i've been staring at the screen for the last half an hour and after general frustration kicked in went and deleted the drivel i'd eked out on the page. i don't seem to have the words today. i think i've been more pissed off with myself than anything else. i always get most frustrated when there are things i can't do anything about, or things i can't control.
last night i reacted to my inability to articulate my meaning by throwing my phone across the room and spending the following 20 minutes beating at the inside of my skull in utter frustration, after which i had yet another of what has become my typical sleep patterns:
fall asleep.
wake up in the wee hours convinced i'm somewhere else.
spent the following quarter hour or so tossing and turning, reacquainting myself with reality.
finall wake up properly.
fall asleep again and enjoy peaceful, rest until my alarm goes off.
today i woke up in a lobotomised daze. becoming insanely hungry by 10AM didn't help. i'm hungy a lot lately. my weight's back down below 100kg again and every time that happens i wind up having to graze otherwise i stop being able to concentrate unless i eat every 3 bloody hours. now THAT is pissing me off. delaying eating once i start feeling hungry leaves me braindead and i'll sit there on the couch staring at the wall until i manage to get up the willpower to move and find food.
that doesn't explain last night... although i didn't have much for tea last night so it might. i'm losing grip on myself and my self-control has been chipped away over the last few weeks so i'm having more and more difficulty reigning myself in at the moment. i think i know what i have to do about that, but of course i won't be discussing it here. let's just say i'm lucky enough that for once the course of action i'd consider the "easy" is also the one most likely to result in my preferred outcome.
meanwhile, there's work this week so i'm going to see if i can get the halucinations and waking dreams out of the way early so that i can get a decent amount of real sleep.
oh, and it's entirely likely that you'll never know explicitly what the hell i'm talking about here. if i wanted to talk about it i would have already.
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
how long can i keep this up?
a month ago i was riding the needle on the gauge from tired through to weary. 5 weeks later and it's starting to nudge the red-line of "exhausted". for no sensible reason i can discern i'm pushing myself too hard again and it's getting to the point where i'm starting to lose my cool. no in the "getting hot under the collar and losing my temper" sort of way but in the "it's difficult to be cool, calm and collected when you're swaying on your feet with the blood draining out of your face trying desperately to not pass out until you get home... which won't be for another hour or so" variety.
on the surface of things i can say that
"there's a lot i want to get done" and
"i've made promises that i intend to honour" and
"there never are enough hours in the day"
but if you scratch that surface you'll find
"i've over-extended and over-committed myself" and
"i can't seem to put anything down" and
"i've injured myself, healing is taking a lot of energy and i've not allowed myself the time or physical resources to recover and while i'm completely cognisant of this i'm going to keep burning energy i don't have."
when i noticed that one it no longer surprised me that while i've been eating far more than i usually would over the last week and done very little real exercise i've managed to LOSE weight. ok, the result is good, but really, this means that the chemical energy i need to... you know, heal myself, is coming from what little fat reserves i have left rather than the food i've been cramming down my through which has, instead, been used to keep me moving.
yesterday was a little different. after weather a few nights which have involved a lack of sleep in the last week or so i decided that i'd go out and wear myself out. Rapunzel and i went out for a nice day together - a visit to the Art Gallery, then some shopping in Civic. 4 hours, most of them on my feet. i had to exhaust myself - tire myself out so that i could be sure that i'd sleep. unfortunately this also meant 4 hours of near-constant agony as my knee, leg and lower back protested the abuse. i was about ready for bed by 9PM and when i did finally fall asleep i slept for 7 hours straight. motherfucker did it hurt though.
today i've alternated between "fine" and "falling over". the exercise helped to loosen up my knee, and i'm spending more time walking unaided than with the cane, but i've found that i have a decent energy boost for an hour or so after i eat, then i'm spent again. part of this is the lack of low-GI food in my daytime diet at present, but a lot of it has to do with how quickly i'm burning through the fuel.
meanwhile i'm still running around like a mad chook. i have a 3-day weekend ahead of me which won't include my favourite distraction, so i might actually spend some time bumming around doing very little. the week i spent between jobs came and went too fast. a long weekend won't be enough, but hopefully it'll stave off the eventual collapse. hmm... i'm going to have to tell Work that i'm not going to participate in this weekend's Overtime. it was tempting to say yes, but i have the feeling that it'll just be tooo much.
what i really need to do is say "no" when someone asks whether i want to do something. i managed to bail on going to the pub with the boys. i didn't want to - a couple of beers with M and T would have been great, but half an hour or so out and i knew that one beer and i'd be passing out at the table. i'll have to make it up to them. i seem to have some sort of complex where if i CAN do something... build a computer, chisel the the tiles off a floor, set up a home network... i'll instantly agree and go off and do it... as if the ability to do some thing compells me to do said thing. if i say that i can do something then OBVIOUSLY i have to continually prove it to myself on request.
interestingly, even when i'm dead on my feet i have some sort of compulsion which forces me to keep trying to stand straight and pretend i'm not. it's a little disturbing that after a month and a half i've found that around Rapunzel i'm managing to force myself to stop, shut up and let myself fall over a little. in the three years (on and off) with my previous employer i never really managed that. perhaps that has something to do with Capability - i don't think the previous could have held me up. seriously this girl continues to freak me the fuck out.
of course, come tomorrow i'll be back out there forcing myself to believe that i am in fact unstoppable and in the process grind myself further into the dirt to prove it to myself. either i'll start sleeping properly again and slow down enough to recover, or in another month or so i'll find myself keeled over face first on the floor with a 5'11" form standing over me saying
"You know how you thought you could keep that pace up? Well it turns out: not so much..."
on the surface of things i can say that
"there's a lot i want to get done" and
"i've made promises that i intend to honour" and
"there never are enough hours in the day"
but if you scratch that surface you'll find
"i've over-extended and over-committed myself" and
"i can't seem to put anything down" and
"i've injured myself, healing is taking a lot of energy and i've not allowed myself the time or physical resources to recover and while i'm completely cognisant of this i'm going to keep burning energy i don't have."
when i noticed that one it no longer surprised me that while i've been eating far more than i usually would over the last week and done very little real exercise i've managed to LOSE weight. ok, the result is good, but really, this means that the chemical energy i need to... you know, heal myself, is coming from what little fat reserves i have left rather than the food i've been cramming down my through which has, instead, been used to keep me moving.
yesterday was a little different. after weather a few nights which have involved a lack of sleep in the last week or so i decided that i'd go out and wear myself out. Rapunzel and i went out for a nice day together - a visit to the Art Gallery, then some shopping in Civic. 4 hours, most of them on my feet. i had to exhaust myself - tire myself out so that i could be sure that i'd sleep. unfortunately this also meant 4 hours of near-constant agony as my knee, leg and lower back protested the abuse. i was about ready for bed by 9PM and when i did finally fall asleep i slept for 7 hours straight. motherfucker did it hurt though.
today i've alternated between "fine" and "falling over". the exercise helped to loosen up my knee, and i'm spending more time walking unaided than with the cane, but i've found that i have a decent energy boost for an hour or so after i eat, then i'm spent again. part of this is the lack of low-GI food in my daytime diet at present, but a lot of it has to do with how quickly i'm burning through the fuel.
meanwhile i'm still running around like a mad chook. i have a 3-day weekend ahead of me which won't include my favourite distraction, so i might actually spend some time bumming around doing very little. the week i spent between jobs came and went too fast. a long weekend won't be enough, but hopefully it'll stave off the eventual collapse. hmm... i'm going to have to tell Work that i'm not going to participate in this weekend's Overtime. it was tempting to say yes, but i have the feeling that it'll just be tooo much.
what i really need to do is say "no" when someone asks whether i want to do something. i managed to bail on going to the pub with the boys. i didn't want to - a couple of beers with M and T would have been great, but half an hour or so out and i knew that one beer and i'd be passing out at the table. i'll have to make it up to them. i seem to have some sort of complex where if i CAN do something... build a computer, chisel the the tiles off a floor, set up a home network... i'll instantly agree and go off and do it... as if the ability to do some thing compells me to do said thing. if i say that i can do something then OBVIOUSLY i have to continually prove it to myself on request.
interestingly, even when i'm dead on my feet i have some sort of compulsion which forces me to keep trying to stand straight and pretend i'm not. it's a little disturbing that after a month and a half i've found that around Rapunzel i'm managing to force myself to stop, shut up and let myself fall over a little. in the three years (on and off) with my previous employer i never really managed that. perhaps that has something to do with Capability - i don't think the previous could have held me up. seriously this girl continues to freak me the fuck out.
of course, come tomorrow i'll be back out there forcing myself to believe that i am in fact unstoppable and in the process grind myself further into the dirt to prove it to myself. either i'll start sleeping properly again and slow down enough to recover, or in another month or so i'll find myself keeled over face first on the floor with a 5'11" form standing over me saying
"You know how you thought you could keep that pace up? Well it turns out: not so much..."
Saturday, April 19, 2008
demolitioned man...
it's been a week since my knee decided it didn't want to play any more. on week of near-constant pain and i'm demolished. completely fucking wrecked. last night it all got a bit much and at 5AM i sent an email into work politely advising that due to extreme lack of sleep (why the fuck else do you think i was up at 5 in the fucking morning?) i wouldn't be attending. nice work - a sickie in my first two weeks after starting a new job does NOT look good. still, i'm playing by the philosophy of "well, you've SEEN me hobbling around on my goddamn walking stick all week so you can't really think that i'm faking it or something. i'll have to take that day unpaid? whatever. watch me care."
today's been one of the worst. it's not so much the knee which is hurting anymore. the swelling's way down and i'm starting to get flexibility back. around 40degrees at this time. granted, it's usually closer to 160degrees but WTF? it's a start. it's more the muscles around the knee which have been compensating and are now heartily sick of it. add that the a night where i spent far more time awake than asleep and... i'm in pieces.
i'd actually managed to forget what it was like to live in constant pain. when i was at uni i went for years. YEARS. my back was a shambles and there were times where i couldn't walk more than 50 metres without having to stop and sit down for a minute or so. eventually a nice chinese man fixed it in about 2 hours with needles and electrodes and hot cups (no, seriously - 7 years of back pain gone in 2 visits to the accupuncturist. nice little guy who operates out of Nedlands, Perth. if you're in perth and you need help see this man.) after that sort of thing i would have thought that i could handle a week, but no. i've turned into a fucking pussy. "ooh, my knee hurts! i'm limping around the place!" and so on. my Pain Management just hasn't coped the way it used to. i can't really explain how my Pain Management works. i didn't even know i was doing it until i realised that when i get tired or hungry whatever it is that's broken hurts more than it did earlier. it seems to drain my energy reserves and in return it handles the severity of the sensation.
today, after a night of no sleep it had nothing to draw upon, which is part of the reason i've been so screwed today. on the plus side, i've also been sedentary as hell this week and i've lost half a belt-size. the problem is that i have reasonably little to lose and those reserves are going to be gone awfully soon.
i'm recovering though. i have a lot more strength in my right knee than i did even 2-3 days ago. i can walk unaided, although i'm only doing this around the house at present. i can drive without being in constant agony and i was able to hobble around the shopping centre for about an hour earlier today before i lost the ability to speak English and my communication devolved into tonal grunts. another week and i reckon i'll be back to something vaguely resembling normalcy, although it'll be a month or so before i'll sign off on anything involving extended walking. life and its challenges, i suppose. at least i can now be reasonably certain that it'll all be well and truly good by October...
today's been one of the worst. it's not so much the knee which is hurting anymore. the swelling's way down and i'm starting to get flexibility back. around 40degrees at this time. granted, it's usually closer to 160degrees but WTF? it's a start. it's more the muscles around the knee which have been compensating and are now heartily sick of it. add that the a night where i spent far more time awake than asleep and... i'm in pieces.
i'd actually managed to forget what it was like to live in constant pain. when i was at uni i went for years. YEARS. my back was a shambles and there were times where i couldn't walk more than 50 metres without having to stop and sit down for a minute or so. eventually a nice chinese man fixed it in about 2 hours with needles and electrodes and hot cups (no, seriously - 7 years of back pain gone in 2 visits to the accupuncturist. nice little guy who operates out of Nedlands, Perth. if you're in perth and you need help see this man.) after that sort of thing i would have thought that i could handle a week, but no. i've turned into a fucking pussy. "ooh, my knee hurts! i'm limping around the place!" and so on. my Pain Management just hasn't coped the way it used to. i can't really explain how my Pain Management works. i didn't even know i was doing it until i realised that when i get tired or hungry whatever it is that's broken hurts more than it did earlier. it seems to drain my energy reserves and in return it handles the severity of the sensation.
today, after a night of no sleep it had nothing to draw upon, which is part of the reason i've been so screwed today. on the plus side, i've also been sedentary as hell this week and i've lost half a belt-size. the problem is that i have reasonably little to lose and those reserves are going to be gone awfully soon.
i'm recovering though. i have a lot more strength in my right knee than i did even 2-3 days ago. i can walk unaided, although i'm only doing this around the house at present. i can drive without being in constant agony and i was able to hobble around the shopping centre for about an hour earlier today before i lost the ability to speak English and my communication devolved into tonal grunts. another week and i reckon i'll be back to something vaguely resembling normalcy, although it'll be a month or so before i'll sign off on anything involving extended walking. life and its challenges, i suppose. at least i can now be reasonably certain that it'll all be well and truly good by October...
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
snippets #1 (those allergic to incoherence should turn back now...)
i'm trying to get more of these idle thoughts down - those ideas which come to you in the middle of night when sleep beckons and the concerns of the day fade into inconsequence and the quiet voices in the back of your head can briefly be heard. or maybe that's just me.
my head's been fairly quiet of late, i've been noticing. it's the quiet that you notice when you've become accustomed to the constant chatter of the office, or the hum of the airconditioning, or the vibration of the ship's engines to the point where you stop noticing it's there... until it's gone... and somehow you find that it's more disconcerting than when you got used to it in the first place. the noise has died down and i'm finding myself deafened by the harshness of the signal without the softening effects of interference. the distractions are there, like when i notice the scent wafting from my shirt which suddenly makes me desperately wish i was somewhere else (in this case, a place which is less geography and more proximity), or when i fall asleep while planning what i'll be doing tomorrow, or that kind of thing. sometimes, on the other hand, the silence is so deafening that i start to think that if i beat my head against the wall enough it'll come back.
it's at about this point that i realise that the way i'd always thought about insanity was somewhat arse-about. i'm seriously considering the idea that instead of madness being the LACK of sanity, it's the other way around and that it's taking the madness away that leaves you terrifyingly sane. i'm not sure i'm entirely happy with this. this means that something's raped my mind and ripped that comforting random psychosis from my living brain. sure, it's generally easier for me to sleep at night at the moment, but AT WHAT COST?????
hmm. i'm going to have to ponder this more... another night.
my head's been fairly quiet of late, i've been noticing. it's the quiet that you notice when you've become accustomed to the constant chatter of the office, or the hum of the airconditioning, or the vibration of the ship's engines to the point where you stop noticing it's there... until it's gone... and somehow you find that it's more disconcerting than when you got used to it in the first place. the noise has died down and i'm finding myself deafened by the harshness of the signal without the softening effects of interference. the distractions are there, like when i notice the scent wafting from my shirt which suddenly makes me desperately wish i was somewhere else (in this case, a place which is less geography and more proximity), or when i fall asleep while planning what i'll be doing tomorrow, or that kind of thing. sometimes, on the other hand, the silence is so deafening that i start to think that if i beat my head against the wall enough it'll come back.
it's at about this point that i realise that the way i'd always thought about insanity was somewhat arse-about. i'm seriously considering the idea that instead of madness being the LACK of sanity, it's the other way around and that it's taking the madness away that leaves you terrifyingly sane. i'm not sure i'm entirely happy with this. this means that something's raped my mind and ripped that comforting random psychosis from my living brain. sure, it's generally easier for me to sleep at night at the moment, but AT WHAT COST?????
hmm. i'm going to have to ponder this more... another night.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
on the bench due to injury...
i used to have a reputation (of sorts) for being accident-prone. this was mostly when i was a kid and i got overly exuberant and my reach overstretched my grasp. no, strike that. my reach has ALWAY overstretched my grasp. it's just that when i was a kid it tended to lead to bloodletting. usually mine. it's led me to a fairly blase attitude towards injuring myself. a lot of the time i just don't care. "it's only pain," has become my common response, "it doesn't really hurt that much." every once in a while i'll get called on it - "You just went dead-white. Go sit down!" was what I got yesterday, at which point my walking stick and i were sent packing back to the couch.
yeah, it's true. in my late twenties i've become the proud owner of a walking stick. it's been a long time coming, and i should have gotten one the last time i did myself an injury which prevented me from walking unaided. i had alternatives available to me at time (previous involvement in martial arts means I have an impressive collection of long sticks i can lean on when necessary) and i healed up before it got too bad.
it's my own damn fault, although in my defence: i DID land on what was, 2 seconds previously, my GOOD leg. unfortunately my right knee decided it was sick of being the Good Knee and grabbed the title of Bad Knee quite conclusively. the point i'm refusing to, in any rush, get to is that since lunch time on friday my world has been a symphony of pain and agony, with occasional sets played by Karnivool and Bloc Party. i landed on it poorly, and it bent to the right rather than back. this sucked, and instead of hitting the floor and staying there i rolled, came back up onto feet which would no longer support me and landed back on my face. oh well...
still, due to the wonders of the 21st century i have a neoprene knee brace which keeps everything where it should be, and a stick which assists me with... well, walking, but also with retrieving small objects from up to 2 metres away. it's hurt like buggery, and attempts to drive have been... comical. yesterday i had to reach down and move my right leg left and right so that i could shift from accelerator to brake. it made driving cumbersome, but also entertaining... just not in the good way. it's a lot better today... or at least this afternoon. i've been able to move around and shift position without receiving jolts of stabbing pain, and because i've not had to hobble quite so much my back and other leg muscles aren't suffering so much. i have a far better range of movement and this gives me hope for the morrow... or at least, improves my chances of getting to work.
i must admit that i've not been the best patient while out of play. i copped a bit of flak from one of my housemates over the last couple of days for having the audacity to get up and make the tea, or to get myself some water. i have this philosophy that if i can get up and to to the toilet on my own then i can get my own water. it's one of the few areas where i allow hypocricy into my life - if someone else's sick/injured i'll kick them (metaphorically usually) if they don't lie there and get looked after. i, on the other hand, can't sit still and want to keep getting up to help or make the tea or whatever. i'm ok with this. i'm fiercely independent unless i have absolutely no other choice. if i'm so completely fucked that i can't move then i'll accept that i need to be nursed. if i can actually stand then i will do so. this is who i am - i'll accept it if i need it. if i don't need it then i'll get by, and thanks anyway. yes, my arm's quivering and my grip's so tight my knuckles have gone as white as my face and i look like i'm about to collapse but until i do i'm going doing SOMETHING so that i don't feel so fucking useless. i refuse to wallow in my own fucking misery when i could be doing something to take my mind off it for another 5 minutes. if i'm going to put up with excruciating pain either way i might as well be busy rather than sitting around like a lump.
either way, i'm just going to have to be careful for the next little while, and if people piss me off at least i can hit them with my walking stick. it's important to remember that pain is fleeting, just like joy. it might hurt like hell, but it won't kill you in and of itself. i've lived with worse than this, and for longer, and soon enough it'll all be a bad memory. fuck it - it's only pain. deal with it and move on. give me a couple of days or a week or so and i'll be limping, but otherwise right as rain and if that's the case then it can't possibly be all that bad now, can it?
yeah, it's true. in my late twenties i've become the proud owner of a walking stick. it's been a long time coming, and i should have gotten one the last time i did myself an injury which prevented me from walking unaided. i had alternatives available to me at time (previous involvement in martial arts means I have an impressive collection of long sticks i can lean on when necessary) and i healed up before it got too bad.
it's my own damn fault, although in my defence: i DID land on what was, 2 seconds previously, my GOOD leg. unfortunately my right knee decided it was sick of being the Good Knee and grabbed the title of Bad Knee quite conclusively. the point i'm refusing to, in any rush, get to is that since lunch time on friday my world has been a symphony of pain and agony, with occasional sets played by Karnivool and Bloc Party. i landed on it poorly, and it bent to the right rather than back. this sucked, and instead of hitting the floor and staying there i rolled, came back up onto feet which would no longer support me and landed back on my face. oh well...
still, due to the wonders of the 21st century i have a neoprene knee brace which keeps everything where it should be, and a stick which assists me with... well, walking, but also with retrieving small objects from up to 2 metres away. it's hurt like buggery, and attempts to drive have been... comical. yesterday i had to reach down and move my right leg left and right so that i could shift from accelerator to brake. it made driving cumbersome, but also entertaining... just not in the good way. it's a lot better today... or at least this afternoon. i've been able to move around and shift position without receiving jolts of stabbing pain, and because i've not had to hobble quite so much my back and other leg muscles aren't suffering so much. i have a far better range of movement and this gives me hope for the morrow... or at least, improves my chances of getting to work.
i must admit that i've not been the best patient while out of play. i copped a bit of flak from one of my housemates over the last couple of days for having the audacity to get up and make the tea, or to get myself some water. i have this philosophy that if i can get up and to to the toilet on my own then i can get my own water. it's one of the few areas where i allow hypocricy into my life - if someone else's sick/injured i'll kick them (metaphorically usually) if they don't lie there and get looked after. i, on the other hand, can't sit still and want to keep getting up to help or make the tea or whatever. i'm ok with this. i'm fiercely independent unless i have absolutely no other choice. if i'm so completely fucked that i can't move then i'll accept that i need to be nursed. if i can actually stand then i will do so. this is who i am - i'll accept it if i need it. if i don't need it then i'll get by, and thanks anyway. yes, my arm's quivering and my grip's so tight my knuckles have gone as white as my face and i look like i'm about to collapse but until i do i'm going doing SOMETHING so that i don't feel so fucking useless. i refuse to wallow in my own fucking misery when i could be doing something to take my mind off it for another 5 minutes. if i'm going to put up with excruciating pain either way i might as well be busy rather than sitting around like a lump.
either way, i'm just going to have to be careful for the next little while, and if people piss me off at least i can hit them with my walking stick. it's important to remember that pain is fleeting, just like joy. it might hurt like hell, but it won't kill you in and of itself. i've lived with worse than this, and for longer, and soon enough it'll all be a bad memory. fuck it - it's only pain. deal with it and move on. give me a couple of days or a week or so and i'll be limping, but otherwise right as rain and if that's the case then it can't possibly be all that bad now, can it?
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
too fast just isn't fast enough...
every once in a while, when i'm left with a quiet moment in my own mind, where i find that i have a doubt. most recently it's been from my riding. i ride a motorcycle. it's big and fast and a few years old now which dates it back around the time when design philosophy dictated that fast bikes HAD to be big - before manufacturers worked out how to make fast small. it's not the prettiest bike, but it's mine and i love it like i've loved most of my girlfriends over the years (which means, more or less, that i service it as regularly as clockwork, but generally mistreat it otherwise).
the problem here is that after a few years of riding i'm getting pretty good at it, and by good i mean fast. this is what i do: i develop an interest in an activity, be it motorcycle riding, or martial arts, or 2142 Battlefield, and after a little while i find myself pushing myself to get better and better at it. i'm not particularly competitive. not with other people, anyway. what i do is i push myself to be better at it than i was yesterday and on a bike my metric is speed. how fast can i go around that corner? how low can i make it lean? how much of my tyres am i actually using? in management circles this is referred to "continuous improvement" and "benchmarking".
now i'm starting to wonder if i'm taking this just a little bit too far. my new job has a 23 kilometre commute. i'm making it in around 23 minutes which means that i'm averaging 60kph, including a 4km section which slows to 40kph or less. i'm finding that i don't have to slow down for... oh, corners, other road users, traffic jams... that sort of thing, and somehow i don't feel like i'm going fast anymore. when 120kph through suburbia DOESN'T FEEL FAST ANYMORE there has to be something wrong. it's little things - i don't need as much of a gap between the cars for me to make a pass. passing between two cars on a dual-carriageway just... you know, doesn't have the feeling of danger to it that once it did.
i actually scared myself when i was out for a blat a couple of weeks ago. not because i did something which made me fear for my safety, but because what i'd been doing HADN'T. motorcycles are inherently dangerous creatures. you're more vulnerable to start with, which raises the stakes, but when your rear tyre sliding out when going around a corner doesn't raise your heart-rate anymore, or when you barely think twice about lane-splitting at license-revoking speeds... let's just say that i'm starting to wonder how much further i'm going to wind up taking this.
it actually makes me glad that i have an older bike - for a not insurmountable quantity of money i could have myself one of the last year or so's models which tend to be 20 kilo's lighter and 30BHP more powerful... but then i'd wind up learning how to use all that extra power and find myself going faster and harder than before and into the territory where death isn't just a possibility, it's inevitable.
maybe it's a good thing that the likelihood of my going near motorcycles while abroad is fairly low. it'll give me a break to reassess my life and how long i actually want it to be because, and i'm being completely sober and serious here: if i fuck up out there with the way i'm riding at the moment then i am going to fucking die. jokes about 9 lives and my seeming invulnerability to date, i'm getting to my own ragged edge and the abyss is currently staring straight back at me.
i'm going to need to slow down. i just have no idea how this is to be accomplished because once i'm out of the driveway i'm not thinking about taking it easy. i'm not thinking at all. anything less than 100% concentration and i get bored and stop paying any. with that level of focus i'm not thinking about threats because i've already reacted to them, and now i've gone and convinced myself that faster is safer there's no bloody hope.
i never worry when i'm out there. it's only after i've stopped and reflected on it. this is, i'm afraid, not a behavior-changing thought process...
the problem here is that after a few years of riding i'm getting pretty good at it, and by good i mean fast. this is what i do: i develop an interest in an activity, be it motorcycle riding, or martial arts, or 2142 Battlefield, and after a little while i find myself pushing myself to get better and better at it. i'm not particularly competitive. not with other people, anyway. what i do is i push myself to be better at it than i was yesterday and on a bike my metric is speed. how fast can i go around that corner? how low can i make it lean? how much of my tyres am i actually using? in management circles this is referred to "continuous improvement" and "benchmarking".
now i'm starting to wonder if i'm taking this just a little bit too far. my new job has a 23 kilometre commute. i'm making it in around 23 minutes which means that i'm averaging 60kph, including a 4km section which slows to 40kph or less. i'm finding that i don't have to slow down for... oh, corners, other road users, traffic jams... that sort of thing, and somehow i don't feel like i'm going fast anymore. when 120kph through suburbia DOESN'T FEEL FAST ANYMORE there has to be something wrong. it's little things - i don't need as much of a gap between the cars for me to make a pass. passing between two cars on a dual-carriageway just... you know, doesn't have the feeling of danger to it that once it did.
i actually scared myself when i was out for a blat a couple of weeks ago. not because i did something which made me fear for my safety, but because what i'd been doing HADN'T. motorcycles are inherently dangerous creatures. you're more vulnerable to start with, which raises the stakes, but when your rear tyre sliding out when going around a corner doesn't raise your heart-rate anymore, or when you barely think twice about lane-splitting at license-revoking speeds... let's just say that i'm starting to wonder how much further i'm going to wind up taking this.
it actually makes me glad that i have an older bike - for a not insurmountable quantity of money i could have myself one of the last year or so's models which tend to be 20 kilo's lighter and 30BHP more powerful... but then i'd wind up learning how to use all that extra power and find myself going faster and harder than before and into the territory where death isn't just a possibility, it's inevitable.
maybe it's a good thing that the likelihood of my going near motorcycles while abroad is fairly low. it'll give me a break to reassess my life and how long i actually want it to be because, and i'm being completely sober and serious here: if i fuck up out there with the way i'm riding at the moment then i am going to fucking die. jokes about 9 lives and my seeming invulnerability to date, i'm getting to my own ragged edge and the abyss is currently staring straight back at me.
i'm going to need to slow down. i just have no idea how this is to be accomplished because once i'm out of the driveway i'm not thinking about taking it easy. i'm not thinking at all. anything less than 100% concentration and i get bored and stop paying any. with that level of focus i'm not thinking about threats because i've already reacted to them, and now i've gone and convinced myself that faster is safer there's no bloody hope.
i never worry when i'm out there. it's only after i've stopped and reflected on it. this is, i'm afraid, not a behavior-changing thought process...
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
this is the life...
my holiday seems to be going pretty well. 8 hours of sleep a night is, in my book, a luxury enjoyed by the extremely fortunate. right now i'm feeling like the luckiest motherfucker in this excuse for a city.
i ran around yesterday getting things done until i wore myself out, then proceeded to play Mass Effect on the Xbox. for 5 and a half hours of game-time. today... you know, i offered to cook for the (new) household in part because they're always cooking for me and i should return the favour... especially since i'm bumming around doing squat at the moment but also, i think, to give me a reason to leave the flat.
i'm cooking again on friday, but that's a whole other matter.
i'm getting a new rear-tyre on my bike tomorrow (the old one's started de-laminating down the middle and looks... distressing). on thursday i have absolutely no plans. today, until i head off to the shops in a few hours, i'm playing Xbox. i have my coffee, i have games, i'm going to relax godsdammit.
i ran around yesterday getting things done until i wore myself out, then proceeded to play Mass Effect on the Xbox. for 5 and a half hours of game-time. today... you know, i offered to cook for the (new) household in part because they're always cooking for me and i should return the favour... especially since i'm bumming around doing squat at the moment but also, i think, to give me a reason to leave the flat.
i'm cooking again on friday, but that's a whole other matter.
i'm getting a new rear-tyre on my bike tomorrow (the old one's started de-laminating down the middle and looks... distressing). on thursday i have absolutely no plans. today, until i head off to the shops in a few hours, i'm playing Xbox. i have my coffee, i have games, i'm going to relax godsdammit.
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