6th February - The Caterpillar Paradigm

I rarely take a day off from anything – the day-job, the editing, the geek writing, the Disappearing. When I do, though, I take them right the hell off and in another county.

Today, I took a look out the window at the stormy, pissing-down weather and thought a handful of single-syllable words: “Sod that for a lark,” more or less covers it.

d had a day off too, and while we thought about doing any number of things – new coffee shop, breakfast out, movies – in the end, we decided on the warmer, cuddlier option of sitting, snuggling on the couch for hours long enough to get ass-carbuncles, watching recorded TV, Netflixing and chilling. 

Lunch was a small pizza and chicken strips. Dinner was curry and rice. Biking was contemplated, annnnd then frankly not done. This makes actually the second or third night in a row where I’ve done precisely nothing in terms of exercise, and overall, a day containing both pizza and rice is massively unwise. Essentially, today, I emulated The Very Hungry Caterpillar – sitting extremely still in a duvet-cocoon, occasionally pouring food into my face.

Of course the trouble with the Caterpillar Paradigm is that rather than turning into a butterfly, one turns rather more into a slug if one follows it too often or too assiduously. Tomorrow needs to be significantly different. Am I likely to have made progress in my Disappearing come Tuesday? Not on the basis of today, or any recent days. Am I likely to in fact have slipped back some? Yes, absolutely.

It's incredibly easy, contemplating this, to say “Fuck it!” and simply eat what we like. I’m not going to do that. Tomorrow needs to be a return to Disappearing form, before a couple of days of busy ass-sitting turns into a slippery slope to Reappearing.