Feelings on a Friday 29 – Resolve

Hey there internet people.

It’s been a struggle the last few weeks, not done as great as I would like in a number of areas, but I’m not going to complain today. That’s not what today is about.

After a bit of dry spell, I have done a number of posts this week on one of Munky on Merseyside’s sister blogs My Marvel Life. https://marvelmunky76.wordpress.com I’ve been enjoying the writing process again and knocking a few posts out has been a positive. Positive is where I want to stay.

So here are some positives and some resolutions.

Positive 1: I have allowed my trainer (Ali Fraser of Lewis Bailey Fitness) to use pictures of me to show my progress on social media. While this is no big thing for most people, it is a deal for me, I hate people seeing me, mainly because I so often hate what it is they see. This was a step forward in how I view myself..

Resolution 1: To put more into the training, try more things and work even harder, feel so good after my session yesterday and want more.

Positive 2: The pictures themselves are something to look at for me too. I keep hearing how I look different then even 3 months ago. Last night, I saw what I looked like 5 months ago to now. I see it now, it’s very different and for the first time, the FIRST time in a long while, I looked at the old pictures from a look how well I have done, rather than a look at the fucking state of that fat bastard at the old pics.

Resolution 2: Keep at the weight loss. I have found a meal I want to try tomorrow night for tea. Cooking from a receipe is not a skill I possess, but I’m eager for the challenge.

Positive 3: The weather is changing, warmer, brighter. This can only be considered a good thing.

Resolution 3: Do more outdoors stuff, get out into the world more, not for my boy, but for me.

Positive 4: My 6 year old nephew Leo is taking the 3 peak challenge (to climb Scaffel Pike, Snowdon and Ben Nevis before he is 7 in November) one is already done, local press have interviewed him, am proud of the little fella.

Resolution 4: Have put a sponsor form in work for him and there’s a link here for anyone else to have a peep at. https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/heather-carman-1?utm_term=52bvKNwQP

Positive 5: At my therapy session, was given two pieces of advice. i) Cut yourself some slack. ii) Try to look at the world with more a sense of wonder, as children do. Instead of looking at what you should do, just see more of a what can I do? What is possible?

Resolution 5: Wonder more.

As always I am here through the love and support of my son, the irrepressible Sam and the MIGHTY Rosie.

Ttfn internet people, go be positive.

 

 

 

 

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Feelings on a Friday 28: Random Thoughts n S**t

It’s been a week internet people.

I’m tired, worn down and fed up.

It’s easy to feel down at a time like this, when the world is at it’s own throat, when the newspapers are full of misery and Winter is taking it’s sweet-ass time to leave. It’s easy to feel down.

Thankfully, I have a reputation of never doing things the easy way. So I will continue to find the positives.

1: Friday is here and I am still eager for the weekend.

2: I am 12lb from my next weight-loss target and some of my clothes are now too big.

3: I feel I am making progress, making peace with some of the shit in my head and coping with it better when I can’t. Most days it’s a battle, the good days are the ones where I am winning it.

4: I have got either Crocodile or Kangaroo burgers for tea tonight.

5: After listening to the excellent Stacey’s Pop Culture Parlour podcast, was led to the hilarious radio show Ray Gunn & Starburst, which is a lot of fun.

6: I have a wife who loves me, a son who adores me and the growing feeling that I am good enough for them, or at least, I can be.

7: Got a comedy gig to look forward to this month, this is a bonus.

I usually say find your 5 as a way of keeping my spirits up. I found 7 easily.

I think I am doing ok.

The battle is not won, maybe it’s a Superman thing, a never-ending battle.

If you are struggling, keep going, every now and again, pushing forward in the dark, you get to see the sun.

Metaphorically like, its miserable weather here today, ah well it’s England, summer falls on a Thursday.

Stay strong internet people, believe in yourselves. We have accomplished miracles just getting here.

Links

Stacey’s Pop Culture Parlour can be found here

http://popcultureparlour.podbean.com
The Ray Gunn and Starburst podcast can be found here

https://raygunnandstarburst.wordpress.com

Feelings on a Friday 27: Positivity is Exhausting

Hello there internet people.

Forgive my absence, beyond my usual weightloss posts. I have been neglecting this blog somewhat recently, unsure what to write about or say. I suppose I still not sure.

So here are some random ramblings.

Work is work, stressful and frustrating, but ultimately, things seem to be going well. My gym sessions are going full pelt as well. Started bench-pressing again after a gap of over 12  years. I’m even begun to enjoy my weekly therapy sessions. It’s amazing when you have people on your side. Speaking of people on my side, after an overnight stay at his grandmother’s my son came home last night, it’s weird when he’s away mid-week, missed him terribly. Last night he told me that I was the perfect dad. I had to fight that instinct to tell him he’s wrong, but I was too busy tearing up. The moments between him, me and the MIGHTY Rosie are the ones that make all the other things in my life make sense. It’s hard sometimes to articulate how much I love them. We need new words for it I think.

I’m trying to stay positive in the mornings, shit that’s hard. As exhausting as my daily battles within my head can be, the being positive thing is a little bit harder. But then again, I have always been a person who likes to make things harder for myself. So positive is what I am aiming for each day. Some days are harder than others.

This week has seen more time for me and the MIGHTY Rosie to spend together, which has helped us feel closer and close the distance we felt a few weeks ago, I am reminded daily of how lucky I am to have found and won her heart in this world. She remains the best part of me.

Also there’s been a lot of decent stuff to enjoy entertainment wise. I am still enjoying the shit out of DC’s Rebirth, with Superman, Action Comics and Wonder Woman nailing it week after week. I have watched the first 3 Sharknado films at the recommendation of a mate. I don’t know if I should thank him, or seek revenge. They are simultaneously great fun and so very terribly made films. You enjoy them, but don’t think too well of yourself for doing so. Went to see the Lego Batman film with said mate and enjoyed that tremendously. Whilst not a Batman fan as such, Will Arnett is always worth watching, even if it’s only voice over stuff, the cast is great and there’s loads of fun stuff in that film. TV wise we are clearing some of the recent TV we’ve been avoiding and had lots of fun doing that. Whilst Netflix’s Van Helsing has ended on a damp squib finale that anyone could see coming, Lucifer ended it’s run with panache. Have been catching up with season 2 of Dark Matter which has drew me in as well as it did the first time, but it’s bleak. The MIGHTY Rosie referred to it as a greek tragedy. But the new TV program of choice is the remake of the Richard Dean Anderson vehicle MacGuyver.

Yeah, that’s right, they remade MacGuyver

But it was something that I haven’t seen in a while, fun. Lucas Till (I know, I had to look him up too) takes the lead, with George Eads (from CSI) as Jack. Till has a degree of charm and Eads is having a ball playing Jack and it’s a really entertaining series that follows the same unarmed genius solving problems formula, but updates it a little. Really entertaining series that I’m going to keep up with.

So that’s it for now at least, positive ramblings over for now.

I am climbing this mountain, because I can. I have been shown I can believe in myself.

When we believe in ourselves, we are capable of so much more.

You have survived everything up till now. You are still here, despite your battles.

Your greatest victory is ahead of you.

Feelings on a Friday 26: Mixed reflections

It’s been a weird week.

I’ve finished my writing course and I feel quite melancholic about the whole thing. I got to know people I would have otherwise never met and now that’s done. I don’t know what to do with that. I’ll still keep in touch with them, but it’s still a little sad.

Work has finished being enjoyable since I got back after New Year’s, so there’s that too, but I can keep that in perspective, since I am 4 hours from the weekend.

Also today is the inauguration of the 45th US President. I want to say something pithy, or reassuring or something like that, but that’s not there right now. I’m concerned for everyone in the country who isn’t an affluent white man, because I think there’s good reasons. I’m not interested in the politics of the Donald, that doesn’t interest me quite so much. There have been right wing types in charge before and while not the best thing in the world, hardly the end of it either. I fear for the world when the leader of one it’s most influential nations is to be honest a lecherous and dishonest TV personality who throws tantrums on twitter based on nothing beyond criticism. If you can’t handle criticism before you take the job, this is going to be a rough 4 years.

It’s not a great place at the start of the year. We have a US about to go into one meltdown or another, we have a UK government as uncaring and out of touch as anything we had under Thatcher, a Russia that feels it can interfere with international politics with inpunity, because it looks like it just did regarding the US election and we also have an EU ready to kick the UK to the kerb in an embarrassingly handled leaving of the EU. The future is looking grim, the next few years seem fraut with peril.

My point? Not for the first time. Europe has been in one tension or another for a hell of a long time. Fascists appear whenever there is conflict for them to use and rich fuckers have always and I mean always done whatever they can get away with to those ‘below’ them. But remember this, we are raising a generation that are so used to global communication and community, who can see all our mistakes as they go along. We have faced global war and global disaster before and yet… we are still alive. The last 4 years have not been so great for me, but I am getting better all the time and while it’s easier to say the world is getting worse, that’s only how it looks now. The darkest moments always seem dark, until the light returns and sooner or later it will.

We need to be make better choices, wiser choices and choices made on hope and the future, rather than fear and the past.

Hope and the Future.

They still exist you know.

Feelings on a Friday 25: 9 Years on

I feel down today, or at least I did, it’s stopped raining and there’s just a touch of sunshine and things don’t seem quite so bad. There’s a metaphor for something in there somewhere I suppose.

Ok, in other news, I went to my first slimming world weigh-in on Saturday and after 4 days of diet plan, have lost 5 1/2 lbs. That’s only 1 1/2 lbs from a half stone. I was thrilled with that and have been ‘on plan’ ever since. I am ridiculously hungry, but that is a post for another day.

This post is the story of 9 years. It was a different world in some ways, in others, it feels like yesterday, but 13th January 2008 will always be the day I got engaged to the Mighty Rosie.

I’m not going to tell the story here, not fill in the gaps between falling in love and that day, some shit is private and really not my story to tell. But I do want to say a few things, because of who she is and what she means to me.

She’s funny, acerbic at times, inappropriate at others and despite a lack of verbal filter, filthy as fuck. But she is also the most kind hearted, loving and compassionate person I know. From my parents I learned about what love is, I grew up around it and all that stuff, but that’s by example Rosie showed me how to do it. She is my best friend, soulmate, partner in love and adventure and the first person I want to speak to, morning noon or night. She and I share a sense of humour and a darkly sarcastic sensibility and an appreciation for the odd and bizarre. I never fit in anywhere in my entire life, but I never feel that way around her. She is the force of nature we all need in our lives to give us a kick up the bum, the annoyance at times to remind you not to be complacent. All these things are true and have always been true. She is also the mother my beloved son and has taught me so much about how to parent. Also, not quite so new. The more recent revelation is that whilst she has battled her own demons non-stop for years and years (not mine to say, so not going to) she has still been there for me during the worst 4 years of my life. Without her, I’d be suffering depression, instead of battling it. Without her, I’d be a nervous wreck, rather than a slightly nervous mess. The worst part of mental struggles is that feeling that you are alone in this fight. Whenever I feel like that (and there are many) I look at my left hand and the white gold band on my finger that says “I got your back, because I know you got mine.”

To the Mighty Rosie I saw this, you remain my northern star, whenever I see you, I can always find my way home. I love you as much now as I ever have and each day, that grows. I am trying to get back to who I used to be and beyond, I do it for me, but I am on this path to being better, because you have helped me find it.

I remain your loving Munky husband

I remain your Munky

I remain yours

To anyone reading this, who has someone in their life, for whom their heart beats. Tell them this, the harshest things said in a relationship are always the not-said things. To anyone who doesn’t, 11 years ago, I was in the same boat and was blindsided by this wonder, so you never know.

I’m outta here internet people.

Ttfn

Feelings on a Friday 24: You are going to win Today

Hello there internet people.

Took a bit of a break from here, time issues and emotional stuff, but I feel I should post something.

It’s been a rough ten days.

Had a therapy session on the 30th and lots of stuff came up and continues to come up. I’ve repressed for so long that no longer doing that feels so incredibly strange. I now get choked up over a song, which has never happened before. Lows seem lower, but the positives seem ever so much brighter. I feel a bit all at sea, but realise that this is some form of progress. It’s made the struggle I feel, seem more like a struggle. As part of the writing course that I am doing, I wrote a piece about the bad days. How a day in my life can go. It all just poured out of me, onto the page like some form of exorcism of typing. I heard nothing from the tutor, till it was read out to the whole group, since mine was the next to last one, and am one of only three men in the group the whole “no one will know whose is whose” defence didn’t work and watching everyone as the worst side of my day was laid out before them was … uncomfortable. But afterwards, many people said how it was enlightening and powerful. There were criticisms of course, but mostly constructive. I was compared to a solider, but I found that a little uncomfortable too. The words used were a soldier fighting a war no one knows about, against an enemy no one can see. Kinda reminds me of the song Marlena on the Wall, but that’s just me. It reminded me how exhausting some days can be, how heavy it leaves you feeling. Now I am feeling it more, or maybe noticing how much I was always feeling it, without the filter of repression.

 

But here’s the thing, I don’t feel low. I’m having a bad day, that’s a given at this time of year, but you know what? Don’t care. Christmas is coming, both the day itself and the two weeks around it where I don’t have to be in work. The two weeks where I am husband and father and me, all wrapped up into one. Today started off badly, it got worse..BUT I still find positives, like moving the Elf on a Shelf around at night and watching my son see what the elf has been upto while he is asleep. Seeing everyone get ready for the weekend and feel a bit happier, music playing in work and feeling like I am making progress. I dropped a tin of sweets into work today, not for the first time this week. I don’t have to allow how I can feel to dictate what I do. I am going to win today. You are going to win today.

The news tells us all about how shitty the world is and how bad things are and how hope is pointless and all that shit. But it doesn’t have to be true. Yes there is bad, yes it gets some more press, but that’s not who we are. No one is just how they are on their worst day, we are more. You are going to win today.

What I am going to do now is finish strong at work, get some shit done and go and enjoy my weekend. I am going to win today.

Every day can be a victory, every day is a win. Including today.

When the days don’t feel like a victory, MAKE THEM A VICTORY.

 

 

 

Feelings on a Friday 23: Short n Sweet

I just wanted to have something down, so here are a few random thoughts.

1: We have seen the most divisive votes on both sides of the atlantic in many a year, yet still the hate, vitriol and rhetoric clog up the internet like it matters at all. Can’t fix the past, can’t undo the election in the US, Trump won for many reasons, so the thing to do now is to try and minimise the damage he does through political means and hope that good comes out of this. It might, not likely, put also not impossible. In the UK, we’re out of Europe, we just have to makes the best of it and that means knowing whats going on, stay informed and figure out what to do next, not constantly harp on about a decision made by the nation as a whole 6 MONTHS AGO. Deal with now, because that’s what we’ve got.

2: In that vein of thought, maybe we should be treating each other a little better. There’s so much anger and upset in the world already, maybe we don’t need to go looking for reasons to get upset with people. Was on the internet last night, saw a post on now internment camps weren’t good things (a no-brainer I thought), but got caught up in an argument. We’re a better people than this, if not, we should be.

3: Christmas is coming, now before we get into the whole too early thing, consider this, after the parade of hate, misfortune, loss and disappointed of this year, isn’t it nice to have something positive to look forward to?  No matter what culture, faith or community you belong with, that time of year has many positives. After this year, we need that coming together and celebrating, no matter what you call the celebration.

4: Found a new Tv series on Netflix called the Expanse. Well written and compelling.

That is it for now internet people, I promise I will try to have something to say next time.

Ta ta for now

Feelings on a Friday 22: Some days you need a win, occasionally, you get one.

Hi de ho internet people.

It’s been a rough year. Won’t lie, doesn’t look like we are going to get a break for a while yet. So it would be easy for me to go on another little rant.

But you know what? Sick of that. I’ve been on an upswing and I’m glad of it. After swapping all the bedrooms around, have moved my comic longboxes into the spare room along with my trades. The last thing I need is my 6 year old son finding some of the horrors in my graphic novel collection. Now he has more room for his own toys and is sleeping like a baby in a bigger room. On sunday, went to a comic mart, met up with Andy Leyland (host of about 7 current podcasts, some of the best are listed below) and had a nice chat with a comic fan and bought an arse load of comics. It reminded me of why I have this hobby and what I enjoy about it. Then me, my boy and the MIGHTY Rosie went for tea and had a lovely time doing so.

http://twotruefreaks.com/shows.php?show=14

http://twotruefreaks.com/shows.php?show=37

http://twotruefreaks.com/shows.php?show=38

http://twotruefreaks.com/shows.php?show=52

http://ffcast.libsyn.com/
As suggested my the aforementioned Mighty Rosie, have met with a therapist for some longer term care and met with her on Tuesday. Easy to talk to, understanding and knowledgeable, without making me feel that my problems were beneath her or anything. I allowed myself to be vunerable and open up to a complete stranger, without having my eye on the fact that in six weeks I’d no longer be their problem. After one session, I felt better, so clearly I am going to go back and have more.

On Wednesday, went back to college and handed my assignment, parts 1 and 2 of Nights Empire, which can be read on this very blog. Got some good nuts and bolts feedback and was quite talkative all night, not the usual unsociable me.  Thursday I gave 100% at gym, despite having no energy at all. I even managed to maintain my recent 12lb weight loss.

It’s still a struggle, but every victory matters. I need a break, but have one coming up.

Remember, you have survived this far, even when you thought you couldn’t. You are stronger than you know, braver than you feel and matter more than you can imagine.

So this weekend, see loved ones, laugh, play, watch bad Tv and anything else that makes you happy. It’s what I intend to do.

Feelings on a Friday 21: Positives

Feeling positive today internet people.

Why you may ask?

Well this weekend, me and my wife (the MIGHTY Rosie) tackled the gargantuan task of sorting our bedroom and we did, by moving it next door and give our son (the Irrepressible SGM) a larger bedroom. We kept at it the whole day and I now sleep in a room with all my wardrobes and drawers as well as glow in the dark stars.

It’s been a rough week in work, but have kept at it, got lots done and kept going no matter what. Have had two gym sessions this week and on incline walks alone climbed 1,000 ft. I have also beat my press up record and since I was last weighed, lots 12lbs. The things that bring me down are very much still there, but I had some wins this week. Got another of my A-Z posts done and more than anything else, am feeling good about things.

I know I am struggling, I know that this fight isn’t over, but weeks like this, they remind me that it’s a fight that I can win. I am a lucky man, I have a job (not always an easy thing to keep the way the economy is) that I often enjoy. I have a wife who loves me, because of myself and in spite of myself, she is nothing less than my northern star, as long as I can see her, I can find my way home. I am also a father and realise the blessing that it is. There are fears, panics, stresses and frustrations that are at times overwhelming, but I see him and realise that it’s all worth it.

I feel positive today, still in work, still stuff to do, still too far from the weekend, but I am positive.

I’m lighter, happier and more focused than I was this time last week and I am looking forward to the weekend, but not because I won’t be at work.

See you soon internet people, have a day’s arse to kick.

 

Feelings on a Friday 20: Long Week, but a good one

Hi there all.

It’s been a long and tiring week, with gym, college and a somewhat awkward parents evening. (When the teacher says she feels like she’s being attacked, maybe you’ve come on too strong) Work is mental, but well within what I am capable of handling.

The weekend fast approaches and it yet, it still feels a long way away, every feels like so much more of an effort to do anything. So the easy thing is to be unhappy, or down or one of the other things that get in the way of enjoying life, instead though I am going to find my five. Five positives from this week, that will keep the positivity I am trying to foster going a bit longer.

1: My son is doing really well in school, his marks were all in the excellent category.

2: Boss was away today,which was nice.

3: My wife is awesome ( no surprises there with the MIGHTY Rosie).

4:I found my portable DVD player, so enjoying some Tokusatsu at lunchtimes before I go for a walk.

5: I have really enjoyed my college lessons on writing. More on that story later.

There are reasons why I would feel down, but today I refuse to yield and be down. Today I embrace the weekend.