up to tip me over the edge.  Granted it's not that bad but some of the journeys through the depression have been horrific.

So here we are, retirement, what's that all about?  It was interesting to note that the ex business partner has started up a business on his own now.  That should prove a very interesting exercise for him now as he starts to deal with US and UK laws and attempts to get to market something that I know will not work.  If it was live for 6 months, got just 200 downloads in a 2 billion user market place and not one of those converted to a sale then as you can imagine, his work will be cut out for him.  I suppose I should wish him luck but I think I should wish him Karma instead.  He will very soon realise what level of administration will be required together with the legal gymnastics.

Funnily enough, it doesn't worry me and I'm not going to make a fuss about his new venture, he's been throwing money at it for many years and he will throw even greater sums of money at this and I imagine end up bitterly disappointed too.  He never was interested in the marketing and research I did nor the social media and IT side.  But as I said, not my problem it's all his now and it will be an education especially as he will now need to pay for the services that I did for free over the years. 

So I'm free now and free to do pretty much what I want but I have no plans at all and that is somehow, in and of itself, also stopping me making plans!  What does it all mean and how does one go from a full on working life to one of retirement and "leisure"?  I have no idea at all.  I just know I feel old, see the grim reaper on his way for me, am afraid and have lost my self confidence as well as any reason for existing as my purpose (yes I know it really isn't my purpose) disappeared with the closure of the business.

It is strange times as I come to terms with it but I had not expected to be shelled out like I am now and for it to have had such a drastic effect on my mental heath and well being as it has.  At least I am now able to realise this and start to reassemble my life as such.  There are things to do and be done - it just needs me to do them and not to worry that on a certain day when it is chucking it down with rain like today, it won't get done and I can do something else.  It's also OK not to be OK.

Today's task is to rationalise my clothes and throw out all the old ones, sell the unused ones and see what I have got (or not).   

The (Very) Slow Road To Recovery

You, of course, do not wake up and find yourself cured and back to 'normal' not at all.  Like you don't lose weight in a few weeks, it took a long time to get to where you are and it will take a long time to recover back to acceptable (not normal) weight.  Such that you are not asshamed of your body as such.

The small steps matter though and this morning even though we had lashing wind and rain overnight I slept through waking just twice and only once of those to get up as the other was a with a very heavy rainfall pounding on the roof.

This is a small step for me and one that I can point to as an achievement of sorts.  It's so much better than a week or two ago.  I hope that continues.

Apart from a beer a week ago and a non alcoholic beer I am now around 50+ days alcohol free. That in itself is also a great achievement.  I fancied a beer last week and so had one and I wasn't actually that bothered by it.  That is another small step forward and much as I might miss it, it is now occasional rather than a daily occurrence.  

I feel better in my head and is my physical body.  My clothes now start to hang loosely about me and my trousers can suddenly want to fall down.  

So these small steps can be viewed as steps of progress for me encouraging further efforts and achievements.

The Good And The Bad Afternoon Out

 I noticed a few things when I went out and getting ready and driving to the venue were fine.  Meeting my friend and having a chat and explaining how I was feeling was good too and because it is a large venue, it was OK to go into it.  However, just before starting it was actually quite strange as I suddenly came over quite strange and didn't want to be there.  My breathing quickened and I felt the rising, let's call it anxiety attack for another word but it perhaps lasted no more than a few minutes as I deep breathed through it.

The meal was OK and driving home was better this time than it was last time too.

Overall it was a success and I got a good amount of sleep too. But, I was up about 45 minutes earlier than normal having slept through with one disturbed part where I was making some strange noises in my sleep but as soon as I adjusted I was able to fall straight back to sleep.

So a bit of a win in the first place but I did feel a little disturbed and uneasy.  So a little more work is needed.

Going Out Day Arrives - Will I Venture Out?

 The day has arrived and I am going to take myself off to the meeting and see my friend and hope that I have a good time and leave some of this "worry" behind.

My Cousin's wife called from NZ last night to say he had passed away on Monday.  That was a shock and my other cousin had ended up with Dementia and another has been sectioned after trying to end it all!  That was not a great telephone call across the world at all.  It was very sad indeed. Doubly sad as my daughter is due over to meet them in the New Year on her travels.

I guess that it put an idea in my head that all of my troubles are as naught really and that perhaps I can come around to accepting where I am.  It should be a salutary lesson in my head struggles.  Today I am getting rid of a load of "stuff".  A charity van is on its way to me and I have just packed a load of things up that have sat doing nothing for years and they can be reused and raise funds for charities.  They are doing me no good so they can go.

Now to sort out my clothes for the next one - I have a load of tropical clothes and I am not likely to use those or indeed fit them going forward! 

I am looking forward to going to the meeting and hopefully regaining my confidence in such situations!  Let's hope it starts well!

Not Sure What Is Wrong Overall Even Though I'm Getting There

 Don't look back they often tell you except once in a while it is probably worth a short review.  I did try and work on documenting my Bladder Cancer Journey, bringing close to 20 years into a book and it actually made me feel quite ill.  It dragged up old memories best forgotten, pain relived is not good and I wonder if I am partly carrying around that - I abandoned it when I got to the nastiness of the business issues the tribunal and so on.  Who needed that?

At the moment I am worried / anxious about going to events and meetings.  It sounds strange but it no longer interests me, fills me with dread and I just don't fancy it at all.  I have had this before of course and in July I got to one of the meetings and it was so hot that I could not go into the room.  I can of course choose not to do that.  It's irrational but claustrophobia is back and I dislike that more than I can say.

It plays on my mind but, of course, I can choose not to go.  This Wednesday I am going as a guest to a meeting to try and resolve that.  I know the guy I am going to be with and it is a large Lodge room and a large dining room so I should be OK with it.  It does take me right back to my early days with Bladder Cancer treatment when I would just get all anxious and want to leave the room.  A friend would help me breathe through it.

I need a plan for this and I'm not sure what to do about it at the moment. 

Pass Through Melt Down - That's Better

 Irrational fears I suppose - although it felt real but I finally had a full on melt down and OH was very supportive and the chat we had was needed and it resolved some (not all) of the problems.  I don't know for how long but we both have "stuff to do" and we can sort it out together we've agreed.

So that resulted in a better feeling and a good but not entirely uninterrupted sleep - a mouse throwing itself in a trap didn't help at 5 in the morning I guess! 

So I'm feeling a bit better and the heaviness has gone and I feel a little empty inside so that much of the angst has melted away.  Let's hope we can build away from there.  

Thought - They Came Back To Haunt Me

 Yet again, my thoughts overtook me.  I probably wasn't ready to go to bed and was a bit flustered and awake and so I lay awake for at least an hour, possibly more.  The thoughts then came and overwhelmed it's pretty fair to say but I managed to get about 5 hours sleep when I woke up I disturbed OH and so felt really bad about that and then couldn't really settle back down again and so here I am sitting at the PC and ruing life.

I know that it is unfounded in many ways but there is some background in what is going on in my head.  Normally I can get past this but last night was not to be.  I need to gird my loins and sort this out.

And So It Proved

 I'd worked out what I was struggling with.  I know what it is, I can identify it and yet, boom!  It knocked me for six yet again.  These waves of melancholy - I should be able to identify them and control them but sometimes they just overtake me and make me feel sh1t and then after an hour or so - I feel better.

OH suggests it is because I am intermittent fasting so I perhaps need to look at that and see if that is so.  I perhaps need to go back to eating in the morning more often.  I tend to eat breakfast only on Monday and Tuesday and the rest of the week do not eat until after noon or even as late as 2.  I'll have to see whether that might be a factor! 

Back on an even keel again now and let's hope that lasts a while. 

Retirement Adjusting Is Difficult For An INTJ I'd Say

 A lifetime of planning, managing and doing suddenly comes to an end and almost overnight life has completely changed.  There's no routine other than getting up and going to bed I suppose.  It's as if I've woken up in another dimension and the structure and order and deadlines and milestones no longer exist.  As an INTJ I've been thrown way off course.  

Things that were structured and planned are now abstract I guess?  Transitioning to having little formal structures in place is hard.  Understanding it is harder too.  It shouldn't be but if you weren't planning it, this is all a surprise!  I hadn't planned for retirement because up until March I was still working and made the decision to terminate it all - I had specific business goals to this - an exit strategy for the business but nothing for myself.

Two years of emotional turmoil too have had to be dealt with - the aggression from the business "partner" and legal challenges plus the disappointment from that.  The self fulfilling prophecy of someone who destroys their own business as they did also stacks up the negative energies.

Today feels quite different somehow.  A little light has switched on to suddenly build away from.  There are no milestones, schedules, metrics, spreadsheets (I do like a spreadsheet) reports, deadlines, it's all gone and I miss them.  I miss them a lot.  Perhaps I am grieving for them?  It's the Kubler-Ross ( The classic five stages of grief—introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying—are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance). 

I've been through the last two for sure not sure I was denying it but there was anger, anger at the way I was treated.  Not so much bargaining but depression and acceptance which I think is just coming now.  I still feel that "something" is about to happen but in reality what can that be?  Everything is ended and there's no point but, of course, people can be arseholes and it's trying not to worry about it (INTJ planning and risk managing blah blah) which doesn't do any good anyway as we know.

Well let's see how I get on from here?  It feels a better day today and so let's move forward and see if things change for the best?

When You Kind Of Know What The Matter Is BUT

 There is little you can do to resolve it.  Not without risking it all or really upsetting someone else or both or other.  In reality, it is a combination of things that are giving me problems.  

I say problems when of course that is probably not the case at all.  Neither are they "opportunities" either!  

It probably isn't a complex problem(s) but it affects or is caused by or both someone else.  Therein lies the catch of how are they going to react to it all?  Knowing them, probably not well at all.  No one wants to have their "faults" exposed and certainly not as the cause of my anxiety and happiness.

It's a complex problem and it doesn't help that it has built up and I have allowed it to, over many years. 

Quite how I go about this is worrying me, it's a bit like a minefield or one of those fables where the animals (all mortal enemies of each other) have to cross the river in a boat and you have to work out how they manage to do it without attacking each other :-) 

Wish me luck!

The Demon Drink - Perhaps

 I can see now why my father and other "older" people I knew only had a half or maybe a pint in total.  I had three beers last night and when I found I took longer to go to sleep and woke up twice I presumed it was because of that.  No hangover, no headache but certainly after 45 days of not drinking, it was a shock to the system for sure.

I had other stuff on my mind like going to see my daughters and granddaughter this morning.  The youngest has been away on a three month exploration of Canada and the USA as a solo traveller.  She has had a great time and just missed the big flash flooding at the Grand Canyon but was in the middle of the flash floods at Zion national park!

I feel sort of weird about seeing them all I havent seen one for about a year and the other for three months. 

I was pretty much OK yesterday but for sure the alcohol screwed with my brain a bit so I know the answer to that. 

Weight loss has been steady, a good inch off my waist and my neck, wrists and legs are losing the weight but the belly always takes longer to resolve.  It took a long time to gain weight and a long time to lose it too.  Too many want to lose weight in a week or two.  Anyway, hopefully it will continue and I will get further benefits from it. 

Well I Wan't Expecting That Retirement

 To say that was unprepared for retirement is a colossal understatement!  I have been knocked sideways by it for certain and in many ways, added to the horrid way I was treated by my supposed business partner it has all added up to feeling pretty down in the dumps and very very miserable.

It all sounds great does it not?  No more work, do what you like, your time is your own and so on.  Yet in reality if you aren't prepared for that level of change in your life, then it hits like a hammer blow.

I'll explore this more shortly but today I drove OH over to get her car and as usual roadworks workmen put diversion signs up in the totally wrong place and so we spent a while circumnavigating to get to our destination. But, that gave me a little time to do a longer drive home and just take it easy, no rush to get back, stopped off at the shops and bought myself a few beers.  It's been 40+ days since I last had one and after that drive I felt I deserved a beer as a reward.  Let me see if I enjoy it or not.

What has happened is I feel a lot better having got out of the house for a while and so I am sort of happier than I have been for a while.  Not so uptight I suppose and I just realised that I never planned for retirement other than the monetary side of course.  They tell you to sort that out which I have done.  Sorted out the Will, LPAs and so on.  I can spend a little time now I think just getting used to this retirement malarkey as of course, all sorts of deadlines and so on no longer exist and the reminder is "It's all in your head Mr. Tweedy!" needs to ring in my ears.  It's all in my head but these thoughts and problems loom large and it's not as if they are real is it?

Surely I have better things to worry about.  I need to spend a bit of time rebuilding my life and perhaps feeling better about myself.  

Partly Successful - Is There Such A Thing?

 I slept well waking gone 6 which is pretty good in my books and I thought I'd be able to drop back to sleep but no, of course not.  I was working on my breathing and whilst I was relaxed, thoughts kept arising and I'd dismiss those, go back to breathing and again some trivial thought would arise and so after about an hour of this I got up and here I am.  It will only be a few minutes until the alarm anyway.  The crazy thing is I feel tired and I'm yawning to go with it!

It's a bit of a nuisance for sure but it's a lot better than just a few months ago where I was plagued by the bad thoughts.  In some ways, I still am but I can work through these albeit not always.

OH was taken unwell again yesterday and that too is a worry.When trying to get an appointment at the Doctors she was told to use the App (or rather her son was).  I feel that our GPs have lost the plot as she has sight problems!!!  Who are these heath care professionals? 

I lost all respect for them during COVID and afterwards.  They really aren't fit for purpose any more.

Another Good Night's Sleep - Gradually Feeling Better

I managed to go back to sleep and could have slept past the alarm clock too.  That's better and a small part of the problems I've been facing is back under control.

Not everything is, there's still keeping control of the Ego/Pain Body to manage and I am doing OK on that but still need to work on it.  If I can identify what is happening I can control it.  The mind/brain starts to catastrophise the situation and you need to catch that quickly.  Bring it back to right now.  I have visions about not being able to cope in a situation and yet that situation is a month off, it hasn't happened, it's unlikely to happen and worrying about something that hasn't happened and is unlikely to happen isn't a good use or my time.

That's the current fight to get over, that and now living with the loss of my working life.  What I knew for all these years has gone.  Perhaps I am grieving for its loss?  Life has a purpose if only I can now transition to retirement and enjoy it.  It is yet another learning process that has to be lived and journeyed through.  I thought I had it covered but obviously not.

Sleep Returns To Almost Normal - A Little Hope

 That was a good night's sleep, at last.  One disturbance when OH got up and so I chose to as well and managed to fall straight back to sleep, a disturbance around 6 but back to sleep and when the alarm went off I had a cheeky 10 minutes more.

I did get up with a bit of a start as if expecting some sort of action or prepared for something but that went quickly.  Imagine if you will a deadline or expectation of some sort of action required and it felt as if I needed to meet a target or undertake some sort of action, right then.  It did go as quickly as it arrived.

It's about a year ago that I launched the App and had the run in with the business partner and two years since the whole thing kicked off and the de-stabilising affect this had had on me has been massive.  I think I have always been too giving of myself in business and to be betrayed was a massive destruction of my being.

Anyway, this morning has dawned with me feeling a lot better and not with the nagging of the little voice in my head.  That will no doubt arrive sometime today but I feel I can sort that out today and not let it all get on top of me.  I've lost weight, I feel OK inside but want to lose more and it has been around 45 days without a drink and I have no desire to have a beer or a glass of wine at all.  I am down a notch on my belt size and that makes for interesting times as my trousers are at that slipping down stage.

A little hope on the horizon, some of the main issues are still present but I hope to tackle those gradually, it isn't going to happen all at once I know. 

Nag, Nag, That Voice!

 I'm in a strange place this morning.  I did quite well with sleeping and managed a full 7+ hours and then tried to go back to sleep but the nagging little voice came along and whilst I can deal with it some of the time, not all of the time.  So there was a little fight between the Ego/Pain Body and me. 

The problem is that it is a constant nagging feeding doubt and sadness and anxiety into my life that does have an affect on me.  Irrational as it is, the constant dealing with the voice in my head, can be wearisome and get me down.  When I realise what it is, I can deal with it.

The optician said I had eye floaters and now they've turned up, that too is making me feel down.  I can deal with them somewhat how I deal with my Tinnitus and that's another ongoing thing.  It can be in the background but not always.  If I pay little or no attention to it, then I can happily just get on.

However, I am concerned about this current phase of not wanting to do anything.  That's very concerning I have to say.  There's a dread of going anywhere especially if it involves being in a room like a Lodge room.  I need to snap out of that if at all possible.  I know nothing will happen to me but it is the irrational fear that is now part of it.  By association it pulls me up worrying about something that hasn't happened and is unlikely to.

The struggle continues but it isn't overwhelming me like it has done.  I can control it but I just need to be more alert and catch the signs early then I can deal with it.