Ha. All that malarkey yesterday about how "one more walk will see me having walked a marathon."
As it turns out, and this needs to be made very clear - I do NOT have blisters.
I do however have sensitive areas, mainly on the right foot, that if something stupid and point-making were done to them, would moe than happily become blisters.
So I decided to get an early morning gym session in instead.
"Really?" said d when I mentioned this. "Thought you might do a Starbucks day, seeing as there's nothing on."
Part of me jumped at the prospect. Part of me, as I mentioned earlier in the week, didn't - far too hot to drink hot coffee all day, and far too calorifically expensive to drink the cold stuff. The fact, incidentally, that I'm thinking in those terms means one very important thing is happening.
Loooooooooooooong-ass readers of this blog will know what's happening. If you'd turn to the newbies and explain, that would save us all some time.
...
...No?
What's happening is the world is genuinely going perspex. Oh, I can talk about perspex boxes and how they separate me in my determination from all the things that will stop me achieving my goals till I'm blue in the face (or indeed, given the sunshine of this week, red and blotchy in the face). But when the world goes genuinely perspex, it's not, perhaps, the most hugely sane place to be. You know how some augmented reality apps on smartphones will show you the world through the lens of your camera, but with added content on, like the nearest toilets, or the nearest place to get falafel at 3 in the morning, or if you particularly need to know, the nearest opera house or somesuch? Well when the world goes genuinely perspex, I get that sort of information overlay on the world as I move about it. Meeting a friend for coffee? If they pick me up, it's all negative calories, but if I walk there, the road gets a little tag on it saying "Minus 100 calories". When I arrive there, every swig of coffee I take goes "ker-ching" in my little mental perspex world - "Plus 50 calories. Plus 50 calories. Plus 50 calories..." Every option, every choice that parades itself and can-cans before my already-overthinking brain gets an extra layer of Stuff To Think About overlaid on top of it. Which is why, although it's a fundamentally useful mindset to be in when trying to Disappear, if and when d reads this blog, she may well cry, or hide, or run off with a Belgian gas fitter to Rotterdam or something, because she's been through this with me before, and I happen to know she's of the opinion I could do with a couple of hundred volts across the temples to short circuit this shit before it really gets started.
But now it's got started. The genuine perspex is here, or at least hereabouts. If it's not really here just yet, then any minute now...any day...I can feel it coming. To be honest, I'm fairly certain it's already here, because the resolve is growing. Man, how it's growing.
When I restarted this, just four days ago, I was spurred on by the tachycardic incident and the closeness to my original starting point for the Disappearing Man project, what now seems like allllll those years ago. What was it, three years ago? Bloody hell, in three years I lost 6 stone, put 4.5 of it back on, and now and determined to start going the other way again. Suppose that answers the question of what the hell I've been upto for the last handful of years. Anyway, that was the initial spur, but there's something else now. The resolve is thickening around me. I genuinely believe at this moment you could put a chocolate fudge sundae in front of me, and I wouldn't be interested. A plate of sausage, chips and gravy, and I wouldn't crack. This is goooooood, both in terms of the project, and in terms of me and my relationship with the world. Feels like the first levers of control are jusssst out of reach, but with time, and patience and bloody-minded stubborn-bastardy, they'll be slipping into my hands soon enough.
All of which was by way of a diversion really, and an unplanned one at that.
Happened to mention the idea of spending the day in Starbucks to my mother. She very calmly told me that freaked her out more than somewhat, but she realised I needed to get back to normal.
I figured normal can wait, and went up to her place to work for the day - that meant no gm this morning either. So I've just got back on the bike, the exercise bike that takes up a fair chunk of my office and has been sulking for weeks that I wouldn't give it a ride (Scottish readers, feel free to piss yourselves). Rode it tonight, for a restrained 500 calories, on top of a bare 100 of walking just about the place throughout the day.
Food intake today:
Weetabix, 3, with semi-skimmed milk.
Coffee, mugs, regular. Honestly, about seven.
Apples, Pink Lady, large, 1
Plums, origin indeterminate, 1
Plus whatever d is whizzing into majestic life in the kitchen downstairs as I sit here, tapping out gibberish to friends, family and fellow Disappearers. It's late in the day to eat of course, but that's entirely my fault for the biking resolution.
Tomorrow will be in all likelihood another biking day, because I'm out most of tomorrow at the first All Wales British Humanist Association meeting. Should be a laugh, but you can never tell - humanism is no guarantee of non-dickheadery. Certainly tomorrow, there will be Starbucks, but this is not some giant Rubicon to be crossed - I was back in Starbucks in Canary Wharf the morning after the latest tachycardic adventure.
And so we head into the weekend, with a thickening resolve, hopefully a thinning layer of blubber and a faintly demented excitement about self-denial. Are we having fun yet?
Perversely, I really am.
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