Welcome to the Sugarpause

 

Right - first news first - first official weigh-in today.

16 stone 9.25 pounds.

233 pounds.

105.6 Kg.

Pick one that has meaning to you.

The "story" in that is that I'm up by 0.75 pounds since Saturday. Shush, we're not focusing on that at all right now.

That means the goal by a week today is 16 stone 7.25 - but you know me, that little quarter-pound is gonna bug me, so I'm declaring I want to get to 16 stone 7 by next week. 

That's because every 7 pound marker is a half-stone (told you, you pick the scale that has meaning to you - in my case it's stones and pounds, and therefore half-stones have meaning for me as markers on the downward journey).

So there's that.

What else is news?

We're both ridiculously exhausted - is that news, or just a factor of our age and it being Evil Bastard Season? Or Summer, if you insist on the politically correct name for this annual hellscape.

We're both abbbbbsolutely dragass right now. It's ten past 8 in the evening as I write this, and I've woken from a too-short nap, just long enough to do it, before heading to bed for the night. 

She's mainlining caffeine and finding it makes her sleepier (I have suspicions about mind-type there, naturally. 

"This is ridiculous," she barely found the energy to mutter after work. "Is this down to giving up sugar?"

I shrugged one shoulder at a time. "Could be," I said. "Dunno," I admitted. "Maybe it's the Sugarpause?"

"The..." She shook her head. "I don't even wanna know."

I just mean that a behavioral upset is likely to be occasioned by any prolonged shift in body chemistry. Puberty gives us hormones, the horn and hair. Pregnancy does...a whole mass o' crap.

See also menopause. Radical chemical change in the body produces behavioral symptoms.

This is Day 3 of our Sugarpause. 

*Shrugs* S'probably not, in any real sense, a Thing, I realize. But when you've been used to a certain level of sugar coming in relentlessly (significantly in my case larger than my insulin-producing systems - there's a word, I wanna say pancreas - can cope with), suddenly changing that relatively cold turkey feels likely to have some behavioral consequences.

From memory, I expect to begin resenting happy people with icecreams - even children - and wanting to slap them soon.

Haven't reached that point yet, because I haven't as yet hit an actual hunger point - it hasn't been that kind of beginning. And besides, I don't have the energy to slap anyone right now.

Which is probably not the right spirit with which to embark on new adventures.

Oh yes - new adventures. A little bit of history. 

Can't quite remember where I was when last I stabbed blindly into the dark energy of Disappearing. Probably, I think, I was making some kind of living as an editor of books for my own editing house.

That went downhill as the economy suffered, and that little tinker of a virus started getting screentime on the news.

I jumped back into working for a living just as Covid hit.

That turned out to be a colossal screaming mistake - though I made some absolutely arse-kicking pals as a result.

The job I jumped to was at a word-farm run by a pair of utter dickheads. 

While there, I went blind in both eyes from fast-growing cataracts.

The dickheads - fired me.

In fact, they fired me on the very day I got my Covid confirmation.

So that was special.

A week later I was taken into hospital with, famously, "24 hours till cascading organ failure." Long story short, not enough oxygen getting to the organs to keep them alive.

Spent two weeks on a Covid ward. Came back from the brink, and eventually came home on Christmas Day, for the Richard Curtis ending. Was absolutley weak as a kitten for about half a year.

While in hospital, they treated me with a drug which, in simple terms, dilated my pupils and let the catacts at the side grab hold and keep them open. So I went more blind.

So blind, in fact, I actually got one of those offical diagnoses of being legally blind.

I applied to the DWP for some kind of benefit.

They refused.

I appealed.

They refused again.

So I could make no money, but wasn't disabled enough for the DWP to give me any money.

Fun, fun, fun...

Eventually I had two cataract operations, in one of those waiting-list-busting schemes the Tories try to get away with. Treated privately, but paid for by the NHS. So, in a very real sense, thank you all for that.

No sooner had the second eye been done than I got what has to go down as the best job in my career to date. 

So much so, I actually got promoted, into a role I wrote myself. Oh the plans we had...

Came back after Christmas, starting in January 2024.

Oh.

The board (run by bankers) had decided to "rationalize" the company, and canned a whole department.

Our whole department.

Ten journalists - boom. Gone. March 2024.

Since then, I've been ridiculously lucky, given the state of the job market and the rise of AI.

I got a permanent job starting on April 1st. I got another couple of freelance roles - and dropped them, because I wanted to focus on my main role.

This is the role I'm in my last week of, because another role came along. Three interview rounds, four months of recruitment, and I got it. It's a journalistic role, but perhapse weirdly, I actually can't say too much about it. Hush hush, wink wink, say no moooore.

So that's where you find me as we both encounter this complete energy-drain. About to embark on a brand new role, as a full-on journalist, in a aubject area I've never properly tackled before. It's exciting, and scary, and fun...

But I'm going to bed now, cos I'm totally knackered...