Q1 performance review

The sun is out, the sun remains out at 7pm, the County Championship is back on Friday, I keep chuckling out of nowhere thinking about a man named “Beyers Swanepoel” deciding to leave his team a man down in the middle of a South African domestic final to fly off for pre-season with Worcestershire instead, on my phone there’s shiny new Tom Misch and Courtney Barnett and Robyn and Snail Mail and Raye albums downloaded and ready to tuck into, Tom Scott is posting YouTube videos again. In other words, nature is healing. Life is good lads, life is good. I don’t know how often I’ve genuinely got to say that over the years.

I feel like this has been the first winter ever where I’ve been well enough mentally to even begin to get bogged down by the long dark nights, although as the Day One app’s ‘on this day’ notifications keep reminding me literally fucking anything is going to feel better than this time last year. One particular day in the hospital with my grandma in mid-January echoes as the epitome of the low, where I think I threw up on three different floors certain my body had finally reached its limit and was literally imploding. Then, once I’d eventually steadied myself enough to crawl outside for the bus home another wave of sickness hit me, terminating the bus mid-route and causing its very kind Irish driver to both console me in one of the worst panics of my panicky life and fend off the one passenger of six who was more concerned about getting to work on time than the mental and physical disintegration of this stranger.

There were glimmers of hope starting to peek through at times in that turmoil, but it wasn’t until April or May those ever felt remotely real and not some sort of manic delusion I was conjuring rather than facing reality. Things steadied once March was out but it wasn’t until the very tail of the year that they ever began to feel settled, even if the unsettling was only my brain launching back into the horrors whenever allowed to idle. Having 2024 as the single worst year of my life immediately followed by one of the single worst days of my life on January 3rd and the absolute worst day of my life on January 10th and six weeks of hospital visits every other day realising nothing in life would never be the same again? Wouldn’t recommend, funnily enough. But we made it through. I made it through. There is not one single thing that isn’t better now.

I started a draft of this month’s blog a couple of weeks back when I did the hitherto unthinkable and took An Entire Week Off Work Like A Normal Person, and that concept got me reflecting on how the last time I had one of those would have been when I was desperately unemployed and depressed and anxious in the winter of 2021, where job applications got me as far as Christmas temp weekend nightshifts at Sainsbury’s purely because they required less a CV/application and more a warm body with a pulse. Even those had me in the occasional violent panic attack when I wasn’t hibernating through daylight and limiting my social interactions to those with villagers on Animal Crossing, and even that marked a significant upgrade on the winter before. Any time I think about any of those feelings I just want to go to that scared little boy/man/adult and give him a big hug and promise him it will genuinely all be OK. I could still do with someone doing that for me most days now, but never so desperately. Hopefully never again so desperately.

Anyway, I mention that mostly to show whichever figment of my imagination is reading this that I haven’t deliberately left it until the last two hours of March to do this blog nonsense, I promise! I’ve been going outside! I’ve been living life! I had a haircut and got a new passport, albeit not in that order! I’m getting used to the idea of trying to do things that make life better rather than merely fighting desperately to stay afloat between existential panics! And I think the latest version of the resolution bingo grid backs me up here:

Other than the whole psychological thing of breaking off from 2025 and writing 2026 instead, I think the two biggest factors to keep me ticking along really quite nicely this year so far have been the existence of this grid – having goals and aspirations, what a novel concept! – and specifically that one in the top left. Starting off the New York Times crossword streak from January 1st as well has let me both get a lovely little jingle every day and see a tangible reminder of how many days (90 and counting) it’s been so far. Even on the two or three days I have felt like rotting away to mush, and that being of the 90 rather than per week as was frequently the case before, I’ve still managed to crawl to the shop for some milk or take the bins out or something even if just to keep the streak(s) alive and give myself a brief moment to be proud of. I think I’m finally getting the hang of being nice to myself rather than relentlessly critical.

The step count might be one I’m behind on but less so than before: from 6,563 as an average last year I’m now at 6,735 per day, helped massively by 70km in total over what turned out to be eight mental breakdown-free days off basking in sunlight and feeling alive. For the ‘impulsive train trip’ square I trotted up to the Young V&A in London for their joyous Aardman exhibition, only realising en route to Victoria the Young V&A is in Bethnal Green rather than anywhere near the Actual V&A in South Kensington, so I just put Oklou, Caribou and Big Thief albums on back-to-back and walked right across the city through a lovely spring breeze. The next day I ticked off the cinema square courtesy of Arco, a truly endearing French animation now with the vocal talents of folks like Natalie Portman and Andy Samberg and Flea for some reason, and that only because there’s literally nothing stopping you and a pal going to the cinema with two other strangers for a random film you’ve never heard of in the middle of a weekday afternoon for £4 each if you both have the day off. It’s great. You can do things on a whim! You can just have fun!

I mentioned in January the Lego bit was essentially shorthand for rewarding myself for doing one Big Scary Thing in particular, and without going into it too much here I’m pleased to report I did the Big Scary Thing and the sun came up the next morning and of course there was nothing to be terrified about for years and years even though it didn’t pan out quite how I might have hoped, and now there’s an FW14B and moustachioed Brummie minifigure on my desk forevermore to help me keep that in mind. Putting that one at the centre and randomising everything else was incredibly deliberate as well, and if nothing else the weight that’s lifted off my shoulders and the sheer relief of having done Big Scary Thing feel as good as anything. For a moment that felt like all it would be, with sod’s law ensuring the Lego store had Nige and his car next to an OUT OF STOCK tag when I walked in for my victory lap, but at the very least it gave me a chuckle to distract myself from the world feeling like it might collapse in (which, of course, it didn’t and was never going to).

This also means there’s also now a couple of diagonals looking pretty good for a bingo: a couple of pals who’ve been trying to bully me into going away with them for 18 solid months are finally kidnapping me for a few days in the Balkans in May, so that and some SQL and 275 more days heading out of the front door would do it, or else nine more blog posts and an 11 mile walk over the South Downs and some sort of successful job application that’s looking ever more tempting to make by the hour. I joked (?) at the start I’d end up ticking these things off if only to outdo my other bingoing pals but the more the year rolls on and the more my life feels rich and rewarding the more it’s become a fun way to visualise and keep track of what feels like substantial personal growth. So that’s nice isn’t it.

Anyway I’m really never quite sure how to write conclusions so instead have an incoherent playlist of some music I’ve been really enjoying lately: