Finding positives

Some little progress over the past couple of weeks. Little things, better than no things. I'm glad a keep a note of things. My memory is terrible these days. An anxious mind is always full and always more incoming so recent thoughts and memories get thrown out pretty quickly. Its still a constant battle with fatigue as well as panic but managing to push myself out a little further. Over a month now of getting beyond half way to the school. Not any further yet and truth be told its still a battle getting just to that point, a battle I am only winning once or twice a week. So still a lot of work to do but have to remember there a time not so long ago when I struggled to get halfway to where I am now.

Sore aching body. Shaky. Not an ounce of energy. Feels like the flu but only in those regards. Some little bug bothering me at the moment but from what my wife says, who's job is customer facing, there are a lot of bugs going around at the moment. Not the flu though as I have not cold feeling and am ravenous. Some little bug running through my system so finding it more difficult than normal to push myself out. Fatigue and anxiety, one feeding off the other.

The little positives. Nothing by anyone else's standards but positives for me. Been into the supermarket a few times. Even bought things at the kiosk- not ready for the checkouts yet. Also took my oldest daughter and her friend into their club and stayed for 5 minutes which was a big thing. Really drained me though more than I realised and when I went to pick them up 90 minutes later it was panic after panic with the fatigue. Really not good at all. But I was back in their the following day with my wife and boy. They run a cafe and this time I went right inside and waited while my wife ordered a couple of cold filled rolls to take away for lunch. Also a few times have been into my wife's work again and stayed a few minutes.

All small things which sound irrelevant to most but for me worth noting. Steps in the right direction. Its a race against time to try to get some sort of normality before ATOS come calling. And they will come calling. Its just a question of when. It hangs over me. Could be 6 months away, could be 6 hours away. They will come.

The car is back on the road- for now. Not been in it yet but that is the next step. Its just a pity its this time of year where long journeys will become problematic if there are adverse weather conditions. Small journeys to begin with will do. I usually find when I spend a spell in the car it improves my walks too. I think the small world in my head is mapped differently when I am not going far and things seem further away that they really are so traveling around helps bring perspective. That is the next step.

Time passes

I'll be honest and say I am finding it harder and harder to blog. There is a simple reason for that. I wrote my first blog post 4 years ago, 5 years if you include the first year I deleted. And from that day nothing has changed. Basically my world is small, very small. I see no one and when I do it is for too short a period of time. My boundaries are so restrictive that I go nowhere and do nothing new. So there is only so much you can say in 4 years, only so much you can recycle. I am past saturation level. I hope for something new to say and try to do new things but nothing changes.

I live in the hope though that it will change and keep trying for that change.

A strange thing concerns my photography. Logically summer would have been the best time to get out and about with my new camera- one that I am still trying to get to grips with. But this has been the wettest summer I can remember. Not the weather for a non-waterproof camera. Colder times lie ahead and with that drier times and darker nights and that is when I will get out more and take more photographs I feel. Hopefully by then I'll be more comfortable with my camera. Its not like the little compact that I can just carry around in my pocket so I have thus far been reluctant to take it out when it has been dry. Also hoping to save for a new lens which will not only allow me to take the kind of photos I want to take but is also smaller so may be able to fit in my coat pocket.

Another factor in not getting out far is the lack of a car. What a palava that has been. One mechanic is very lucky I am agoraphobic or might well have his neck wringed. We are still without a car and I know nothing about cars but was starting to suspect a mechanic was extracting the urine. Our usual mechanic died last year and since then we have been struggling to find a reliable one- really its a new car we need but that is not possible. Anyway my wife found a guy to look at the car because the breaks were squealing and the steering wheel shaking when she braked. He said was the back brakes and charged her £150 to fix them. But when she got the car back it was still doing it so back again and this time he said it was the front brakes and wanted another £150. I said there was no point and we might as well scrap the thing as its so old now its just going to bleed us dry. We would be better cutting our losses and then if she had to go far she could hire a car for however long. But she was determined and as the MOT she got a price for the brakes, MOT and whatever else needed done- £350.

It gets complicated from there. Basically he then changed to £450 when we were due the car back and then £600. Money we don't have. And money which added to the brakes before it would have got us a run around with a MOT and road tax. He was at it. A crook. He got the original amount but the car is still not MOTed and the work he has done does not even cover the expense so I am raging and its one of the few times I was really going to try to push through the panic and agoraphobia to see him and let him know what I think. Instead I was left feeling angry, hopeless and bitter.

Any way we hope to have the car back soon if all goes well from a recommended mechanic- something I asked my wife to do before all this stuff. Hopefully in the coming weeks I can get out driving again. The good thing about being in the car is it allows me to work solely with the mental side of things. With the walks I have the physical fatigue as well as the panic so its a lot harder to deal with. With the CBT I am doing I am hoping if we can get out places and try to stay there for a bit using what I am learning I can maybe start to improve and then longer term start to work on physical side. The last time I spoke to the therapist who has experienced the same thing he said that he managed to get on top of the panic and anxiety first and it was only then that he could start to work on the fatigue and also that it did take time but getting on top of the anxiety first definitely helped. So that is the route I will try to follow. All I need now is the car.

So in the meantime I will just continue with the walks and trying to learn how to use my camera indoors with some still life and the like. I will keep doing the CBT and hopefully soon some mindfulness too which helped with the drives 3 years ago. Maybe, you never know, in the doing there will be a story or two to crop up worth talking about and a photo or three worth posting.

New addition

Mmm...another cat. Not so much a new addition but a re-addition. Oh and we do still have that cat who came for a temporary stay with fleas that cost us a fortune to get rid of. Its abandoned now. The owner never in contact again like she promised. This on was actually my wife's cat. She met her her sister lived with it but this cat and another belonged to my wife. They stayed with us until the birth of our second child in 2005 when her sister took, one died recently and the other has made its way back to us after a 7 year absence. Here it is peaking out under the couch. Not a bad idea- might employ it myself the next time we have visitors. She has taken refuge under there. On this occasion the other cat, who she just hisses at all the time, made the mistake of trying to get under there during a mental frenzy of darting about the home and she came out with claws bared. I guess I can relate to that- next time we have visitors...

Not much to post about to be honest. The one thing I dread about the kids starting a new term after the summer holidays, apart from adjusting to the new routine, is that there is always some kind of bug they bring home in the first few weeks. And this time is no different. The girls have been fine but the wife, boy and I have had the cold, the dreaded lurgy. One of the mothers was telling me her family had it too over the weekend. That's the way it is. Bloody bugs. So that has kept my anxious mind plenty occupied for the last week. Still though I have been pushing myself out on my walks. It has affected my single walks greatly but what I can't make up in quality I have been compensating for in quantity and managed to notch up over 10 miles for the week. That is 5 weeks in a row which I have never done before. I have been approaching my walks in a different way this year and its certainly working so far. I just need to now try to change the way I think before, during and after I go out for a walk which I feel is the main thing holding me back and possibly even the cause of fatigue I get with them.

All going well though at the moment and however small the steps they are at least in the right direction. That is fine with me. If I can get there I will be over the moon. If it takes years to do I don't care. I'd prefer it tomorrow but I never have been patient. If I can get there that will do.