I’ve had a distinctly mixed day today. I figured it was time to call it a night at 9pm on the basis that any longer and I’d‘ve likely broken something, be it physical or lines of code. I woke up from a state of dream sleep in a matter of minutes, having just had a very odd dream which included over-sized condoms and a conversation with someone I know that involved them wanting to do stuff and me bemoaning the bagginess of my prophylactic. Considering I slept in the same room as a broken laptop table with failed superglue repair residue, I blame the fumes. Either that or I should see a therapist, one of the two. As a result of this rather rapid awakening, the first half an hour of the day was spent wondering where I was and what was going on, which gave the outward appearance of me being Mr Cranky Pants. This was not the case. I am many things, and some days I’ll admit I am about as fun to be with as a persistent armpit rash, but my morning demeanour was misinterpreted by Emma as, well, I don’t know, but it wasn’t nice. There are some mornings where I think the best course of action would be to avoid my tired and emotionally fragile wife for a few hours and go straight to the part where we have lunch, nicely side-stepping the touchy subjects of each other’s current mental state. Today, instead, we went out to buy potting compost for Emma and what turned out to be a lunch that I really shouldn’t have eaten. I keep saying to myself I won’t shop at Millett’s Farm Shop again, but something always brings me back to it.

That was shopping trip number one, which took us to lunchtime. Following my astonishingly bland lunch I had an email that a local home wares store was closing down and remaining stock was half price. An hour later, and £115 poorer, we were home again with a load of things that we’ll actually use, which negates the brief pangs of spending guilt I had. As mid-afternoon approached, I went for my daily walk and racked up another 3 or so miles. This only happened after I persuaded myself that it was worth doing and I’m doing this for a reason, and that it’ll all be worth it in the end. That took half an hour. The persuasion part, I mean – the walk itself was another hour and a quarter, and then some rest time, and then a bath to de-stink, and then delicious fish soup for dinner, and then three hours of fighting with website code to try and integrate jPlayer with Textpattern which ended in spectacular failure and no actual progress. There’s a backlog of stuff waiting to go online when I’ve got this integration nailed, and if I don’t get it sorted by close of play tomorrow I’ll need an alternate plan. I blame myself and my walk – I still haven’t managed to figure out how to operate when I get back from my walk and my body is physically tired.

I’m behind on my projects, I’m behind on my work, I’m behind on my training courses, I’m behind on my to-do lists and I’m behind on housework. This needs to change, and the rest of the week is all about getting stuff done on my terms. Despite having my day dictated by lists and plans, it feels shorter and I’m not achieving what I want to, which just compounds the issue the next day. It may be down to seasonal variations, but I can’t help thinking that I’m not the man I used to be.