You know when people tell you to see what difference a year makes? But you struggle to do that because even though in hindsight a year goes by really quickly, in reality it’s a long time where all manner of things happen? It’s so annoying when those people are right.
At the start of this year, I was on my arse. I’d just come off the back of a shitty end to 2021, had just tanked an exam I had hyped myself for and was predicted an A in, and was going through the motions in a dead-end job that I despised.
I won’t make light of proper mental health issues and say ‘I had this’ and ‘I had that’, but I was low. I was on the floor. I couldn’t see how this year that was only a few days old was going to be any better than the last two stinkers that had gone by.
Can’t tell you one thing I achieved this year other than making it to the end. Absolute shite, but we’ll kick on in 2022. Cheers then 🍻 pic.twitter.com/FNA5AGXfb3
Eight days into it, I spent a really good day with a mate at the football. Accrington away. Had it not been for the freezing cold and the turgid 1-1 draw, it would’ve definitely been in contention for my favourite away day, given the fun journey, the food and the fact it was the first away game I’d done since Covid. After that, I started feeling better. For a bit, at least.
Then my head was up to its old tricks and produced what I’ve now named (after deliberating in literally the last few seconds) the Great April Wobble. I wrote about it then, I won’t subject it to you again now. But it was bad. Crying alone in the loft bad.
Then it got better again. Then it got worse again. Then it got better again. That seemed to be the rough pattern for about four or so months after that. Had I not been so open about it with one friend in particular, it may have again been a case of ‘then it got worse. Then worse. Then worse’.
I’ve never been that open with anyone. And we helped each other through our own rough patches. Whether it was at the pub or in the sauna at the gym, it was like therapy (and way better than actual therapy, at that).
I spent the summer doing a different job. I didn’t despise it like the last one, though at two days a week and crap money it was hardly anything to be excited about. But I think if I didn’t have that extra time to myself and had instead carried on mindlessly pushing trollies around Tesco, I’d have accepted that as my fate. Instead, I had time to finish what I was doing – getting back into journalism – and apply for jobs.
As summer ended, I kept getting the feeling that it was only a matter of time. I was getting exam results back that I had never thought possible. I was getting job interviews (not actually leading to anything but before then interviews were like gold dust). I felt ready to tackle the real world.
But, as the pattern goes, it ebbed again. The job rejections were piling up. I crashed my car and had to use the money I had saved for a holiday to sort that out. On that holiday I then had my wallet stolen.
All trivial things that can happen in life. But when they’re thrown at you in the space of a few weeks, it feels like life has got it in for you.
But then comes the bit at the end. The bit I was told to wait for at the start of the year. In the space of about four days, I went from applying to a job to finding out I’m moving away from the only town I’ve ever lived in at the start of next year.
Journalism is the only job I’ve ever wanted to do. I’d argue it’s the only thing I’m half-good at, even though I still have to deep breathe before phone calls and convince myself of the existence of certain words.
To be back doing that is a great feeling. To be going back to Accrington (as well as other places in East Lancs), the place where 2022 took its first good turn, is weird. Funny how the world works.
2022 has been strange. It’s been better than the two years before it combined. But it’s also had moments lower than anything I experienced then. I’ve made new friends, strengthened friendships with people I’d known for years, moved on from others.
I’ve gone from working at Tesco, to making chemistry kits in warehouse, to being a journalist again. I’ve gone from crying in the loft and dropping my AirPods in a bucket of piss (did I ever mention that on here?) to getting NCTJ Gold and having five of my closest friends fly out to Lisbon for my birthday.
I’m not on top of the world. I’ve learnt it’s better not to be, otherwise it’s too big of a fall. But I’ve gone from being on the floor at the start of the year to sitting comfortably at the end of it. I’m happy with that.
Despite the sad end to last season, it was enough to leave me full of hope going into the second season under Liam Manning. This time around, he would be able to make his own signings, have a full pre-season and make sure the players fully understood what he wanted to do. If he could come third without doing all that, surely the next reward would be greater?
After 30 seconds of the season opener against Cambridge, I was convinced we were going to piss the league. We pressed from the off and hit the crossbar through Matt Smith, causing an almighty scramble in the box and an eruption of noise from the away end (one of which I was sadly not part of, instead watching on a stream on holiday – good start).
However, that’s all there was to get happy about because what followed for the next 89 and a half minutes was a scrappy, lifeless performance devoid of any creativity and cohesion. Perhaps understandable given the squad from last season has been ripped up by sales and returning loanees, but it was still a kick to the stomach given the pre-season optimism.
Don’t tell anyone but I actually follow another team if you didn’t know
If that’s what is going to be served up for me in the professional leagues (seems like it is, more on that later), at least I’ve got some non-league football at Leighton Town to fall back on.
It seems like this is finally the year they’re really pushing to get out of the Spartan League and back into the *big time* of what is now either the Isthmian League or the Southern League (it gets confusing at this level of the pyramid). That’s the level they were at when my dad first started taking me down there after the northerner in him succumbed to the prices at MK Dons, and it would be nice to finally say goodbye to teams like London Colney (more on them later too).
Credit: Me. All mine.
This time I actually managed to get down to the game, officially making it my first of the 2022/23 season (I don’t count friendlies, so sorry Dons’ 4-0 win away at AFC Rushden & Diamonds, you were good too though).
They faced newly-promoted Stotfold, who I feel like I’ve seen a million times before even though it’s probably only twice. Leighton started quick and should’ve had a man advantage after five minutes, but such is the standard of refereeing in the Premier League… sorry Spartan League… Stotfold stayed with 10 on the pitch, for now.
Only a couple of minutes after that Leighton took the lead, with Stotfold showing why they were relegated from this league in the first place and producing some calamitous defending for Jack Harvey to take advantage of.
8’ GOALLL JACK HARVEY
Jack harvey beats the keeper to the ball and he slots into an open net.
The visitors then went down to 10 anyway with a proper 1970s tackle being punished by the ref, but it actually seemed to make them better and until half-time they looked the more likely to score.
As usual when that happens though, the players probably got a few stern words at half-time and it did the trick, with Leon Lobjoit heading in and Matt Cooper getting a third late on – so late that my dad had just turned up to see it after doing whatever else it is he does on a Tuesday night (does anyone know, actually? I don’t).
Stadium MK return
As much as I love non-league, there is something nice about watching the professionals do it. That is, when they can pass the fucking ball to each other.
Realistically, I can’t be too downbeat with a home loss against Sheffield Wednesday, especially when it was only 1-0 and the goal was a dodgy penalty that happened closer to the corner flag than the box. Wednesday will be up there this season – I find it astonishing how, with the team they’ve got, they didn’t go up last season.
But, my God, if we could have just given them a game in the first half, that would have been nice. Instead what we got was a 0.00000001% improvement on the drivel served up at Cambridge.
Put to shame by Wednesday fans for the second year running.
Despite losing, it was the defence I was most impressed with. Warren O’Hora is probably our best player now, looking every bit as good as Harry Darling did last season and possessing solid leadership skills at just 23. I also thought Dan Oyegoke did okay in his first ever EFL start and Jack Tucker looks like he’ll be a good addition. But the sooner we can return to a back five and get Dean Lewington away from that left-back position, the better.
The second half was pretty good in fairness and were it not for David bloody Stockdale again, we would’ve got something out of it. Darragh Burns was lively and Matt Dennis, I’m sorry. I slagged your signing off a lot in the summer but you’ve proved me wrong already. Please, just score some goals though.
So, not the best return – and it wasn’t made any better by the fact that my dad had watched Leighton spank Baldock 9-2 in the FA Cup Extra Preliminary Round while I had watched ‘that’, but I sense there’s going to be a lot of that sort of thing this season so I better get used to it.
Back again
Three days later and I was back, this time to watch us take on Sutton United in the Thai Carbonated Energy Drink Cup. I knew it was going to be bad before I even turned up, hence why I only bought a ticket at 4pm after going back and forth on whether to bother, but the reality of it was so much worse.
Chairman Pete Winkelman was on the radio slightly before the game answering as many questions as he could about all the shit things going on around the club at the moment, and in my opinion, all of his answers were fair enough. It was also quite exciting to learn that Red Bull had actually enquired about investing in the club in some capacity a long time ago because I had always assumed that was a myth.
But the fact he had even had to go on the radio to answer those questions after only two league games really didn’t help set the tone for what turned out to be a lifeless affair anyway. Let me get it straight, I understand *why* the club did the things they did for this fixture, like only selling three blocks and in one stand, and only opening one gate, and not printing a programme. It’s all down to money at the end of the day, and clubs have still got to be wary after Covid. Also, all due respect to Sutton, because I do genuinely have a lot of respect for how they’ve come into the EFL and mixed it with the big boys in League Two, but when you’re playing that level of opposition, things like that just do happen. We’re not the first club to do it and we won’t be the last.
This was about five minutes before kick-off. So, so bad.
But God, it was so DEAD (I know it normally is, I’ve heard the library jokes a thousand and one times, shut up). And that translated onto the pitch as well as times. It was just a pretty boring watch, even if technically we were playing okay in comparison to the Cambridge and Sheffield Wednesday games.
I quite liked the line-up too, giving a full debut to Burns and also a debut to Dawson Devoy, both signed from the League of Ireland with a lot of promise. The one that confused me though was Zak Jules. He was loaned out for the second half of last season after barely getting a sniff before Christmas and after having his squad number effectively downgraded from 4 to 33, it seemed as though he’d be off elsewhere in the summer.
I’m guessing he thought that as well, because he certainly didn’t play like he wanted to be there. The body language was off from the start, he couldn’t make a simple pass (just like against Rushden in pre-season, where he was the only player I had a bad thing to say about) and offered absolutely piss all defensively or going forward. I backed him for a long time after he first joined to my mates who took an instant dislike to him, but I’ve now joined their side I’m afraid.
Anyway, we won the game 1-0 thanks to Conor Grant being the only person capable of having a shot, meaning he got Dons’ first goal of the season. Although there were some impressive performances elsewhere, the goal was the only real highlight, despite Sutton having a flurry of chances late on. Thankfully they didn’t score because I’d been up at 4am that day to drive to London and I honestly wasn’t sure I could stay awake any longer.
The aforementioned London Colney
Non-league away days are weird. I think because you get so used to what the home ground is like, you expect similar standards at the few away grounds you visit. That’s how it is in the EFL and it can be hard to disassociate the two when you’re following one team from each end of the footballing spectrum.
After successfully navigating the endless potholes on the 1/4 mile track off the North Orbital Road that leads to London Colney’s ground, I was greeted with a pitch akin to a desert, a clubhouse which was just a standard non-league clubhouse, and a ‘car park’ which was already full despite there being hardly anyone there and was constructed with what looked like just some leftover sand from another project somewhere.
After I’d turned around and driven back to park next to the fence alongside the pitch, I was greeted by a gentleman who said ‘you need to pay’, which I had assumed would be the case because you normally need to do that to watch football, but I had also assumed I’d be allowed to park my car first – silly me!
Anyway, after handing over eight precious British pounds, I nervously left my car about three feet from the side of the pitch, almost convinced that a ball was going to go flying through my window at some point in the next two hours.
Bit dry.
By the way, it was fucking boiling. I’ve no idea how they actually managed to play a game in that heat – I felt like I’d ran a marathon after just walking to the only bit of shade at the ground. So, fair play.
I didn’t have high hopes for it being a good game given the heat and that I’d sat in front of London Colney warming up. It definitely wasn’t the best, but it was worth going just to see Leighton capitalise on some more funny Spartan League defending, this time with Kyle Connolly pumping the ball forward from just inside his own half and see it slip out of the keeper’s hands and bobble over the line to lead 1-0 at the break.
The rest of the game was played at a slow pace, justifiably. But it’s a shame that there’s no sort of statistics collection at this level, because it would have been interesting to see Leighton’s possession percentage for the first half. It must have been 75% at an absolute minimum.
They continued to dominate in the second half and eventually got a second when Luke Pyman headed in, and to be honest after that I just scrolled through the scores elsewhere on my phone – I’d got my eight quid’s worth from the first goal alone.
I wish I hadn’t looked, because Dons were getting pumped at Ipswich and had gone back to being shit after some signs of life against Sutton, and my Fantasy Premier League team dropped an absolute stinker too. Business as usual, then.
The quirks of non-league.
So what do I really think?
Look, I can understand the frustration at Dons. Four games, one goal, no league wins, and honestly, it wouldn’t be half as bad if they were actually playing well and just getting beaten by bad luck.
You’ve got to look at the opposition, though. Cambridge are a very well-coached team and proved a lot of people wrong last season by very comfortably being able to stay up. We’ve never played particularly well at their ground, despite winning twice, and on opening day with some key injuries and almost a brand new team, a 1-0 defeat is excusable.
In Sheffield Wednesday and Ipswich, we’ve played two teams who will be gunning to win the title, while we, really, are going to have to be happy with play-offs at the ‘absolute’ best at the moment. The second-half performance against Wednesday was okay and that seemed to carry on into the Sutton game, which I’d have been shocked if we didn’t win regardless of line-ups, form, performances etc.
I didn’t go to Ipswich – thankfully, because it sounds as though it was fucking rubbish. But again, they’re a top six League One team at worst, top two or three at best, on paper at least – there are games where, sadly, you just get outclassed.
In the long run, I think we’ll be fine. I’m certainly binning off my pre-season prediction of fourth for a little while because until we get going properly it’s going to be hard to judge this team. So early in the season though, you have to have faith that things will come good.
Liam Manning didn’t become a bad manager overnight (or three months after leading us to the play-offs for the first time in what, a decade?) and the players still here from last season haven’t suddenly become terrible either. Give it time and things will improve.
For Leighton, it’s non-league, isn’t it. Things can change so quickly it’s not worth predicting where they could be in the table next month, let alone at the end of the season. But they’re top at the moment and the squad, with a load of acquisitions from far higher up the pyramid (so much so I’d actually heard of some of them before), is the best it’s been in a long time.
I spent a long time not being able to watch these two teams regularly, even before Covid. It’s been nice to get to games consistently this early in the season and hopefully I can stick around and continue to be the bad luck charm I’ve always been for them.
Back when it was fun and I did fun things to have fun.
It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. Like, anything. Whether that’s on here (as if that’s even a surprise anymore) or for Last Word, where I’m still clinging on despite not having done anything there for about four months.
Been a bit of an odd one, so far, 2022. In many ways, it’s just been an extension of the absolute shitshow that 2021 was. In others, it feels like I have actually made progress on the things that made it such a shitshow in the first place, although actually producing something to prove that is apparently a difficult task.
Truthfully, I feel drained a lot of the time, which is why when I do get a sudden surge of productivity I try my best to scrawl my thoughts down on here before it evaporates and I end up reverting back to mindlessly swiping through Tik-Tok.
But I used to be better than that. I used to be able to write all day, every day. Very few breaks. Not eating my first meal or taking my first drink well into the afternoon because I was so focused. Admittedly, that’s not great either – you should eat and you should drink before 3pm so please do that – BUT the point I’m making is that I COULD do it, whereas now it feels like a mini-achievement to have had some breakfast and dragged myself to the gym by that time.
It would be easy to blame all of that on Covid. Not that I had it, because evidence would suggest that having gone through three pandemics with nobody in my house contracting it, I am immortal. But to blame the pandemics themselves? Yeah, a little. When it manages to stop the thing you write about most (football, if you haven’t kept up), it’s a bit of a struggle to be arsed about tapping away at the keyboard for six hours a day.
But I can’t pin it all on that – and I don’t. I blame my old job.
I never wanted to say what it was while I was actually working there, but I ‘revealed’ (big exclusive for the seven people that read this) that I had been working at Tesco as a picker for over a year.
Before I started there in January 2021, I had managed to keep my motivation with writing up throughout Covid. It had had its dips, but that’s normal. But the longer 2021 went on, the more I could feel myself slipping away with it.
As it would turn out, no matter whether you’re still getting 7-8 hours of sleep, waking up at 4.30am to go and work a pretty physical (it’s not exactly heavy lifting but you’re on your feet a lot) job that you absolutely despise doesn’t really go hand-in-hand with then coming home to write for three or four hours. And the more you try to keep it up, the less you want to do it.
Obviously, Tesco was my main job at the time, and by the time it came to having to make a choice, I also had my journalism training with the NCTJ to throw into the mix. Unfortunately, proper-job money and training towards no longer having to drag my ass to Tesco beat the thing that I really wanted to do, which was to carry on the (sorry, I’m going to boast) ‘pretty good’ work I had been doing managing Last Word.
And so life at Tesco continued. On paper, it’s a very easy job. You do what the little machine tells you to do. For eight hours a day. That’s standard. But when you’re in a small-ish shop with not a lot of customers, and colleagues that you barely talk to, you feel isolated. And for me, complete isolation like that is bad, because then it means I’m left alone with my head, and that means I can think about absolutely EVERYTHING.
Particularly when I’m tired from having to haul myself to that hell-hole every day, ‘EVERYTHING’ can consist of some pretty crap shit. Thinking back to the old job I actually enjoyed; worrying whether I’ll ever get another job like that; whether I’ll ever get out of Tesco at all; thinking about all the stupid things I’ve ever said; the things I had the opportunity to say to people but never did; all of the embarrassing moments from school; all of the things that DO NOT MATTER, but while you’re stuck in the cycle, your brain will convince you are the most important things at that moment.
And that’s what it was like – for the whole 16 months I worked there. Thinking like that, constantly, is draining. I never thought about it before, but I find it baffling how much of your energy in a day can be consumed by your brain just functioning. It left me with no energy to do anything else. All just for a job. A job I never wanted to do in the first place and knew that I wouldn’t be staying in forever (however much my brain tried to convince me otherwise).
I’ve been out of that place for a month and a half now. I have another job which, while on paper should be much more boring, I find I’m enjoying way more because I’m not bound by the dismal hours and dreary environment of before. I’m more attentive, my sleep is better, I can see my mates more (shoutout to them for finally getting a WhatsApp group together, too).
But the buzz for writing still hasn’t come back, fully. Yes, I’ve sat here for 20 minutes and smashed my face into the keyboard to produce whatever nonsense this is. But writing about football – the thing that I used to be able to do for hours on end – I want it to be like that again. Like 2019, where it was my job, my hobby and the only thing I wanted to do.
I don’t know why I always get the weird burst of motivation to come on here on a Sunday night when I’ve spent the day feeling sorry for myself after one too many glasses of deliciousness in town. I also don’t know what I want to write about, but after going through the effort of publicising that I had had some sort of drastic rebrand on here (i.e. changed two pictures and binned off the cream background) I feel as though I should just write ‘something’. So let’s have a catch-up.
Since I last posted here I haven’t been too good ‘upstairs’, but for once I want to avoid too much about all that. It’s good to talk, and I’m happy to talk about it, but I don’t want this to become somewhere where that’s all I do. Then it comes across as if that’s my entire personality, which it’s not (entirely). Other things have been happening too.
I’ve alluded to my job on here before but never actually said what it was, mainly because I found it a bit embarrassing. But now that I’ve left, I can happily say that I survived 15 months working as a picker at Tesco. I’ve had a lot of jobs in my life already, and have worked in some capacity since I was 12 (paper rounds count, okay) and can honestly say that Tesco was the worst of the lot.
Should anyone from there actually read this (which I doubt, but anyway), the people there were sound. I didn’t speak to many of them but the ones I did were good people.
The job itself just stank.
Fifteen months of getting up at 4.30am to drag my ass to Aylesbury to start at 6am took its toll. It was mentally draining.
When we weren’t in lockdown, it was hard to maintain any sort of social life when you have to go to bed at 8pm and all your mates are still at work whenever you have your free time.
Walking around a supermarket for eight hours a day being a slave to the scanner you carried with you might ‘sound’ easy enough. I thought that too, that’s why I applied for the job when I desperately needed one. But you soon realise it’s just a mental game, one that I’m still not sure whether I won or not but am nonetheless happy to not be playing anymore.
So with Tesco firmly knocked on the head and fucked off to the back of my mind where it belongs, I’m starting a new job this week. Nothing too exciting, but it’s local, pays good and allows me to properly focus on the actual thing I’m trying to achieve, which is getting back into journalism.
Something I never mention to anyone when I see them apart from to everyone every time I see them is that I was, before that big cold that went around, a sports reporter. Unfortunately when said big cold became quite a bit more serious than that, no sport was allowed to happen, which put ol’ Volleys out of a job.
However, ol’ Volleys had actually got very lucky bagging that job in the first place seeing as he had not actually passed the NCTJ qualification the first time around (bloody law exams).
So, that’s why last year I went back and started the course again, and it’s been going well so far.
I’m using a lot of my old grades where possible rather than re-doing things that I don’t need to (work smart, not hard), but I still managed to get an A grade on one of the new exams (my first ever A on any exam I’ve ever done, which felt just *mighty fine* 🤌) and I’ve got a shorthand exam coming up this week that I’m feeling mildly confident about too.
Finding out you got your first ever A on any exam you’ve ever done on a random Thursday night at 10.30pm. Scenes on the streets of Linslade pic.twitter.com/rFyq1pniqh
In all, that side of things is going well. There’s a difficult stretch to come now, where I’ve got to put a lot of focus into law (the bane of my fucking life) but with that being the only major worry (as opposed to the four or five I had at this stage of the course last time) I should hopefully be okay.
Probably the last little catch-up point is that I actually left the southeast of England for a little while last week, for the first time in what felt like too damn long.
I went back to Anglesey, where my mum comes from, for the first time since 2018, and the first time I can remember since I was a kid where my brother and sister were there too.
It was nice going back to all the old beaches and towns we would go to when I was younger, although my siblings probably have better and stronger memories of some of the more out-of-the-way places. My Anglesey experience as a kid was largely limited to Holyhead. That place is just one big anomaly…
Just being somewhere different seemed to calm me down a lot. The anxiety troubles I’d been having in the weeks previously definitely subsided a lot and since I’ve been back I’ve stayed roughly around that level. Maybe getting out more would actually be beneficial.
Anyway, I’m bored of this now so I’m going to not check any of it and just hit publish anyway. Even though it’s a rambling mess it was nice to mostly write about something not to do with what most of my other posts are about.
I’ll do them still as and when it’s appropriate, but it’s nice to have something refreshing on here.
The last time I graced you all with my presence on here, I spoke about the short and sweet stint I had unloading all of my negative thoughts to a therapist/counsellor/paid listener.
I also said that it had worked – which was true to some extent because I did feel better at the time. I had less brain fog, I felt happier and, crucially, the thoughts I was having had gone away.
Well, now they’re back. Which sucks.
I’m not ready to release to the internet what the problem thoughts are. Some people know and they’ll instantly be able to put two and two together. Maybe one day when I’m famous and they finally make that already long-overdue sitcom about my life that I imagine episodes of in my head on a daily basis, the wider public can be made aware of my deepest, darkest secrets. But for now, all you get is a metaphoric description.
I’m actually surprised I never thought of it this way before, considering how much overthinking I do. But walking around at work last week, I came up with probably my most accurate long-winded description of something ever (I can promise you there is plenty of competition for that).
The scenario: you’re reminiscing over something you shouldn’t be reminiscing over any more.
I’ve started to think of the reminiscent thoughts as some kind of monster. Or beast. Or angry dog. All metaphorical, obviously, therefore you can take your pick as to what it is, but monster was the thing that came to head the first time around.
You’ve had this monster inside your head for years now, and every now and then it wakes up, demanding to be fed. It keep snapping at you and bearing it’s teeth, letting you know it’s hungry. Do you feed it, or let it starve?
I used to be pretty good at letting it starve. I didn’t want the monster anyway so I was happy to leave it be until it went back to sleep. Every now and then, during a moment of weakness, I might have given it a snack, just to ensure it didn’t die completely, but ultimately that was just to shut it up so I could carry on with my life.
The problem is, if you continue to starve it and just throw a few scraps at it every now and then, every time it wakes up, it’s hungrier. It wants more. In this metaphorical case, it wants you to sit there, reminisce, beat yourself up, feel guilty, overthink. If you do that, you feed it. Therefore it grows stronger and stays awake for longer. But you do it in the hope that when it does go back to sleep, it’s nourished enough to stay down for a while.
I find there’s different ways to wake it up too, just like there’s different ways to wake up in real life rather than this made-up, in-your-head bullshit. When you’re in a deep sleep and you’re woken up suddenly, like someone shaking you, you could act aggressively. Whereas if you’re allowed to wake naturally, it’s a more gradual process.
This is the same. When I decided to have those therapy sessions, it was because the monster was aggressive. It had been asleep for ages, possibly more than a year, which is the longest it had ever been. But it got a violent jolt, and suddenly it was up, realising how hungry it was and making that very much known to me.
This time around though, it’s been allowed to wake of its own accord. That’s allowed me to judge better what I want to do with it, which was, after cautiously throwing it some bait for a few days, giving it what it wanted. Hopefully, that will keep it satisfied for a long while.
As much as I resent the monster, I don’t want it to die. That would mean losing its memory completely, and I think it’s fine to think back to things as long as you can be in control of how you feel about them. Therefore, that’s what I need to learn. How to be in control. How to make the monster sleep and wake on my terms and not its own.
The monster is still awake at the moment, it’s still hungry and I’m still feeding it. Hopefully, when it’s had enough, it’ll piss off again back into the dark abyss of my brain and not come out for a while. I’m resigned to the fact it will happen at some point, but I hope it gives me the break I need.
This has been really weird to write. I’ve always been pretty open about my mental health but I’ve always done it in a real way, rather than talking bollocks about monsters and dogs. I also don’t plan anything I write; I just type and see where it takes me, so if there’s a big gap in the ‘story’ and something you don’t understand, let me know and I’ll be happy to explain it and add it to the piece if it makes sense to.
Evening all. Like the last few times I’ve been on here, it’s been a while, hasn’t it? Just a quick one tonight, I promise. You’ll want to save all of your reading energy for the 2021 review in the works!
My first year of blogging, evidently, hasn’t quite gone how I planned it to. All of the ideas I had at the beginning never came to fruition for one reason or another. One of those I want to address.
My mental health has been shot to pieces this year. I’ve spoken about it on here before and it’s been fluctuating massively pretty much all the way through 2021.
Just over a month ago, it hit the lowest low I’ve ever experienced, so after six or seven years of just ‘plugging away’ and ‘getting on by’, with a little push from some people, I decided it was time to actually do something about it.
For the last month, I’ve been ‘seeing’ a therapist. That comes with added inverted commas because I haven’t actually met the person as she works in the US. But through a site called BetterHelp, they can help people all over the world using either chat rooms, video calls or voice calls.
Even though it’s only been a month, I’m already feeling a lot better. A lot of that will be because the wave naturally came to an end. But given how big a wave it was, I know there’s a chance I could experience one like that again, and that’s where this is helpful.
Yes, it’s helped me in the moment, but I’m also going to be way more prepared in the future when this happens again. And I know it’ll happen again. Of course it will. It’s all ups and downs. But going into those downs with a better knowledge of how to cope is going to make them much more manageable – properly manageable, not hoping that a two-hour walk will magically clear the fog in your head.
Everyone suffers from these days. I’m no different to anyone else in that regard. But not a lot of people seek the help they need. I now know how beneficial getting help is. It’s hard to admit – I went years without doing it and even needed a push while I was at my lowest moment.
But if you are struggling, please do it. It might be a slow process, you might feel better in a couple of weeks. It doesn’t matter. It takes as long as it takes.
The world is becoming a fucking weird place once again. And that can be scary for a lot of people for a mass of different reasons. Be nice to each other, be there for each other and look after yourselves too.
I started off the last thing I wrote on here by saying ‘sorry for the two month hiatus’. Little did I know then that actually I’d sack it off again almost instantly and once again forget I had my own corner of the internet in which to vent my many frustrations.
How you all been? That’s a bit of a weird question, because I’m assuming by this point most of the people that read this are either somewhere in my house or the friends I have on my private Instagram – and I’ve seen most of you in the last few weeks, let alone the few months I haven’t been on here. But it’s nice to ask, no?
I think the main reason I haven’t put anything up is because, really, I haven’t had anything important to say (when do I ever?). That might beg the question as to why I even started a blog then, if I deem most of what I say to be complete fodder. It’s a fair point, but every now and then it’s nice to remember that it’s here and I can come online and tap away paragraphs and paragraphs rather than cramming it into an Instagram caption.
What you been up to then, Nat?
Dossing about, mostly. Until September that is. Everything got real again in September. But we’ll get there.
But between May and then, I’ve mostly just been working, doing my bit for the local community of a town I don’t even live in, constantly waiting to be told we’re done for the day and that I can go home ready to do it all again tomorrow.
There was some fun in between. Good nights at the pub, a five-a-side team where I lasted one game before breaking my wrist (I class that as fun because it happened on the day Euro 2020 started, so I actually had an excuse to not leave my room and absorb every match, rather than feeling guilty about it (to extend on Euro 2020 slightly, it was fucking class wasn’t it? I nearly wrote something on here about it but couldn’t bring myself to relive the final, although thinking back now it was just quality to even be there)). And at the end of all that too, my brother got married, which was just the most perfect day.
September, though – hoo boy. Finally, after a long bit of back and forth with work, I got the all clear that I could go part time, which had always been the plan so that I could act on the 🤌 good news 🤌 I got back in January, which was the subject of one of my first posts on here.
Then on the 14th, I got on a train, which was as exciting as it always is, and went into London to start my NCTJ diploma once again – four years on from the last time. I’m only a few sessions in, but it’s going well. The tutors remember me from before, which is, well, nice; the new sport tutor seems delighted with what I’ve done so far, which is also, well, nice, and a bit of a new feeling too; and it’s just generally going well.
How you feeling about it all?
Well, as I said, everything, in general, is just ‘nice’ at the moment. I’m tired, but that’s to be expected when you’re traipsing into London three days a week, getting up at 4:30am for work another three days of the week, and trying to see your friends on your new weekend days of Wednesday and Thursday.
I’ve definitely felt worse this year. Definitely. But, some of you might have seen (the Instagram lot – it’s always you, you’re always referred to as ‘some of you’) the rather pointless, beggy think I posted the other night (I do it a lot, sorry. It’s a flaw) referring to a ‘switch’.
The way I’ve been feeling at the moment is like there’s a switch in my head. As quick as a light switch. When it’s off, everything is fine – I’m content, I’m sitting on a train, I’m thinking about positive feedback from tutors and daydreaming of the first sip of Lowenbrau later that night. But once something (and I would LOVE to know what) manages to flick that switch – boom, anxiety.
Often I don’t even know what about. It can be as simple as scrolling through social media and making comparisons, or watching TV shows and drawing up completely unrealistic parallels between myself and characters, or feeling like I’m in places or situations where I don’t belong. It’s weird. It’s not nice. I don’t like ‘the switch’. When it’s on, it gets me down, sometimes for an hour before I manage to do something to snap out, or sometimes for a day or two.
This isn’t like a big plead for vital information. It’s really not as deep as I’ve made out (Ha! Again, so why would you write a big post about it, you big silly…), but if anyone does have any tips or anything they can offer on how to keep ‘the switch’ off for longer, like hot glue it down, leave them in the comments or let me know some other way (it’s 2021, I’m sure you can figure out another way).
Time to Go
So, yes. I’m fine, basically. It’s been a while, nothing really happened until September and then suddenly everything happened all at once. I’m tired, but life has a little less monotony about it now, which is always a good thing.
Fuck knows when the next post will be. This could be the kick-start to actually use it more regularly (with NCTJ now underway I may actually have some things worth talking about), or it’ll be another four months before I grace the internet with my presence once again.
I hope you’re all doing good, as always. Drink water.
Someone said to me yesterday ‘are you going to write another blog soon?’ and my instant thought was ‘how do you remember I had a blog? Even I’d pretty much forgotten’.
I suppose it’s nice that at least someone remembers I once detailed a month’s worth of running and complained about my bedroom wall to you. Only thing is that I should probably be remembering that too rather than just others.
Anyway, I’m here now (aren’t you lucky!) basically just to say that I am still around and the only reason I haven’t posted anything is because I’ve had very little (I think, anyway) to post about.
I’d like to say that I’ve been busy but the truth is I took a month off from my managing duties at LWOF because my brain went a bit funny and April was probably the deadest month I’ve had at work since I started there.
I think the slight feeling of burnout at the start of last month came at the end of my running. It had gotten to the point where it was the last thing I wanted to do each day and I just wasn’t enjoying it, which is not the point you want to be at.
Now, though, thankfully, I can go back to the gym and I’ve been enjoying that so far, and have actually noticed differences in three weeks that I didn’t in three months of dragging my feet around the same three running routes I had.
Being able to go out again has been a blessing too. Pubs were definitely a big miss of mine over lockdown and being able to see my mates again has made life infinitely less shit than it was.
I do have some more ideas about what I want to put on here in the future. A lot of it is just about waiting for the right time, though. In the meantime, I’m still here, just ticking along, waiting for the next big change to happen.
An impromptu update after over two months of silence on here but it’s nice to get something up (for me, anyway – probably less so for you). I’ll see you again in another two months when I’ll have most likely forgotten again that I paid money to do this and should probably make the most of it.
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Ever since that last post where I said I hadn’t written anything because I haven’t been doing anything, absolutely sod all has changed and I have continued to do nothing.
I still go to work and I’ve still been running, but writing about work is only slightly less mind-numbing than actually being there and I’ve really come to rue my insistence that this isn’t a running blog, because it’s about the only interesting thing going on at the moment.
As a slight update to that, I’ve started training to do a half marathon and am currently a month into a three-month programme. I hit my first 10k in over four years the other day and feel like I’m really kicking on following all of the Dry Dry January efforts.
But, this isn’t about running (for once), nor is it really about any of the other things I suggested I would use this for when it first started…
Instead, I come here to ruin your Sunday evening by asking for advice.
(At this stage, please take a closer look at the photo below).
Around this time last year, I fully redecorated my room having not done so for more than a decade (I say I did it… someone with tools and skills came and did it for me). It had had little updates here and there, but ultimately it was still the same bedroom I’d had since I was nine or ten with blue and red walls (despite my love for red, even I knew four red walls was too much), a football-shaped lampshade and absolutely every trinket, photo, award etc I’d ever had somehow on display around the room.
I absolutely love the room the way it is now. There’s things I wish I could do differently (like have a bigger desk, for example) but given the space I have, it’s grand. However, a year on, I can’t help but feel there must be something I can do just to give it a little update. The problem is, I’m not creative enough to think of that idea myself.
I’m not talking drastic changes – anything that would require Nick Knowles to come and do it is too much. Something even I could do over a maximum of a weekend is the level I’m talking.
There’s a wide array of football shirts on a hidden rail to the side of my wardrobe – perhaps there’s a way I could bring them out. But then I am also working on a football pin-badge collection (because lockdown), and I think if both that and a load of shirts are on display, it becomes too much of a childish room again rather than one of a so-called 22-year-old who is trying his best to be a bit more grown up.
Any ideas are welcome. Comment them on here, send them to me on Instagram, write it down on a piece of paper, wrap it around a rock and then throw it through my window – do whatever’s easiest for you.
I think I said in my last post that while life is pretty dull, I wasn’t going to be making any apologies for not writing on here (largely because I’m sure nobody is that bothered), but I do have some things roughly planned for when the world opens up again. It should then become less deserted on here.
While I won’t make any strict apologies for my general silence on here in the last two weeks (mainly because I’m sure most of you that read this know me anyway and probably couldn’t care less), it has been a little while since the last one so, erm, sorry, I guess?
I’ll tell you the main reason. There is NOTHING going on in my life at the moment, because literally the only things I’m allowed to do are go to work and go for a run. While I’m thankful to have a job, it’s arguably the most mind-numbing thing I’ve ever done and I don’t really want to re-live the days I’ve had by having to write about them too. And, my insistence that this is not a running blog (which it isn’t, okay? This isn’t a running blog, and it never will be. Alright?) may have actually backfired on me because it’s probably the most interesting thing I can do at the moment.
Seeing as I haven’t posted on here for two weeks, I could probably tell you that I’ve started a 12-week half marathon training programme and have just completed the first week, which is good I guess. Three runs so far but from tomorrow until the end it goes up to four per week. Once the gym comes back (God I miss that) I’ll have to maybe re-think the schedule a bit because I need to go to the gym at least three times a week to make it worth the fee. For now, though, it’s just a lot of running and trying to focus more on my relatively poor diet. That’s quite easy on the days I don’t work as there’s an easy 10-hour-ish block where I eat very little but tend not to starve too much. The days at home are a bit harder, though…
There’s plenty of other rubbish I could put on here but I, like pretty much everyone else, just seem to have no motivation at the moment. I’m tired nearly all of the time and the thought of sitting down to write, for the most part, is just draining at the moment. But, as the title suggests, I’ve just got to keep going. Things will get better. Hopefully by September at the very earliest I’ll be getting my career back on track with the NCTJ course. Until then it’s just about getting through.
Not really a lot to this. Just checking in to say I’m still alive and haven’t completely forgotten about the idea of having a blog after only a month. But understand, life is very boring at the moment, and I’m sure you don’t want to make it even worse by reading about boring things.
Until it gets more exciting, look after yourselves, check in on your mates and keep on going.
natgoodlad.com 