About two or three days ago I mentioned this blog on a recording of the Emma and Pete Show along with a brief mention of how I’m finding the action of writing a few blocks of words every couple of days quite a cathartic experience. Things have gone a bit nuts since, page views have gone up four-fold and people are asking me about things I’ve written. I suppose not having an immediate outlet like Twitter has meant I’m channelling what I really think into larger chunks of text – even my paragraphs are long compared to web text these days – and I don’t have to sanitise what I’m saying into a 140 character blip. There may also be a backlog of rumination from last year when I went inward and barely came out to play, and no-one knows how big that pile is, not even me. It almost feels a bit like the olden days of the web where personal blogs were rife and people had stuff to say that wasn’t written purely for the amusement or gratification of others. I’ve seen a few people saying in recent months that they’re going to start blogging again in 2012 – the operative word being ‘again’. Perhaps it’s just a blast from the past or a hankering for the times when comment wasn’t quite so ephemeral. Regardless of the reason, I’m going to continue this blogging habit for as long as it’s sustainable. Frankly, I’m surprised I’ve got this far, so this is new territory for everyone.
Shortly after my startling page views discovery this morning I had a bit of a moment, and not in a good way. I opened the bedroom window before I wrote this morning’s post, thinking it was a mild day with a fresh breeze. I was half right; the breeze was fresh, but also tending toward freezing, so my morning blogging session was a little rushed. After I’d published the post I got up to close the window, seeing as the temperature inside was getting closer to the outside temperature. I stood up, forgot I’ve got a sore ankle, stepped awkwardly on it and leant out to steady myself. On my laptop table that I’ve had for less than a fortnight. Which smashed into bits. For reasons that I’m not totally clear on, this upset me enough to burst into tears. I really have no solid clue why, but clearly there’s something else at play, here. My best guess at this stage, having given it some thought after the event, is that I broke my new table because I have a sore ankle, and I have a sore ankle because I walked too fast on Saturday morning. And why did I do that? Because I wanted to get back for midday so I could stick my schedule. Stupid, really. One of these days I’ll learn.
It’s a cheap table that cost me less than £5 from IKEA. I can get a new table next time we’re out there, but it’s a 2 hour round trip and it’s barmy to just go for a table. I tried the made-do-and-mend route but the superglue I used was cheap and ineffective, so once again it’s in bits, but this time I have the faint whiff of glue solvent in my bedroom, something that’ll probably give me some interesting nightmares. Rightly or not, I spend the first part of my day on a laptop in bed, and I tend to wrap up the day on the same laptop in bed. I sleep fairly well, all things considered, but I don’t want to get into the routine where every day is a duvet day, it’s dangerous territory for me but I’m acutely aware that I can do just about all of my day job from a laptop. There’s a thin line between having a regular lie-in with a laptop and atrophy brought on by being sat in bed all day. Chances are, however, that I won’t hurt my ankle by being in bed, so it’s significantly safer than the mean streets of Abingdon.
Speaking of which, I’ve set myself a target of walking 100 miles in January, and I’m almost there. The last week or so of January is going to be a struggle with aches and pains, but I’m on track to hit my mark with a daily walk. At my current rate, I’ll also hit my year target by the end of March, so I’m thinking of upgrading my 2012 target to 1,000 miles over the year. I think I must be ill, I don’t know me anymore.
