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.