Yesterday just flew by. I started my day at 6am, which seemed far too early to be getting up, but I couldn’t sleep so I decided to get out of bed and do something. I did a few things around the house for several hours, and just tried to relax and ease into my day. It got to about 10am and I really wanted a coffee. There’s a Starbucks about 5 minutes away from my flat so I grabbed my laptop, and made the short trek there to do some writing and satisfy my caffeine cravings. I sat there for two or three hours, writing away and watching the world go by. It was the kind of day I could really do with having more often.
I was getting hungry so it was time to look into getting some lunch. I had the intention of having lunch at the flat, but when I got there my flatmate was there and we both had the brilliant idea to go out, find a pub, and watch the three games of football that were going to be on that afternoon/evening. We wandered along to a pub in Leith for a pre football pint, and so I could grab some lunch, which was an amazingly good chilli burger. With some food in me, and the first kickoff less than an hour away we jumped on a bus and headed to one of our old haunts called The Globe. It’s pretty much a Australian themed sports bar. There are giant TV’s everywhere and it’s probably one of the best places in Edinburgh to watch sporting events.
We camped out at the end of the bar and then watched the Wales match, then the Northern Ireland match, and then the one we’d really come out for, the Scotland match. That was an infuriating match to watch. We were clearly second best but there were moments when it looked like we could do something, only for a terrible refereeing decision in one, and a striker I’d really like to slap in the other, bringing those moments to an end.
I’m not entirely sure what time I ended up getting home last night, but it was a pretty fun day overall, and I’m going to try to replicate the first half of it more often.
The one great thing about working in an office is that frequently social events are put together for everyone to relax, forget about their busy working lives and just have fun. For a while now the company I work for have been having monthly drinks where everything is supplied, booze, nibbles, music, etc. These nights tend to vary in quality, but what almost always happens is the same core group of people are still there at the end, having a great time, and quite frequently making idiots out of themselves. I happen to be one of those people. Though the making an idiot out of myself part hasn’t happened for a while.
Last month I was sure I’d left at a reasonable time, to find out I was there at the very end of the evening when the place was locked up. I pretty much have no memory of walking home, and we all had fun on the Monday piecing the end of the evening back together in our heads. There was a point where we were doing shots of wine… I’ve no idea why, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
Tonight brings us to another free drinks night at work. Unfortunately we’ve been given a curfew of midnight, the last one ended at 3am and I think some neighbours were a little miffed about it. Still, midnight is about the last point from last months party that I can remember so it’s probably a good idea. As well as it being the monthly party, it also doubles as a leaving night for one of my friends from work who’s gone and found himself a new job.
I can see tonight getting a little messy, and the hangover tomorrow will probably be a thing to behold. Should be fun.
My little Sister’s boyfriend passed his driving test today.
I’m really proud of him, yet worried that there is now someone else on the roads in Scotland I have to be afraid of… as if my Sister wasn’t enough!
It has to be said… today sucked… hard.
I was stupidly busy and I think that even tough I cleared a massive amount of things of my to-do list, it’s actually bigger than it was on Monday. An old, yet important server died. The day to day grind seemed to be worse than normal, and my new responsibilities require more time than I actually have available. As it is I’m working six, six and a half days a week, but I think in order to do everything I’m going to need to work more. I don’t think that’s actually possible without going into some form of meltdown, but it’s something that looks more and more likely.
So with the fact that my week… no month has sucked I decided tonight was going to be a relaxing night hanging out with friends. My good mate Rob and I have talked about writing novels in a shared world before so tonight we were going to sit down and craft something. However, because both of our weeeks were brutal… he works for RBS… we found ourselves doing anything that required no thought. So instead of building a world to write our novels in, we played Pro Evo on the PS2, and drank several bottle’s of wine.
It wasn’t the most productive of evenings, but now that I’ve just finished it, I realise exactly how necessary it was. My brain is totally fried. Really, really fried. I’m at a point where it feels strange if I’m not at work and that just can’t be healthy. It occurs to me that all I talk about at the moment is how much I’m working and how fucked I feel. This bores me, so I’m not going to talk about it anymore.
Tonight I took some well deserved chilling out time with my friends and it was one of the better nights of the last few months. Hopefully it won’t be a one off.
I’ve mentioned in the past that I’ve had some trouble with insomnia. I find myself lying awake at 2am with my brain running rampant, then 3am hits, and I decide that I’m probably not going to be able to sleep and that I should probably just get up and write down some of these crazy ideas that run through my head in the dead of night. Then usually somewhere around 4am I’ll finally crash out only to be woken up by my alarm a few hours later informaing me I have to go to work. It’s one of the many reasons I drink as much coffee as I do. Occasionally I’ll fall asleep earlier than 4am, but It’s almost always around 3am at the earliest.
I get into the vicious cycles where I’m the walking dead in the morning, which is where a lot of the IT issues rear their ugly heads, and where I need to be at my sharpest. So I have a coffee, and then another, and then by the third cup of coffee I usually feel pretty good, and my brain finds it’s steady running pace. However, since I’m usually totally caffeinated by the end of the day it adds to my normal insomnia ridden body and keeps me awake even though I desperately want to go to sleep.
Well today I thought I’d run a little experiment. I was awake last night at 3am, nothing unusual there. I woke up at 7.30am. Again everything is going ahead as normal. Today though I decided I was going to go completely without coffee. I resolved that every time I wanted to go have a cup of coffee I’d grab a glass of water instead. It meant drinking twice my normal water intake, and many, many, trips to the gents, but I managed to last the entire day without any caffeine at all.
The result… well it’s almost 11pm, I’m pretty damn tired but still very alert. I doubt I’ll fall asleep any earlier than 1am, but you never know. The real test will be tomorrow morning. Will I be as exhausted as I normally am, or will I wake up feeling more refreshed than normal. I have to say it was a tough day. I really love coffee and going the whole day without one, epsecially when there were moments I really wanted one, was difficult. will I be able to go two days in a row without one…. well… we’ll see.
It’s been over a week since I last went running. I’d intended on going out for a decent run before I left for London last week but things transpired that made sure I wouldn’t have the time. Since I’ve been back I’ve been constantly busy with work, and though I initially planned on going last night, I started writing and lost track of the time. So tonight, before I did anything else, I made a point of getting changed into my running gear and heading out for a 10k run.
I think it’s essential because of the way I spend my days that I make time to exercise. I’m an IT Professional, and a writer, both of which involve a great deal of time sitting in front of a computer screen, and very little time engaging in any form of exercise. That’s one of the reasons I decided to get into running. I found myself doing very little over the last few years and getting completely out of shape. Since I’ve actively started running I’ve lost a lot of weight again, and feel so much fitter, and healthier than I have in years. My running habit has hit a point that if I don’t go for a run within a week I start getting really tetchy, and irritable. I find myself becoming increasingly lethargic, and the only way to get through it is to put on my running shoes and go out for an hour.
I think that’s one of the contributing factors to the mental block I’ve had when writing recently. Because I’ve been so busy it was difficult to get out for a run. I’d be working late, and weekends, and when I wasn’t working I had no energy to really do anything but relax and try to recharge my batteries for the following days work. I hadn’t realised how much not going for a run truly affected me until after tonights 10k. To simply undergo that physical activity blew away a lot of the cobwebs. It helped clear my head and allowed me to focus on a few personal writing projects, and kick started my mind allowing me to finally get some of the ideas that have been bubbling in the back of my brain down in writing.
I plan on getting back into running two or three times a week, running a distance of around 30k. I want to build up the frequency so that I’m running the equivalent of a marathon a week. How long that will take me I don’t know, but as long as I can get out three times a week minimum for the moment, I’ll be happy. It seems obvious but with a healthy body, and a healthy mind you’re much more productive, creative, and much, much happier. So get up, go for a run, get to the gym, play football, do something energetic. You’ll be glad you did.
