So, we are done for another year and what a bitch of a year it’s been for the world. Celebrities are battening down the hatches and hiding in bomb shelters for fear of being taken by the reaper who appears to be on a form of celebrity bounty hunt. I for one think that an armed to the teeth SAS regiment, with drones for overwatch should be taking Ian McKellen, Patrick Stuart and David Attenborough to an undisclosed location, wrapping them in bubble wrap, surrounded by a mile-wide minefield to protect them during 2017.
This year for me has had its ups and downs. I can’t grumble as this time last year I was still recovering from having my entire large intestine removed, trust me that will knock the wind out of you. Now I was previously banging on about how life will not hand you breaks. Shortly after I posted that blog I managed to go and land myself a much better new job. I now work for a charity, it’s different from what I have done before but in good ways. You aren’t just chasing profit and revenue. Especially to the point whereby you put earning money above risk to people, and ignoring legislature as I have previously seen some companies do in the past. That’s not my cup of tea. This is actually about putting the people you are supporting first, which is how it should be. So it would appear someone upstairs may have be listening and actually cut me a break. I might be able to afford to move out this year at some point. There are many times when I was ready to give up in life but you just have to keep cracking on and work towards something better and occasionally with a tiny sprinkle of fairy dust, luck and a black magic spell I paid £200 for a shaman to perform, its might just work out.
I also ticked something off my bucket list recently. I was granted my first shotgun licence and purchased myself a brand new Browning Sporter, over and under shotgun. “Why do you want a gun?” I hear you cry, because if used responsibly it’s as fun as shit. It’s something I have always wanted to do and it’s a good laugh. It also bodes well should there ever be a zombie apocalypse. By the way, should the zombie apocalypse happen, gather your supplies, meet at my house where we will make our way to the coast, hijack a boat and go from there. At the moment I am honing my skills on clays, and to be honest I am happy with that. I would maybe try one proper shoot for pheasant or something but only if I was confident I could hit what I was aiming at and it would be eaten or used after which I am sure most are. I went today and hit thirty six out of fifty. Destroyed the first three stands with ten out of ten, eight out of ten and then ten out of ten. “I want to see you hit one on this one.” says the gent escorting me round. Well that sounds ominous. “This is the demoraliser then?” Fucking one out of ten and only because I skimmed it. Quickly brings you back down to earth and makes you realise how far you have to go. Practice makes perfect.
Christmas was the usual affair of meat and alcohol although it was somewhat overshadowed but the fact I had a wisdom tooth removed the day before Christmas Eve. Why on earth I thought that would be a good idea was beyond me but it needed to come out it was agony. Now, nobody told me that if your tooth is really impacted, as mine was, THEY CUT IT IN HALF with a drill first. That was the least fun thing I did all Christmas. Once they have cut it in half, the doctor took out what looks like a mini pry bar “You may hear some crunching now” It sounded like someone was stomping on gravel in my head. Once the first half was out the remainder was dragged out with a pair of long nose pliers. That was that, done. Explicit orders not to drink or smoke for the first 48 hours or you could end up with something called dry socket, which sounds like an out of business hooker, but I am told it is actually a painful condition due to not following the doctor’s rules. Here I am now, six stiches later with next to no pain. Although, I quickly learnt the hard way, for the love of all that is holy do not put cold water anywhere near that hole or it will reduce you to a crying five-year-old girl.
So now is the time of year where we all lie to ourselves and tell everyone what better people we are going to be, that we are going to eat healthily and exercise and not kill hookers but we all know its lies and we will keep doing the same crap we do every year. What I like to do is set my expectations for the year really low then anything that goes well is a bonus.
However, after saying all that I popped down to the Royal Free to see my cardiologist today for my follow up after all the tests I had done. I had recently had a letter that basically said all the tests look good and my heart function, which was originally what they were concerned was quite bad, it turns out to be at a normal good level. So, I originally had an echocardiogram which said that my heart function looked quite impaired and the top two chambers were only working at as little as fifty five percent. This would explain why I got out of breath when I was thinking about walking. They started me on a couple of drugs, sadly not the fun kind, and then performed a cardiac MRI a bit further down the line. Now the results of this showed that my function in these chambers was normal so in theory the drugs may have worked fantastically well and allowed the function to return to a normal level. All the other tests they performed showed nothing untoward or out of the ordinary. Generally speaking, they are quite happy although they don’t have a definitive reason as to why my heart is beating so fast so have been given the diagnosis of inappropriate ventricular tachycardia aka your hearts beating fast and we don’t know why. On the bright side, I have been told I am allowed to go back to the gym. I’m going to look at getting myself a personal trainer because it’s going to be hard enough to start from scratch with a level of zero fitness. I will be one of those blokes in the gym panting and sweating a great deal, not moving far from one of the defibrillators.
New year, new start and all that jazz I guess then. No excuses now. I might just slowly document this over social media to shame myself into action. For those of you who know what Reddit is, I subscribed to r/discipline where I was reading some bits and I came across this which struck a chord with me.
“Don’t rely on motivation for anything. It is fleeting and unreliable. Discipline, however, is unyielding. Force yourself to follow through. Things are going to come up in life that get in the way of your goals but that’s no reason to let them stop you completely.
Can’t do a whole run? Do half of one. Don’t have time to go to the gym to lift? Do pushups. Any action is better than inaction. Don’t like the food you need to eat to meet your goals? Tough shit. A little discomfort is worth the change, and at the end of it you’ll have a mind as tough as your body.”
Time to put words into actions I guess.
Life is ballbag, then you die. 