A couple of months ago I got caught up in the snowball that was the "25 random things" meme on Facebook. I'm sure you did, too. Rather foolishly, in an act that was not so much tempting fate than lassooing it and hauling it from wherever fate happens to reside, number 17 on my list of particulars was that I've never broken a bone, and that for some reason I feel slightly disappointed by this fact.
I should be clear here. I don't particularly want to break a bone. I sure as hell don't want to deal with the pain that accompanies such an act. But I am intrigued as to the experience, and there is something... appealing, if you will... about being seen to have broken a bone. Surely there's no better battle wound than a plaster cast on your arm or a pair of crutches to help you get around? Admittedly, it must be awkward and uncomfortable - and I don't envy that - but suddenly you have a story to tell anyone that asks, a portable conversation-starter. It almost demands attention from others - and I find myself surprised at thinking it's a little appealing, because I'm someone that tends to stay off the radar and doesn't like a fuss.
About 18 months ago I injured my ankle playing football - one of those inexplicable tweaks that hurt like hell at the time but was quickly run off and dismissed as nothing. After a couple of weeks of continuing to play on it, and continuing to aggravate the same spot, I ended up going to my GP, who in turn referred me to get an x-ray. This, I must admit, kind of excited me. A potential fracture that hadn't caused me huge amounts of discomfort - it could've been my ideal battle wound. My team-mates would have continually asked me for updates on my fitness; girls would have offered me sympathy as I would tell the story of injuring myself whilst doing the manliest of things - sport; and if I'd been a top-flight professional the cameras would cut away during a lull in the game to the image of me watching from the stands, all whilst the commentator would say something like, "how they miss this guy, sidelined for six weeks with a broken ankle".
In reality, I'm not a professional footballer, and as it happens, it turned out there was no fracture. As a result of having to wait two-or-so weeks to actually have my x-ray, and then another three to get the results, whatever the injury was had cleared up by the time I returned to the football pitch, and although I was delighted to be able to play again, there was an element of disappointment that I didn't have an overtly obvious reason for my absence.
I have to admit to feeling a tad sad as I tell you this. I'm making myself sound like a person that craves attention and/or sympathy, and that's really not me. At all.
Nevertheless, karma, or perhaps irony, has now caught up with me.
Whilst playing football last Thursday, quite early-on in our 5-a-side after-work kickabout, the ball ricocheted at some speed towards my chest. If you can imagine one as a rock and the other as a hard place (I'll let you decide which is which), my own hand ended up as the thing that was caught between them. So, essentially, I punched myself in the ribs. And it hurt. And it continued to hurt afterwards. And for the following seven days, in fact, at increasing levels.
Today I finally conceded that the pain wasn't going away anytime soon, and that perhaps I should be making a fuss about it after all, so I went to the hospital to get it checked out. Lo and behold, I was told that I "may" have broken a rib - but because these can't be treated with a cast and heal of their own accord, they don't x-ray them unless it has punctured, or possesses the potential to puncture, a lung. Which mine hasn't.
So there we have it. Two months after saying I felt disappointed at never having had a broken bone to accessorise, it looks like I now have one which I can't show off at all. All I have for my efforts are four boxes of painkillers (because I wasn't taking enough, apparently) and a small leaflet advising me to do breathing exercises every two hours. Not as cool as crutches or a cast. And I can't even tell people it's definitely broken. All I've got is a "maybe" and a heap-load of pain for the next few weeks.
I think it probably serves me right.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
So this is 30.
Yesterday morning, for some reason that I still can't fathom, I decided to get out of bed half an hour earlier than usual and do sit-ups. On a Monday, no less.
I set myself a target of 50. "How hard can that be?", I thought - a sentiment that seemed justified after the first 12 as I breezed into this challenge like the Superman that I didn't realise I was.
At 18, things were getting a bit harder. By 24, I reconsidered my target. And at 30, I stopped, reasonably satisfied that I was able to achieve as many sit-ups as years I am old.
And then I got back into bed.
Lying there, my stomach screaming at me for having had such a daft idea, I realised that my housemate Richard was still in the bathroom, and that I therefore had a bit more time to kill before I could treat my beard to the post-weekend trim it required. I could've gone to the kitchen and ironed a shirt for work. I could've stayed in bed as an ironic reward for actually waking up early. But instead - and this decision defies belief, given what I had just subjected myself to - I chose to do some push-ups.
I did 10.
Now, I've never been a particularly fit guy, but I've always been slim, I've cycled and played squash in the past, and I still play football once a week, so I'd like to think I'm not completely unfit, either. For this reason, I'm going to solely and unfairly blame my age for why I'm still feeling the effects 40 hours on from my initial enthusiasm. Nobody told me in the weeks leading up to my birthday that all my best-laid plans for getting my 30-year-old life in order would ultimately be let down by a 30-year-old body that wasn't going to comply. I feel cheated.
My plan was, when leaping out of bed so bright-eyed yesterday morning, that these sit-ups and push-ups could become a daily routine, or at the very least a course of action for every other morning. Nothing serious, but something to keep my oar in, to reduce the beer belly an inch and thus make myself 0.5% more attractive to the opposite sex.
But tomorrow is Wednesday, and I still feel so weary from yesterday's 'work-out' (if it can even be called that) that I'm sure as hell not going to be bounding out of bed in eight hours' time. In fact, tomorrow is our monthly 'breakfast meeting' at work, at which I'm expected to fill my plate with fried bacon, sausages, eggs, and the rest, whilst we discuss the latest Playout Planning issues that face us in our daily routines.
I have to say, that plate sounds 30 times more appealing than sit-ups.
I set myself a target of 50. "How hard can that be?", I thought - a sentiment that seemed justified after the first 12 as I breezed into this challenge like the Superman that I didn't realise I was.
At 18, things were getting a bit harder. By 24, I reconsidered my target. And at 30, I stopped, reasonably satisfied that I was able to achieve as many sit-ups as years I am old.
And then I got back into bed.
Lying there, my stomach screaming at me for having had such a daft idea, I realised that my housemate Richard was still in the bathroom, and that I therefore had a bit more time to kill before I could treat my beard to the post-weekend trim it required. I could've gone to the kitchen and ironed a shirt for work. I could've stayed in bed as an ironic reward for actually waking up early. But instead - and this decision defies belief, given what I had just subjected myself to - I chose to do some push-ups.
I did 10.
Now, I've never been a particularly fit guy, but I've always been slim, I've cycled and played squash in the past, and I still play football once a week, so I'd like to think I'm not completely unfit, either. For this reason, I'm going to solely and unfairly blame my age for why I'm still feeling the effects 40 hours on from my initial enthusiasm. Nobody told me in the weeks leading up to my birthday that all my best-laid plans for getting my 30-year-old life in order would ultimately be let down by a 30-year-old body that wasn't going to comply. I feel cheated.
My plan was, when leaping out of bed so bright-eyed yesterday morning, that these sit-ups and push-ups could become a daily routine, or at the very least a course of action for every other morning. Nothing serious, but something to keep my oar in, to reduce the beer belly an inch and thus make myself 0.5% more attractive to the opposite sex.
But tomorrow is Wednesday, and I still feel so weary from yesterday's 'work-out' (if it can even be called that) that I'm sure as hell not going to be bounding out of bed in eight hours' time. In fact, tomorrow is our monthly 'breakfast meeting' at work, at which I'm expected to fill my plate with fried bacon, sausages, eggs, and the rest, whilst we discuss the latest Playout Planning issues that face us in our daily routines.
I have to say, that plate sounds 30 times more appealing than sit-ups.
Sunday, 15 March 2009
Another decade done and dusted.
Tomorrow is my 30th birthday, and as I write this I've realised that I completely failed to notice this blog's own birthday a couple of weeks ago. Granted, it was 'born' on February 29th so it's not as if I could mark it on the calendar, but the fact that it didn't even register as an event to consider, let alone celebrate, suggests (ever so slightly) that I've thoroughly neglected this blog during its first 12 months. I guess having not written anything here since November is also a pretty obvious indication of my lethargy.
What annoys me more, though, is that on the seldom occasions I have sat down and made a contribution, I mostly talk about the fact that I'm a serial procrastinator, that I should make more of an effort with certain things (namely writing), and that I'm honestly going to be more organised in future and be a better blogger. Which, of course, never comes to fruition.
Let's be honest, it hasn't been a particularly great read, has it?
In my introduction to this blog I complained about my previous attempts at keeping a journal, and how re-reading the entries mostly made me cringe at the content and delivery. A year on, and I'm worryingly finding the same thing of my efforts here. Maybe it's to be expected, given how self-critical I can be. Perfectionism and procrastination make very bad bedfellows, don't you know.
I know what you're thinking - this post doesn't sound much different, and you're not wrong either. But, if you'll allow me this - one more moan, a final foray into writing about not-writing, I promise I'll change the record once I'm done being 29.
Someone told me recently that Jesus didn't begin to do his 'thing' until he was 30, and I felt particularly buoyed by this information. At times over the last 12 months I've caught myself reflecting on my twenties and thinking that perhaps I lost five years of my life by not moving to London sooner. Maybe this, in turn, is the reason why I feel I haven't achieved very much so far in my adult life (of course, that's not true - that can only be attributed to my lack of motivation and ability to put-down on anything I ever create). But to discover that JC himself (allegedly, depending on your religious stance) didn't really get out of his 'other' dad's workshop until he was my age gave me something of a lift. It's kinda ludicrous given that there are many more relevant role models for me out there, but I do tend to find inspiration in the funniest of places and things.
Of course, I'm not comparing myself to Jesus. I can barely swim, let alone walk on water, and his beard is far better than mine.
I don't like using clichés like "life begins at 30", but for the want of better words, that's how I'm trying to treat entering my fourth decade on Earth. Enough of the laziness. No more lack of faith in my own abilities. It's time to give things a good go and see what happens. And that means more blogging - better blogging. I nearly wrote "worthwhile blogging" there, but actually, perhaps I shouldn't get so hung up on creating the perfect post every time. They don't all have to be winners.
I should add, at this stage, that my friends have become very supportive in recent months. Given how little of my 'writing' they've read (few actually know about this blog), they seem to have a lot of faith in me, and I'd like to repay that with a bit of effort on my part. Not least because two of them want me to script a trilogy of Dungeons & Dragons movies for them. Seriously.
I have just under one hour of my twenties remaining. Only now, for the first time, do I feel a twinge of sadness. Soon they'll be gone, never to be revisited, and the 'age' field on my online dating profile is likely to turn away even more ladies than it already does. But, you know what, enough people have told me that my thirties will be the best years of my life, so I think it's only fair to give them a chance rather than dismissing them before they've even begun.
Let's get this party started.
What annoys me more, though, is that on the seldom occasions I have sat down and made a contribution, I mostly talk about the fact that I'm a serial procrastinator, that I should make more of an effort with certain things (namely writing), and that I'm honestly going to be more organised in future and be a better blogger. Which, of course, never comes to fruition.
Let's be honest, it hasn't been a particularly great read, has it?
In my introduction to this blog I complained about my previous attempts at keeping a journal, and how re-reading the entries mostly made me cringe at the content and delivery. A year on, and I'm worryingly finding the same thing of my efforts here. Maybe it's to be expected, given how self-critical I can be. Perfectionism and procrastination make very bad bedfellows, don't you know.
I know what you're thinking - this post doesn't sound much different, and you're not wrong either. But, if you'll allow me this - one more moan, a final foray into writing about not-writing, I promise I'll change the record once I'm done being 29.
Someone told me recently that Jesus didn't begin to do his 'thing' until he was 30, and I felt particularly buoyed by this information. At times over the last 12 months I've caught myself reflecting on my twenties and thinking that perhaps I lost five years of my life by not moving to London sooner. Maybe this, in turn, is the reason why I feel I haven't achieved very much so far in my adult life (of course, that's not true - that can only be attributed to my lack of motivation and ability to put-down on anything I ever create). But to discover that JC himself (allegedly, depending on your religious stance) didn't really get out of his 'other' dad's workshop until he was my age gave me something of a lift. It's kinda ludicrous given that there are many more relevant role models for me out there, but I do tend to find inspiration in the funniest of places and things.
Of course, I'm not comparing myself to Jesus. I can barely swim, let alone walk on water, and his beard is far better than mine.
I don't like using clichés like "life begins at 30", but for the want of better words, that's how I'm trying to treat entering my fourth decade on Earth. Enough of the laziness. No more lack of faith in my own abilities. It's time to give things a good go and see what happens. And that means more blogging - better blogging. I nearly wrote "worthwhile blogging" there, but actually, perhaps I shouldn't get so hung up on creating the perfect post every time. They don't all have to be winners.
I should add, at this stage, that my friends have become very supportive in recent months. Given how little of my 'writing' they've read (few actually know about this blog), they seem to have a lot of faith in me, and I'd like to repay that with a bit of effort on my part. Not least because two of them want me to script a trilogy of Dungeons & Dragons movies for them. Seriously.
I have just under one hour of my twenties remaining. Only now, for the first time, do I feel a twinge of sadness. Soon they'll be gone, never to be revisited, and the 'age' field on my online dating profile is likely to turn away even more ladies than it already does. But, you know what, enough people have told me that my thirties will be the best years of my life, so I think it's only fair to give them a chance rather than dismissing them before they've even begun.
Let's get this party started.
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