The Catchup Confusion and the GBL List

What ho, chaps and chapesses, as Bertie Wooster would probably say, were he a) not fictional and b) here today. And indeed, what ho to all my non-binary Mx's too, because why the devil not, eh?

Apologies - missed quite a few days of entries, including, least forgiveably, a weigh-in day. Irritatingly, the Nazi Scales on weigh-in day were, sahll we say, fairly non-binary themselves, inasmuch as whenever I stepped on them, they refused to settle on the same figure twice. I woke up and they told me I was 18st 3.5. Hung aorund a bit, went for a fairly considered pee, and they put me UP to 18st 4.75. A few hours later, having still neither consumed anything nor notably expelled any more, they had me down as 18st 3.

So, really, who knows? I'm going to go with the first number they thought of, and say that irritatingly, I was still 18st 3.5 on Tuesday.

Since then, they've been doing some fairly similar things, varying by up to two pounds depending on, for instance, which foot goes on them first. We may be due a battery change, but certainly the news is not what I'd call conspicuously good. It's been one of those 'chained to the desk' weeks, though I have been pretty good in terms of going, like an automaton, for my 10,000 step walk every night, come rain, wind, sleet, snow and frankly just having a laugh. Still haven't plugged either the exercise bike or the treadmill in, which can't possibly go on much longer. What needs to happen is another big push, another system shock - a couple of days of double-walking, maybe, just to wake up a system that's now expecting 10,000 steps a day. Hmm. Will try and restructure a couple of days this week.

Pal of mine had a talk with a bariatric specialist today, and aparently had the whole 'Welll, you could be dead in ten years' talk. Believe me when I tell you, that'll put some rocket fuel in your Disappearing ass. It was being almost begged to have the procedure because otherwise I could be dead in ten that made me first decide to try to Disappear. That was something mad like six years ago now. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock. Four years away from notional deadline, where the hell am I? I'm trying to do it again the non-surgical way, and I'm only really a couple of stones lighter than Zoiksy McLifeThreatening was, six years ago. Still, whichever way you go, this fight for health and social normalcy is a bastard, so at the risk of dissolving into crappy quotes, you've either got to get busy living or get busy dying.

Of course, being able to feel like you're living helps. I'm struck by the urge to whinge and moan about how actually little I've accomplished, and whenever that urge comes on me, my Inner Working Class Bastard slaps me silly. I have an urge to whinge about how I'm not a published novelist yet, which would feel like getting busy living, and my Inner Working Class Bastard gets up in my face to say 'Best fucking write then, hadn't ya?' - I have a novel that I think needs a tweak to its ending and maybe one more go-through, but instead of doing any of that and sending it out, I'm editing like a mad bastard. I have two separate people who've given me writing gigs on Who audio plays, and instead of doing either of them, I'm...editing like a bastard. Have a feeling soon there will be a chart in my life - a GBL chart, which, rather than seeing all these things I want to do as part of my ordinary To-Do List, and so, sort of turning them into chores to be done, will turn them into temporal rewards: edited like a mad bastard for a whole project? Right - send off the novel to five agents. No really, fuck you, this is what this time is to be used for. Ring the bell when it's done and go back to edit another project.

In terms of Disappearing, it's the well-known idea of effort and reward. Get under 18stone - take a day to write for yourself. Get to 17st 7, take the day to rearrange the bejesus out of your website. And so on.

Yes - I like this plan. A GBL List, to get more stuff actually DONE, in more areas of life, and feel more alive. Feeling more alive=a bigger incentive to put the work in to do more Disappearing, and so on.

Now excuse me, have to just go and edit like a bastard before taking my 10,000 step walk in the frozen pissing rain.

The Lifestyle Constipation Question

Lalalalalalala - not talking about the Orange Idiot, not thinking about the Orange Idiot: it's his day, he can have it, it doesn't mean he gets to colonise my world. Today at least, this will be a Trump-free zone, because let's face it, nowhere else is going to be, ever again, unless we choose not to let him in. We have our own chunks of electronic real estate, and he can only go there if we let him. So, Hail to the Thief, and let's move on.

The worrying thing is that in Disappearing terms, very little actually happened today. But then, the rhythm is developing that very little happens any day - I work, I eat fairly sparingly, I go out and walk my daily 10,000 steps+ in the dark, what adverts for weird living yoghurt call my 'digestive transit' has slowed right the hell down, I have my main meal later than would probably be advised, mostly because I don't go walking till I finish the day-job at 5 and the walk is currently taking me over two hours, and actually, in my faintly obsessive weighing, not a whole hell of a lot is happening to my numbers. But what is happening is not particularly good - though whether that's due to the whole slow transit thing is a fairly disgusting question on which to spend too much time, so let's not.

Right now, the Disappearing seems indicative of a more general pattern in my life - so much to do, so little actually seeming to get done - three edits to do, a day-job with its own challenges, reviewing work for a geek site, writing two audio adventures, trying to sell a flat, trying to deal with all the stuff we packed up when we moved OUT of the flat, Disappearing and actively thinking about taking on new challenges, like Booktubing - oh yes, I'm thinking of moving into Youtube and doing a Jefferson Franklin Booktube channel (ask someone young - I had to). I have a kind of lifestyle constipation right now that needs a kind of motivational enema - it's all doing what I need it to do to some extent, but every day my To Do List, not to mention my To Give A Crap About List, seems to be getting longer and more unbeatable.

Sigh - is there a lifestyle guru in the house? Or, come to that, a handful of To-Do List laxatives?
Still, on the positive side, I'm not, at the moment, this time round, letting the Disappearing fall by the wayside simply because there's too much other stuff to do.

Of course, the counter-argument to that is that perhaps - just perhaps - that's a big contributing factor to there still being so much else to do, but I can't afford to think like that at the moment. This is the first phase of KBO this time round - "Keep Buggering On," as the phrase has it. And as the options are digital, with KBO leading to success and SBTIA or "Say Balls To It All" leading to failure and backsliding, O we jolly well have to KB.

Positive thoughts, positive thoughts, positive thoughts - still a stone lighter than I was when we began this journey again just before Christmas. Just need to dedicate the crap out of some time to the job. Anyone know where I can get some?

The Double Check and the HateCycle

Today was a weird one. Had lots to do, ended up doing very little of it, not least because with the organisational idiocy for which I'm legendary in my close circle, I'd booked two doctors appointments for the same morning. So we schlepped to the first one - to have blood taken for an annual diabetic review next week - and I was vampirised with remarkable efficiency. One thing to be said for taking blood-thinning medications is that getting blood taken is usually no drama whatsoever. Then we hot-footed it to the hospital for the other, bigger event of the day - a cardiology appointment, which unbeknown to me these days includes a rudimentary ECG (and accompanying crop-circle waxing when the sticky pads are ripped off). So...that was fun. Fortunately, my heart behaved itself, and gave the doctor a lovely regular 50 beats per minute rhythm to study intently for ten seconds before he told me to sod off, and that he'd see me in two years.

Result!

That said, the whole thing, which took about four hours from leaving the ohuse to getting home, left me with a kind of hospital lethargy that has persisted for the rest of the day. Right now, I'm writing this before getting on the bike, and rediscovering the resentment and loathing of the machine. You know I've had a couple of knackered nights already, but this is more, or less, or certainly different to that. I'm looking across as it and hating the idea of getting on that bike.

Sigh. Where to go when that mood grabs you?
There's a quote I've tried and failed to find about the business of writing. It says something like "Anyone can write when they're inspired. The mark of a real writer is writing when you're not. Writing when you don't feel you can. Writing when it's the last thing you want to do."

The same is true of Disappearers and putting in the effort. Truth be told and bottom line, no-one's going to care if you don't do the exercise. No-one's going be shocked or scandalised. For the most part, unless you're a schmuck like me and tell everyone, no-one's even going to know.

But you will. And whne you next get on your scales, you'll be lying to yourself when you dare to hope, because you won't have done the work you need to do. And when the results don't come, you'll know why they haven't. Your choice, as a grown-up. Have days off, have nights off by all means, I don't mean to get all drill sergeant on your ass. But if your only rationale is the childlike "I don't wanna!" then shut your yap, and do what you need to do.

Does it help you loathe it less? No, of course not. I still hate the idea of getting on that bike right now. But it's an hour out of my life, and at the end of it, it'll be done. The angst of not doing it would probably last longer and be more painful.

So - to the HateCycle, Disappearing Man!

The Surprise Supporter

It should be perfectly obvious to most people by now that I don't write this blog to conquer the literary world. Way back in the very beginning, I said something like 'There will be rants, there will be bitching. Come along for the ride if you like and let's see what happens.'

The thing is, I'm - and I'm about to lay a technical PR industry phrase on your asses, to hold onto something - entirely bollock useless at promoting what I write. I haven't updated my website for months on end, which means there's a pile of geeky articles probably as tall as I am that need to go on, and that probably never achieved their full potential in terms of eyeballs and brand-growth. Likewise, I tend to only tag a small handful of people into entries of this blog that I'm fairly confident will read and enjoy them, or at least read them to know what the hell I've been upto on any given day, shoudl they want to catch up.

So it was a bit of a mystery to me, a couple of weeks ago when a pal of mine from waaaaaay back - we're talking first year of comprehensive school, when both of us had hair and I had a different surname altogether - suggested to me via Facebook that I should put the first year of the blog together as an e-book, and fling it out into the wilds of Amazon, to at least allow me to say I had something out there.

I'll be honest, the idea was mostly intriguing because I've done what most people would think of as 'the hard bit' - the blogs are written for conspicuously longer than that first, successful year.

Naturally though, I've taken every opportunity in the meantime not to take the idea seriously because - well, again, bollock useless at taking myself seriously.

Imagine my surprise then to get a message out of the blue late last night from someone I didn't know, a friend of Tania, the Starbucker who I promise I'll stop calling the Christmas Elf any minute now, honestly. This friend was enormously complimentary, and, bless her, appears to have read the whole freaking thing. A full year of every-day entries, followed by four years of more sporadic entries, false starts, restarts and fundamental failures. I'm not even sure I've read the whole frekaing thing, because as you can probably tell, most of it is entirely stream of consciousness.

Won't share her actual review as I've somehow managed to get to nearly 8pm today without having the forethought to ask her if I could (I mentioned the bollock useless thing, right?), but suffice it to say, it was more than enough to put a spring in my step, both in terms of pushing on with this attempt to Disappear again and in the potential idea of packaging up the blog entries as an actual book-like...thing. Ha - Year 1: The Disappearing Man. Years 2-4 - The Reappearing Man. Year 5, goddammit, the Return of the Disappearing Man!

Just a lovely moment in life, to get a note through from someone who's actually read the thing and found some worth in it.

Right - enough sentiment. There are bikes to jump on and sweat to be shed. Catch you tomorrow, Disappearers.

The Fly-By

Very much more of the same today - deadlines, deadlines, more deadlines. No lake walking, plenty of skinny coffees, one meal out with d. No rose', I'm glad to report for anyone who braved yesterday's entry.

The meal out was a whole new level of temptation - a buffet. I still probably ate more than I technically should have, but am far enough into this thing now for it not to be a thing. Went, ate sensibly, job done, moving right along.

Tomorrow, heading to the coast at 8AM - may well take an intermediate weigh-in reading, as of course I won't be able to deliver a proper weigh-in on Tuesday morning. And plenty of packing and organising still to do tonight, so will have to carve out some biking time somewhere in the course of the night.

No idea really where. Going away quickly now, to get on with some of the stuff still left to do. Ciao for now, Disappearers and Disappearing-Watchers. Catch you probably tomorrow night or the night after, whenever I can establish some sort of reconnection to the web-world.

The Novel Imperative

The cover of the novel.

Today has been only very vaguely about Disappearing, inasmuch as I walked round the lake a few times this morning, had a porridge breakfast and a solid few of my new Starbucks regulars with what I both hope and have been informed are fewer calories than my previous standard lattes. I've had one hot dog (yes, back to Five Guys) for late lunch annnnnd that's about it, Disappearing-wise - I'm making this a relatively short entry because I still hope to have time to go up and jump on the exercise bike to add to the 560 calories that so far, my 8626 steps of walking about the place have burned. Rather pleasingly, and in line with yesterday's Disappearing Ripples idea, I biked yesterday for exactly half an hour and burned a solid 300 additional calories - on average, ten calories per minute, so I'm hoping to do slightly more today before I have to leave at 9.30 to go and collect d from her twelve hour work day. As I write this, it's 8.09, so again, am hoping to keep it reasonably short.

Today, apart from the porridge and the hot dog, has been my equivalent of a spa day. In my Starbucks, working on the second draft of my novel. I'm within a hundred pages of the end now, though that's a false measurement, as I know for a fact I have to add several key scenes in, or write them essentially better than they currently are. But that kind of time, all to myself, working in a world quite literally of my own, is hugely relaxing - as I say, it's my mental equivalent of a spa day.

The week ahead is going to be almost unremittingly grim - three medical appointments, something of a day-job deadline, progress that must be made on what I have to admit is a very fun ghostwriting project, and some humping and lifting and shoving in the flat to move things around before going on a glorious week's holiday. Fun fun fun. So was good to have this 'spa day' all to myself in my characters' world. Now - back to Disappearing. To the bike!