Waking Up

"You ever thought of hibernation?" asked my pal (and mother of two) Sian (she of the Transit trips to get us here) recently. "Hibernation sounds gooooood..." she added dreamily. I had to laugh.
"Sometimes feel like I've been in hibernation for the last twelve years," I said. "Kinda befuddled and sleep-drowsy and surrounded in fat. Not that it's impaired my judgement or anything, but I feel so much more awake now than I've done at any time in the last twelve years."

I mention this mainly because today has been a kind of waking-up day. Got struck heavily yesterday by how clever some of my friends are, and how well they're doing - Sian herself, on being made redundant, has turned her situation around, launched a company, and is now pulling in business. My pal Rebecca, who I'm joining for breakfast tomorrow, is a niche broadcasting legend, and recently had the guts not only to go it alone and launch her own company, but has already hooked herself a joyfully juicy major contract to float the exploit. Wendy, who I mentioned yesterday, is a brilliant - I mean, almost clinically brilliant IT specialist, being ex-forces, and now earns absolutely squillions for her analytical (and this is not a word I use lightly) genius. d - did I mention d? How breathtaking is it, in this economy, to give up a paying job, spend nine weeks or so making a home, go on one interview and get a new job?

I have impressive friends, and I am, it seems to me, surrounded by reliably brilliant people (there are more of them than I list here, and they're all in some way special - I merely list here the ones who've made an impression this week). I don't kid myself that I'm as reliably brilliant, but the one thing people have always told me I can do whenever I want to is write. So today I've been putting the office into some sort of order, and both writing and doing some of the dull but necessary mechanics you need to do in order to sell your writing - putting together a synopsis and a letter and a CV and a this and a that (basically dressing your red-lit window!). It's time to come around from hibernation, time to take this new energy that losing half the weight has given me and put it to some sort of use.

That said, one highly productive use for all that energy would have been to have jumped on the bike, which I signally haven't done. But as part of the whole office-plus-energy thing, I've written myself a set of long, medium and short-term goals, and a set of intentions for March 2012. A few of which are decidedly Disappearing-based. I intend, by the end of March, to have hit my six-stone mark (84 pounds, for the Americans). And that whole thing I thought of a little while ago - the idea of running a mile without dying. Want to give that a go. I'm not - obviously - talking about running properly. I mean jogging, probably. But just the idea of being able to sustain something for a while without collapsing on the side of the road appeals to me.

Oh also, I'm going to start looking into the possibility of doing another Night Hike. Got a great feeling of accomplishment (and admittedly blisters!) when I did my first one, something like five years ago, when I was...roughly...three stone heavier, maybe four, than I am right now. Would be fascinating to see how much the ratio of stubborn bloody-mindedness to healthiness will have affected my ability to do, for instance, a 20-mile walk.

So, as I say, various elements of Disappearing have made themselves apparent today, but the general sense of the day has been waking up and preparing to get on with what, if I'm lucky, will be the second half of my life in an entirely different spirit to how I spent most of the first half.

Which I suppose, when you consider how I spent most of the first half, can only be a good thing.

Blood was back up to 5.8 this morning, but that'll do for me right now, still on only one type of medication for the diabetes. Woohoo!