OK, time to start taking care of myself again...

Ugh. The last few weeks have been really hard.

I've had to redirect willpower from my long term goals, to new resolutions and efforts to not be self destructive and stupid.

Which has meant my home exercise regime fell to shit, I swam less and my calorie counting totally fell off the chart. I reverted to a 'see food' diet.

But it's been about three weeks and they say anything repeated is habit after three weeks or so. I'm going to hope I have convinced myself not to do the stupid things I wanted to avoid and now I can focus on looking after myself again.

So yesterday was the first day I managed a full set of home exercises again. And was pleased to see muscle memory allowed me to do a full (if painful!) set of press ups.

Now I'm focusing on my eating. I'm detoxing slightly my focusing on removing bread from the diet again. Breakfast was a bowl of grapefruit segment - stuffed full of antioxidants. 90 calories for that.

For snack, I had a pack of sliced chicken breast. 170 calories.

Lunch will be a hearty chicken and bacon pasta snack for 780 calories and I'll have the over half of the can of grapefruit segments as an afternoon snack.

Should come to 1130 calories in total.

Then swimming tonight and some sort of steak and veg dinner. Yum.

It's not perfect, but it's a start.

I'm also trying to wean myself off Pepsi Max. 2 litres a day is getting a bit much. I've got a bottle of mineral water as a substitute. Hopefully being better hydrated will help too.

Sorry folks, not an exciting blog entry but I need to track my crawl back out of hell - for my own peace of mind.

I wish my To Do List for 2010 had been as awesome as this one...

From the wonderful Jamie Smart. Check out his blog here and his LiveJournal here.

Tell him I sent you, he'll have no idea who you mean.

If I die before I wake...

...bury me like this.

I've said it before, but a Viking longboat funeral really speaks to me. I want to be cremated and this is a helluva way to do it.

Remember.

SFX Weekender

Well, that was a lot of fun. Really blew out the cobwebs for the most part.

Myself, Darren, Husky, Lou and baby Rae drove down to Pontins in Camber Sands and were faced with... pretty awful accommodation. Sleeps four they said, giving us a twin room and a sofa bed in the lounge. Hmmm...




I had a great time though, the writers panels I saw were brilliant and have totally encouraged me to keep going. The actors' Q&As were wonderful. James Marsters, Liz Sladen and Tom Baker were everything I hoped for. Mac MacDonald was a little defensive at points, but watching the first episode of Red Dwarf with a pint and a room full of people was quite something.

The big revelation for me was Gareth David-Lloyd who played Ianto Jones in Torchwood. Such a funny guy, very quick with a quip. And he gave up watching the first half of the rugby to do his Q&A, which was pretty impressive. I shall feel better if doing the Swimathon means I miss the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who. Do check out Gareth's new project, The Casimir Effect.

Also saw Salvage on Friday night which was a British horror film. Certainly worth a watch - tis out on DVD on March 22nd.

I am worried the Family Huskinson didn't get to enjoy themselves as much as me, but these two photos suggest otherwise... :)




The Saturday night Maskerade Ball was overseen by DJ Pat Sharpe. THE Pat Sharpe of Fun House fame. His set was a fun mix of cheese, classic rock and modern club hits and kept the party going nicely. Saw some incredible costumes including some excellent home-made Dalek dresses (so good people thought they'd bought them); several Tenth Doctors; lots of Star Trek uniforms (say what you like about JJ's movie, but it has restored fandom's faith in dressing up like Starfleet officers); some Watchmen characters including Doctor Manhattan with fake meat and two veg; and some Na'vi. Ugh, not a fan of avatar, but they did look good.

I also finally found a use for Twitter. Don't get me wrong, I like Twitter well enough but it really came into it's own over the weekend. By searching for the hashtag #sfxweekender, myself and Lou were able to see other people's Tweets. I got a lot of useful info from other users, including the four girls from #geekcamp who I have to reserve a special shout out too.



As I was getting ready for the ball I saw they had tweeted this picture of themselves in their fantastic costumes. So when by chance I ran into them at the bar, I was able to put aliases to faces.

Yup, Twitter seems invaluable at a convention or event. I'm quite looking forward to looking up #nycc in October. :)

Right, must get on. Anyone finding this blog from Twitter, do drop me a DM on Twitter and say 'hi'. Will be doing some #followfriday mentions to some of the great people I have spoken to via Twitter over the weekend. As I say, Twitter has finally come into its own for me. Good stuff.

So what next....

Coming up later this year...

*driving theory test and possibly learning to drive

*first excursion out of Europe ever

*30th birthday (making the above extremely lame!)

*re-writing an old short story into a graphic novel and illustrating myself (in a way...)

*completing the Swimathon and raising money for Marie Curie Cancer Care

*completing my self set North Channel Swim Challenge by March 20th (currently 601 down, 450 to go)

*the SFX Weekender

*new Doctor Who

*celebrating the shop's second birthday in style - TWICE! - to make up for being denied the oppurtunity last year

*finish my story, be it a novel or novella - that has stalled as I killed the main character's Mum and realised I wasn't ready to face that yet

*the continuation of my new RPG, Cactus Land

*there is also the RPG event I have planned with Andy to come

*dropping another jean size, if not two

*new friends and new horizons, old friends and new adventures

You'll have nothing left to squander

I've contemplated one of those long rambling blogs that lays it all out there.

But what's the point? I only have half of the story to tell and at certain points only a quarter.

"Understanding is a three edged sword. Their side, your side and the truth."

All you'll get from me is my side. And to tell you that I have to go into things that probably aren't my place to talk about.

So instead I will simply express my exasperation. I take responsibility for my actions and culpability for my mistakes. I have apologised where I feel remorse, for where I have lashed out in pain.

But I won't apologise for how I feel. Or for what I wanted.

My biggest mistake was swallowing this for so long and marginalising what I want. I've wasted so much time.

So I won't go on any further, but these two Skunk Anansie songs says it all...







I'm not sleeping very well. Woke up three times the other night. Once because I felt I was being crushed - like really crushed as if I was in a car crusher or something. Once because I'd had a vivid dream about everything and woke up furious, really truly angry. And finally because I smacked my face on the metal bed frame, which felt like I'd nearly broken my nose.

I haven't been that self destructive in my sleep since I lived above the Rolly and in my sleep tried to burst one of my eyes on the corner of my bedside bookcase.

I'd not long split up with Jessica if memory serves.

Before I close the book on this, one thing I do want to share with you all. One thing that helps prove it wasn't all in my head. This is an excerpt of a conversation I had on Facebook chat on 14th April 2009.

I copied and pasted it into TextEdit in order to save it, because I feared one day I would look like an overweight, misguided fool who had made it all up. Yes, that is slightly mental and extremely paranoid.

Life has taught me to be this way.

When I was particularly low last year - and completely lacking in any self worth after Mum died - I also treasured it as an artifact of a glimpse at an alternate world where I got to have a happily ever after. Pathetic, but true.

All I have edited is our names to 'She' and 'Him' and corrected one typo where I typed 'form' where I meant 'from'.

She And Him is a reference I expect very few of you will get. Sorry. If you wish to know, do ask. But otherwise, I'll keep it to myself. With a wistful smile, rather than any sense of elitism.

She
this might be an awful thing to say, but I wish I'd met you years ago

Him
Me too. But life isn't like that. We don't get to pick and choose. We have to keep from being to jaded to see the diamonds in the rough.
And how - pray tell - is that awful?
:p
Am I somehow to blame for not opening Proud Lion sooner? Huh? Huh? ;)

22:47

She
nope, because earlier I could have been yours