I Suppose It Is Normal

 Friday's anxiety was, as always, soon put to the back of my mind, once I got to the meeting, met with some old and new friends, settled in and relaxed the anxiety evaporated and I was able to put it all behind me and I was among friends and the stress fell away.

I am certain that this is a process you have to go through when you retire from the world of work and in my case this awful experience of being blamed for someone else's bad decision making.  I don't think I have gotten over that properly yet and it will soon be over as the business will shortly be dissolved.  Perhaps that can then be "put to bed" and I can move on?

It's fair to say that there are many things that I could be getting on with and slowly I am making a start.  I've gotten rid of all my business books and a load of spare gadgets that I frankly never used or haven't used in the 7 or 8 years I have been here.  The contents of the books are pretty much available online and I wont need them anymore so someone else can benefit from them now.

Likewise, gradually going through things that I will never use again and disposing of those will give me room to breathe too.  My film scanners, projectors and the like haven't been used properly for years either and I think that I can probably sell those off along with other bits of equipment used when I ran the film and scanning business.

So that is a plan to do a gradual disposal of things that currently just gather dust.  It's going to be harder for me to work on other areas of being retired.  I just need to work on them and realise that things will improve but not at the speed I want them to.  The disturbed sleep and the crazy sudden emptiness of no longer being "busy" all need to be tackled but I imagine it is the same for everyone.  It's the potential to waste what I have now that also plays on the back of my mind.  

It will change albeit not as fast as, or as complete as, I want it to.  Patience and slowing down are required. 

Due Out This Evening And I Am Anxious

 I shouldn't be but I am a little anxious, I can feel it building a little bit and it's been like this for a number of years.  I am going to a meeting, not far away perhaps 15 minutes drive.  I'll be with people I know and it will be all pleasant and interesting and hopefully not as warm as last year when we had one of the lads faint on us!  It should be fine, no stress.  I might have a little job to do but again, that's not a problem either.  So there isn't a reason for me to be stressed and there is room (for my claustrophobia) so there's no crush and so on so I don't know what I am anxious about, there's the little matter of driving there and back but again, it isn't too difficult really.  

I've got other meetings coming up too - May is the busiest in my calendar and I'll be paying ULEZ at £12.50 a throw which apparently makes it OK to drive into London albeit I'll hardly be in London!  Then I'll only have a meeting in June and July to go to and we get summer off.

This anxiousness is strange though because I'll enjoy the meeting and the dinner afterwards so it's not logical to feel like this at all really.  It is what it is, once I'm there I'll feel fine, settle down and enjoy it.   

Progress A Few Steps Backwards But Mainly Forwards

 It is all a bit strange - getting a new phone and navigating it's nuances was just annoying as they put all sorts of adverts and nag screens in but a google search and I was able to turn most of the annoying stuff off.  AI also helps when you ask for step by step instructions how to achieve something too.  I've put my effort into building custom birthday cards for people I know and I am delighted that I can ask AI to build bespoke cards for me.  It adds a personalized touch to the occasion and I hope it is appreciated too.

I've just received some of my supplements and I now have a regime where I have quite a few vitamins and minerals every day.  I hope it helps keep the Doctor from the door.  I started taking vitamins in 2000 although I had been taking some basic Vit C and D before then.  Now it is a cocktail of additional things including Iodine.  I feel quite lucky that I do not have any signs of arthritis which my friends appear to have or any other problems.  Sure, I've had Bladder Cancer of course and when younger problems with my ears and whilst I have hearing aids and hearing definition inserts I find I only use them occasionally.  The Tinnitus is manageable but can on days cause more annoyance than anything else.  I have the occasional problems with my knees from a cricket accident 30 years ago.  That's it, aches and pains but not requiring replacement joints or anything else and I hope that I will continue to be free of such things.  

I must lose some more weight over this coming summer and get out and about more as I feel I have been stuck indoors for years.  I'm not sure what stops me from getting out other than the habit of being in.  

There are a few things left for me to do before I am free of the business commitments in as much as I need to finalize the closing of it.  Then it needs to be archived and be put away for 7 years.  That leaves a couple of things that I must do in admin terms and then I can continue to make progress towards retirement.  There are still the occasional moments where I catch myself wondering what am I doing looking blankly at this screen or desk, they are becoming less as I work on moving forward and putting all the crap behind me - finally!

New Phone - A Bit Daunting

 I finally had enough of my old phone rebooting itself and so I got a new phone - bigger more powerful but of course there's all the setting up and re-logging on and security to overcome.  But it has a better camera and so I was able to chat to my grandson this morning.  How can he be 5 years old already?  He was on good form as was my soon to be 3 years old granddaughter. 

It's taken about a whole day now to get things as I want them and to shut down all the nag screens from the manufacturer's embedded Apps!  

Let's hope it lasts more than the 5 years my last phone lasted!    

Measuring Happiness

 In recent months I've been adapting to not having anything to do.  Well, that's not quite true.  In reality I've been trying to work out what life without work is like and what my next journey is going to look like.  The strangest thing to me is these dream / flashbacks that I've been having.

I got rid of a lot of the reliving of my past perhaps 14 or more years ago when it was becoming a problem for me.  When I was over analysing anything and everything and I, overnight, banished a lot of the pouring over my past and the what if and so on.  That works quite well, the odd time that I slip back but I know the signs and I stop the rot before it sets in.

The recent things are like a moment ago when I looked back or flashed back to my early days in College and how happy I was back then.  Enthusiastic, motivated to learn new things and I had a great lecturer it was so different from school being treated as an adult and everything was new and exciting.  Another flashback is at break time, at another college, having fun with new friends, going to the local park for lunch and getting along with everyone.  It was all new and you were suddenly out there, in the big world and doing for want of another word, 'stuff' you had your own money and your own freedom. So I get these flashbacks and I sort of get what they are implying for my today by looking back at those halcyon days of my youth.  

Some though are strange as there's no rhyme or reason for recalling these scenes somewhat like Harry Potter's Pensive scenes a past experience is replayed.  In my case these are apparently random nothing scenes.  I have one where we (my college colleagues) and I are in my battered old Mark1 Cortina and we are driving not far from Wandsworth past a parade of shops, a double decker bus is on the opposite side of the road and we drive across a pedestrian zebra crossing and continue our journey.  That's it, that is the scene perhaps someone is directing me where to go. We are again at lunch break from college so perhaps off to a pub somewhere?   In another I am parking the car at Putney but that's all of the snippet.  There's not a clue why I would recall these at all.  There's no incident surrounding them so that is what I find strange.

So back to the subject as I have segued a bit.  Happiness when I was younger seems to be a freedom things, earning and playing, no real worries, having a smoke and a drink, being with friends and having fun.  Work was hard but also fun, playing hard and working hard.  Had my own money at last and was in those great years when the music was brilliant and the weekends lasted from Thursday night until Sunday late evening.  Of late, I've not been having fun nor have I just gone our and enjoyed myself like I used to. You grow up, you get obligations and responsibilities, you get seriously ill, you recover your health but not your mental state, you have to work with arseholes and pillocks and then realise you've worked with those sorts of people all your life.  You despair whether the human race will ever learn its lessons, give it's head a wobble and grow the f*** up?

So, I need to get back to how I used to be where everything was exciting and new. 

Fixed - One Thing Off Of The List

 So the gate post is "fixed" kind of.  It's an interesting thing as I'd done a temporary repair and over the winter I'd had the gate not opening fully so it was all a bit annoying.  That opening has fixed itself now the wood has stopped taking on water and expanding and causing the gate to not quite open as it should.  It is now fully fixed well that is until the next period of rain and cold.  The other problem that I had half fixed was a sagging gate post only a tiny bit and last year I bought a Trench Accrow and propped the gate and it worked fine but again, the weather has changed and this morning the gate was just dragging again.  So whilst I was there, out with the Multi-Tool and a few strategic cuts made and it is all working nicely now as the cuts made allow the whole length of the Accrow foot to be in contact with the post (rather than at just two points).

A job off of my list of to dos and so I am pleased with that, no more than 10 minutes to fix albeit its been waiting 6 months to do properly rather than the bodge I did last year.

I've another thing to get done on my list and then I can pretty much do as I want for a while.  All is under control as far as I can see.  Things need to get done but in their own time frame now rather than mine.  I like the idea of deadlines are for someone else now, it takes the pressure off of me for sure.  Getting used to this retirement malarkey is interesting... 

A New Purpose? Reinvention?

 When you have a goal or a purpose it all seems to come together somehow.  Work, Business, Marriage, House, Family it all fits together and it's sort of cohesive it fits where it touches and all is OK.  Getting divorced was a soul ripping moment after all the impact and fallout of the Bladder Cancer times and it must be around that time that my self esteem, my cocksure assertiveness fell away and this different me started to form.  It probably wasn't like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, no, more like a series of events that changed the way and who I am/was.

There is no longer any business to "keep me going" and actually I am glad, it's been a 9 year burden now I come to think of it and frankly I should have got rid of it at the first signs of being used (and abused).  However, I didn't and that call on my time and the effort I put in were both good and bad.  Good as I still went through doing what I should do against the odds and bad, in that the other person and his "friends" conspired to thwart what I was doing  and to what end?  Destroying their business using their shareholder muscle in the process?  Hopefully they will not complain when the letter arrives shortly to state the business is shut?

So business and that stress will be gone.  There's no more family to take care of no day-to-day things like that and suddenly (and it shouldn't be suddenly really) I'm thinking options, what to do with myself and things like that.  I realise that I haven't done things for years, flown my Drone for example.  Three years since Mauritius and I've not flown the Drone, used the GoPro or used my other cameras.  The film I was making of that holiday lies in metaphorical pieces on the cutting room floor of my server, incomplete.  The garden needs maintenance as does the house and we realised that the last holiday we had was indeed three years ago too.

My daughter is off around the world for the next year or two, travelling and good on her.  I'm wasting my hours in a new vacuum, wondering what to do with myself and flailing around trying to get my Mojo back and it's a very strange place to be for me.  I had planned quite a different future for myself but this is where I am at and this is what I have to deal with.

What to do?  I am sure I will arrive at a way forward but the invisible threads of expecting to be doing some business tasks and so on aren't breaking or if they are, they are taking a long time.  I still expect to be doing something work related tomorrow and feel bound to the computer to do spreadsheet or research related things.  They've gone, a hole is there in its place and I am not filling it with activity but somehow floating in the space left behind.  Having said that I did tackle some tasks last week and somewhat successfully so perhaps I will start to work out what I want to do and how I want to do it?  

You work all your life to retire and enjoy yourself and it doesn't seem to be working out that way at all.....  

Reminder On Social Media - A Sad Tale

 As you may recall, six years ago we were in lock down and treated like common criminals in our own country and as you probably know it was all for nil and we are paying for that now still.  That's what you get for voting in scoundrels and half wits as I said at the time it was wholly unnecessary and viruses are unable to read one way signs and can pass right through paper masks!  

I digress other than how it is now 6 years since my friend died, aged just 59, not of Covid though.  It was a huge shock as I had only been talking to him a day or two before and another friend had spoken to him a few hours before!  I intend to do some work on one of his talks (of which he gave many) as a sort of tribute to him.  I have his words and papers here I just need to work out quite how I make it worthy of a tribute to him.

How on earth it can have been 6 years I do not know.  Time has flown of course and I cannot tell you where it has gone really?  My grandson is 5 next week and granddaughter is 3 in a few months time.  It feels like only a short while ago that my daughter got married!  Yet that too is 7 or 8 years ago.  

So I remember my friend with great affection as he was just climbing towards great things when he was taken from us.  Too soon we lost a great talent. 

Mostly Successful Week

 Well it took a little longer than I thought but the first set of accounts are complete but require my auditors to review them - I'm about £100 out over £24000 so a computing error on my spreadsheet somewhere and as I've been looking at it for hours and hours it is probably worth someone else having a look rather than me as I've gone number blind for now.

Mind you it's not all plain sailing as the Royal-mail App has given me nothing but problems when trying to check out - it wants to check on various payments and then the basket disappears when you go do what it asks!  Twice and then it tries to charge you double!  I was too irritable to give it a third go and went to the website whereupon it failed with some server error which it kindly filled my screen with the code as if I could read it let alone do something about it.

I'm happy that I've got some things done, the sun is shining, I have just had some beer delivered so I can go and sit on the balcony and have a cold beer and celebrate a good week.  The Royal Mail can wait until tomorrow I guess.  

Saint George And All That

 It's 12 years ago now that I went on my last Saint George's Day Club up in London and I never figured it would be my last one.  But it was and we are at that point where my life changed.  Twelve years ago I was getting friendly with my partner, we had Easter Sunday lunch together, we had been at a gig on Good Friday and arranged to meet as she was coming to the little village where I was then living to see her friend and I suggested we could have Sunday lunch.  Interestingly she was fashionably late, I had to wait a few hours whilst she had her tyre changed by the AA and so we had a very late lunch indeed followed by a walk where I managed to pull my shoulder muscle at the outdoor gym - impressive I know!

She wasn't able to make our arranged walk on Bank Holiday Monday, she was in A&E where they diagnosed a detached retina and she told me she was due to go in to have it fixed on the 24th April.  I left it at that other than to say that I'd be available to help her out if she needed it!

St George's Day was excellent my friends and I regularly went up to the Grosvenor House Hotel and had, let's call it all day drinks, in celebration.  Living near the railway station we arrived home suitably late, in fact the next morning.  

The next day in the late afternoon I got a text saying that could I pick her up from the Hospital to which I said I would but no call or text came until in the late afternoon I got a nurse call me from the Hospital asking where I was and so I said I'd come straight away.  The nurse told me had I been told I had to stay with her or needed someone to stay with her after surgery?  I thought no more but warned my house mate and quickly packed and overnight bag just in case.  Surely someone had been arranged with her to stay over?  Going via the Petrol station for flowers and a card I got to the hospital in around 20 minutes or so and went and found her lying on her side with an eye patch on...

On the drive back to hers I asked had she got any food in?  No, so I stopped and did a shop and got her home, gave her some supper and then asked who she had to stay over?  No one and the rest, as they say, is history!  I had to get her back to the Hospital for 9 and then I had an appointment which I had to drive back to almost where she lived, had my appointment and then drive back to the Hospital, pick her up, we went for a meal at what is now our local and then I drove her to her friends, near where I lived, drove her back and so I ended up as the Chauffeur, cook etc. for over 6 weeks until she thankfully recovered her eye sight.

So my St. George's Day celebrations were well and truly over.  So 12 years tomorrow since I picked her up from the Hospital and come the May Bank holiday when I invited her to come and stay with me at the house for the May Bank holiday weekend!  It's been a long three days!!!

Short Bursts Seems To Help Here

 Achievements so far are that the meat delivery has arrived, I've divided into bags and frozen that I don't need until later.  The Charity collection man has been and I got rid of some old stuff that has just cluttered up my desk and workshop.  That's now all my business books gone and some old telephones, headsets and a electric drill all of which can be re-used.  I ordered the kerosene which is down around 30p per litre from its high but still over 50p a litre up from its low just a few months ago!  I then strimmed the area around the tank so the delivery can be made.  I've made bread and now I am going to start the double check process on my accounts talking of which I have filed dormant accounts for my other company too!  On top of that I've double checked my director verification, instructed my accountant to now close down the other business interests and that can be shut down.

Seems like a good day so far with lots of small achievements.  Feeling better about those little steps.  My to do list is getting longer but at least I can see what needs to be done, I just need to prioritise it now and again, in 'Elephant Eating' style do a little bit at a time.

Slow Progress BUT Progress Nonetheless

 Swimming in treacle as someone once said and it feels a little like that I suppose.  I am working on some accounts that I need to submit and have procrastinated long enough really and so here I am trying to do them - it takes a lot of concentration which nowadays I find difficult as I am easily distracted and lead myself astray.  Such is the battle where, years ago I could sit down and do these in a 4 or 5 hour hit, it has taken 5 hours to get part way through and interruptions to the flow mean you have to pick up where you left off which is where the errors will be so I have to back track on what I have done to make sure I don't miss anything.

But I am getting there, slowly of course but surely and I am actually tackling the work where before I'd realise that I'd looked at the screen for hours and not done anything.  So I will get there and hopefully using sheer determination to go through the barriers that my mind blockades my way with.

The road back to normality needs to be taken a few steps at a time.  Here is the start of that progress. 

Disturbed Nights - Over Thinking - Other Stuff

 Awake for over an hour last night then got up early so as not to disturb my partner and raging tinnitus to deal with too but on the upside it is sunny and bright this morning.  The birds started early around 5 just after I'd got back to sleep and here I am yawning away.

I know how to go to sleep too but not this morning and on checking, it wasn't one of the mouse traps that had gone off so goodness knows what made the bang at around 3 am.

My mind / brain, whatever, always has been the biggest problem I've had to live with it as it can just run away out of control and catastrophise situations even applying its own logic to that.  It is destructive and makes "mountains out of molehills"  as they say.  It can leave me exhausted too which makes it hard work to get out of the hole I've dug myself.

It was a tsunami of thoughts that overloaded my brain in the early hours of the morning and it doesn't respond to logical thought and counter argument for there is no logic to the order they arrive at and you cannot second guess the next wave of "bad news" and accusational headline thrown into the mix.  So overwhelming is it that it swamps your senses and can  bring me close to breakdown wanting to just curl up in a ball and meltdown.  So it was this morning.  After an hour I finally fell asleep and things were fine again until on waking early I had to get up and come downstairs to just do something, anything to take my mind off of the head full of nonsense I had programmed in earlier.

I have these episodes every now and again.  It will be around for just a day or maybe two at the most and then settle down.  

People Float In and Out Of Your Life

 A chance discovery of a photo that had a very young me staring out of a gloomy badly lit room with a number of others lined up like a football team photo made me try and work out when it was taken and also who were two or three people in that photo.  I half recognized one of them, could name almost all of them but two others?  I've no idea who they were.

Many had passed away and some were hardly recognizable until you worked out that we all had dark hair, no beards or with beards and so on.  The change in some of them was remarkable and in others you could tell who they were straight away, they hadn't really changed that much.  

Of those left a handful are still friends and the rest are either dead, moved away, fallen away or like the two just unknown to me now.  It was interesting to see that the picture frozen in celluloid taken maybe 30 years ago holds various memories but some of those strange thoughts are that some of them just disappeared never to be seen again.  One day they were there and the next gone and you never saw them or heard from them again.  You never know when that point might be.

I recall that some of these guys moved away, some disappeared, some died and some are still with us.  I often go to places and wonder if that will be the last time I go there.  True of say, Mauritius and some of the places I used to work so make the most of it I suppose.  I recently saw some photos of London in the 1970s and not only have these places changed, some out of all recognition, but certain places I probably will never visit again.  

I am not sure if there is a real point to this but it makes you think about mortality I suppose and the transient nature of our existence.