I have a lot of thoughts and feelings. What sort of personal site would this be if I didn't write them out for your reading pleasure?
I heard a phrase - in a podcast or in a conversation, or maybe I even read it somewhere; or perhaps I suppose I could have imagined it - which seems to encapsulate how I feel right now in regards to reading.
This phrase is made up totally (well, aren't they all?).
What I mean is that when I read/heard/absorbed via osmosis the phrase 'book purgatory', I expected it to be a real thing, something that people actually said, a phrase tied to an actual, concrete concept that could be felt and explained. Like 'ennui' or 'schadenfreude'. In this modern age of social media and microtrends, terms appear that initally seem very novel but are actually used to describe things that have existed for a long time. Like how 'brainrot', something evoking garbled phrases and disturbing, bizarre animation and feral, unfettered iPad toddlers is actually not that new but has existed certainly for as long as the world wide web has - does nobody else remember weird, early 2000s YouTube videos? (Incidentally, the first video I ever watched on YouTube - when it was still very new - was one of a guy making a picture of Ronald McDonald out of sweets. Not exactly brainrot, as this does require some modicum of talent and originality, but also not exactly groundbreaking stuff). Or perhaps the term 'quiet quitting', which has apparently been popularised on TikTok by Gen Z workers, to describe a pretty age-old concept of slacking off at work and coasting silently under the radar. I'm pretty sure that as long as people have been required to work and pay taxes, at least some people have been lazy about it. I am willing to bet that Athelrod the peasant builder crossed his fingers whilst swearing fealty to his liege lord and was deliberately slow about building his castle, because there was no way that some lazy lord was going to extract hard work from him whilst sitting around doing nothing.
Anyway, all of this is to say that when I googled 'book purgatory' I expected, like, an Urban Dictionary page explaining what it meant, or some trashy, maybe-AI-generated news article titled "Book Purgatory - Why SOME Readers Can No Longer Stand Books" or whatever. However, all I got was Christian websites explaining the general concept of purgatory, books about purgatory, and a Reddit thread. This means that, either;
I'm going with option one.
So at this point you're probably thinking, 'For fuck's sake, Merlo. Please get to the point.' And I promise you that I do have a point; I might ramble in an utterly asinine way, but that's just because of all the thoughts fighting for purchase on my neurons. It's not a matter of me being super intelligent and galaxy-brained and having so many important and enlightening things to say, it's more that I could not write concisely if you paid me and also, my brain moves faster than my pen. (Or in this case, the clatter of my fingertips against the keyboard). So here is my point, in bold letters:
Book Purgatory, in my mind, means this - a state where somebody who normally likes reading - is a reader - ties their ability and enjoyment of reading to their identity in a way that is both meaningful and symbolic - is no longer able to read. Not because of a health problem or because their literacy has regressed dramatically, but because they just...can't. And I don't mean a reading slump, which is an actual thing that has a name and a meaning, where reading temporarily no longer holds interest for some reason. But reading slumps do eventually disappear; I have had many, which are usually resolved by re-reading an old favourite (historically, this 'old favourite' has been either To Kill a Mockingbird or The Left Hand of Darkness). Sometimes the reading slump appears as a result of a book hangover, where upon finishing an incredible book, one is overcome with a sensation of hollowness, and the feeling that there will never ever be another book that good again (the first one of these I ever experienced was caused by To KIll a Mockingbird. Funny that).
But Book Purgatory is neither of these things, though I think it's probably a related concept. When in a reading slump, I am aware that is a temporary state, one that will eventually resolve itself. The same with a book hangover. But Book Purgatory seems pretty endless. Which is ironic, since in Catholic theology, Purgatory is not a permanent state - but I'm sure to those damned souls down there, it certainly feels that way. And that's how I feel right now, too.
It goes like this. I, with the best of intentions, pick up a book. It is a book that has come highly recommended, is by an author that is well-regarded and/or somebody whose work I already like. I have read the synopsis, flicked through the pages, already read an excerpt. I settle down and crack open the spine, and begin to read. But then I get bored. I get bored within the first few pages and my mind wanders. I can read entire pages before I realise that I don't know what's going on because my mind has wandered so, and then I need to go back and read them. Or perhaps I'll go further and stick the entire book on the backburner and pick up something else, only for the cycle to begin again. I get books from the library with the best of intentions, only for them to sit and gather dust on my shelf for weeks before I eventually need to return them.
This has been happening to me for the last few weeks, if not longer. I looked at my journal earlier and saw that I hadn't finished a book since July, which is unusual for me. And it doesn't matter what genre the book is, its author, its length, its subject matter. I thought that perhaps my brain was too fried and thought that I'd better read something simple, so I took out a book by a well-known chicklit author from the library and had a flick through. I'd never read anything of hers and hoped it would be simple and fluffy enough to get into, to engage my brain which seems right now so resistant to words. But I ended up with the same problem, though this time I didn't get further than the first few paragraphs because - and I mean this with all due respect, and I'm sure the author is a nice person, but - it was BAD. BAAAAAAAD. It defied explanation. It made me never want to read anything ever again. Bad idea. Bad choice. The train to Book Purgatory is now leaving from Platform 666 and it's a one-way ticket, lady. Hop on.
Okay, that is mean and incredibly uncharitable. It's not the fault of this author, or of chicklit generally, that I can't read right now. It's just that every time I try, I cannot slide into the story the way I have always been able. I'm also not sure exactly why this is happening. But when I heard this phrase Book Purgatory, I thought - yeah! That's it! That describes it! And I wonder, too, if it's just because I've reached the ceiling. This is the ultimate book hangover. Perhaps I have read my most favourite book in the world without knowing it and now I can't adjust to other books and will never again be able to. But I know that's not the case - excellent books are published every day - so what is it? It's not to do with the books being published now, or even the publishing industry generally. I think the problem is me.
In all cases, a trip to Purgatory is caused by sin. It could be original sin or it could be a sin that somebody hasn't atoned for, but it's sin nonetheless. It's something that this person, whether they know it or not, has done. So what have I done? Have I rotted by brain with too many YouTube videos about Internet history and video game mysteries? Have I committed the cardinal reader sin of having simply too many books at once; is it the suffocation caused by the saturation of choices? Is it, perhaps, the fact that I have only read twenty-five books so far this year and am therefore fifteen off from my target, and am consequently terrified by the knowledge that I probably cannot read fifteen in under three months?
I don't know. There's lots I don't know. I know as well that a contributing factor to my current burning existence in Book Purgatory is the fact that words fly past me in a stream but do not actually go in, which is something that I have never experienced and is setting me ill at ease. I need to do something, that's for sure.
So I suppose the obvious answer is that I should just try and read. But that has to come with some caveats, doesn't it? I should try and read, force myself to, even if I'm not vibing with the book or if I have to read the same pages over and over again until they go in. I should stop staring at my phone so much. I should stop reaching for it immediately in the morning, which - at one time - I was pretty successful in doing. I need to do something. Because if nothing else, my lack of ability to read - my lack of ability to concentrate - is getting me down. Because it is also affecting my ability to write, which is something that I have always done and something that I need to do, to help me make sense of the world and my place in it. Whether I share stories here or not, the simple act of writing them helps to keep me happy, and if I can't write, then I can hardly function at all.
Sorry to end on a downer, I guess. I'll keep trying my best and, hopefully, I'll ascend out of Book Purgatory soon.
The other day I was bored at work - a running theme in my life and, I'm sure, the lives of many of you. My manager was sequestered in her office with the door shut and my coworkers were all pottering about doing their own thing, so I decided - as is tradition for people who work in a place with computers, but where their use is monitored - to start reading the news. My manager has explicitly said that she takes no issue with this, and it's probably a better use of one's time at work than painting one's nails. Also, her manager visits sometimes, and I once walked past his open laptop that he'd left on the desk whilst he went into the staff room for something, and he was looking at the cricket scores. Incidentally, one of my colleagues doesn't care about the 'your IT use is monitored and we know what you're doing' rule, and uses the hours of downtime at work to check her Facebook and Instagram pages; another still does online shopping, which I know because I've see her but also because her Amazon account is permanently logged in (the nature of my job means that we all hot-desk). As of the last few months, I have branched out from reading the news to reading Wikipedia, something that is actually a hobby of mine (yes, really), so it barely feels like I'm working at all.
The point I'm trying to make is that as long as you look a bit busy, you can sort of do anything behind the shield of a computer screen.
Anyway, on this particular day, I was reading the news, because I have a look at the main stories between, you know, actually working, before heading to Wikipedia. Reading the news sounds really dull, and that's because nominally, it is. It's also plain depressing. I feel miserable at the state of my country, at the state of our economy and the general ineptitude of our government, as well as the fact that people can, for example, just walk into a supermarket and walk out with their pockets full of goods for which they obviously haven't paid, even under the eye of the sub-contracted, hi-vis clad security guard, because our social contract is not just broken but eroded, melted down into nothingness. World news isn't much better. Inasmuch as it's important to be informed, and I do - begrudgingly - read the important stories, I couldn't spend hours a day doing it. So mostly what I do is skim lightly over the big stories, maybe shake my head so everyone knows that I disagree with one of the latest acts of idiocy by our government, and then move onto the more interesting featured articles. The Guardian normally has some good ones, as does the BBC. After reading those, I'll move onto Wikipedia, on which I can while away hours. Unfortunately, I do actually have to do my job at various points throughout the day, so it isn't as though I'm spending seven or so hours purely reading Wikipedia. What I'm saying is that I probably could.
ANYWAY. I am getting well ahead of myself. On this particular day, there was an article in The Guardian about homesteading in the United States, a concept which seems to boil down to "grow your own food, make your own clothes, keep your own chickens, educate your own kids". (It is actually a pretty interesting read). I also find it interesting - and this is just by the by - that a lot of the proponents of this are people who have quite strong, deeply-held religious convictions (which is perfectly acceptable), but that such a concept has essentially been repackaged and commercialised as cottagecore for the consumption of teenagers online without any discussion as to how difficult this lifestyle would actually be, especially for teenagers who've never not had a smartphone (also, apparently, cottagecore is quite a big thing amongst lesbians on TikTok and whatnot, but I assume that this stems from the concept of self-sufficient womyn's lands that were popular as a means of enabling lesbian separatism way back in the '70s, rather than from an actual desire to be a chicken-having, book-burning, barefoot-and-pregnant Christian tradwife).
One of the (trad)wives featured in the article mentioned having a Substack, where she uploaded a long post about an average day in her life. This is apparently something that is relatively popular, and I imagine that if you were somebody who lived a life that was exciting (say, a travelling circus clown), or at the very least a little unorthodox (a Christian who lives on a working farm with her husband and innumerable kids), I could understand the appeal. Who wouldn't want to read about something so out of the ordinary, something in which you can get lost or perhaps even fantasise - I too could become the great Pagliacci! I too could spend three hours milking cows and baking bread! I thought it would be a fun exercise for me to write about a day in my life, too. Not because I think anyone should care about the minutiae of my life - which is perfectly ordinary - but because I want to because this is MY website and MY post.
So -
I tell people that I wake up at 6:30 because that's when my alarm goes off, but actually what happens is I jolt awake at the sound (a lofi hip-hop mix, set to shuffle), panic for a fraction of a second, and immediately - immediately! - hit snooze. Why? There have been times that I've actually had enough sleep for once and will wake up when I'm supposed to, and I still press the snooze button. Instinct, I guess. My phone snoozes for five minutes, three times each, but by 6:45 it refuses to do it anymore so I need to get up, lest I fall back to sleep and completely miss the morning.
So I get up, stretch, drink some of the water in the glass beside my bed that is by now stagnant and a bit gross. I open my curtains, remark quietly to myself on the weather, fling open the windows to let in some fresh air. I make my bed. I stretch a little bit. Usually, I will pull on some workout clothes at this point. Sometimes I go for a run around the block, but I'm only normally out for fifteen minutes and believe me, I do NOT spend that entire time running, so I feel like I benefit more from doing a workout video.
I refuse to pay for a gym membership because I think they're stupidly expensive, and also I'm always conscious that beyond the treadmill and, like, the free weights, I wouldn't know how to use most of the equipment so any membership would be utterly wasted on me. So I transport myself to the mid-'80s and do workout videos instead. I do cardio on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and strength training on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Weekends are rest days.
After peeling myself free from my mat, slick with sweat, I will fish out from the fridge a pot of fruit that I chopped and washed the night before - usually some variation of strawberries, blueberries, black grapes, raspberries, sometimes a chopped peach or pear if they're in season. I have to let the fruit get a little warmer before I can eat it, because any fridge-cold food sets off my sensitive teeth. Then I'll have a shower, probably cooler than most people would like. I have to wash my hair every day, because if I don't, it's usually lank and greasy by about two o'clock. Once I'm washed and dressed, I'll make breakfast - and I usually have the same thing every day - Greek yoghurt, with chia seeds, sugar-free granola, and said fresh fruit. Since I can't drink instant coffee - not because of allergens, but because I'm a snob - I'll make my coffee in a cafetiere. I eat breakfast whilst I study, and - assuming I did actually get up early enough to do this - I'll usually have about an hour and fifteen minutes worth of studying before I actually head to work.
I walk to work most days; it isn't that I can't drive, it's that I won't, because I hate it with every fibre of my being (as I think I have mentioned here before). The walk is about fifteen minutes, and brisk.
Work is nothing special. I do the jobs I need to do, interact with my coworkers, smile when I need and frown when nobody is looking. It isn't a particularly difficult job, and as you may have noticed from the preamble to this post, you can actually get away with doing remarkably little throughout the course of the day. I usually have lunch at about twelve p.m., or sometimes at one; rarely is it later than that. For lunch, again, I tend towards the same thing every day - a turkey salad sandwich with avocado and a small fruit salad. I also take another piece of fruit - usually a satsuma - to have when I take my tea break in the afternoon. During my lunch break, I read, and I'll have another cup of coffee - either bought from the coffee shop nearby, or made in the machine at work.
I finish work at about six p.m., and begin my second walk of the day. I wander home, sometimes accosted by weirdos that I've come across at work (yes, really). Occasionally I'll pop into the nearby convenience store to get ingredients for dinner, or a tin of cider, but usually I just go straight home. Once I'm there, I put down my bags, change into soft clothes, tie up my hair and begin to make dinner.
I really like cooking. I make all my meals from scratch, though I do usually fall into the same routine of things to make. I eat a lot of pasta - carbonara, amatriciana, bolognese, an odd vegetable pasta creation of my own design - and I also quite like things with rice (teriyaki chicken, orange chicken, lemon chicken) or fish (usually just salmon). So I'll make dinner and usually watch YouTube whilst I eat it. I watch a lot of video essays about random, niche Internet culture topics, or else videos about food and cooking.
After dinner, I'll sit down to study a little more. I plan, day-by-day, what I need to do, and I will crack on until it's finished. By nine o'clock, I'm usually done for the night, so for half an hour, I'll read, or write, or do something for this very web site, sometimes with a cup of tea and a biscuit (or two, or three...). At nine-thirty, I'll call my girlfriend, if she isn't at mine. We'll chat for about half an hour, during which I'll prepare tomorrow's lunch and fruit for the next morning's breakfast, and then I'll say goodnight and plod through to the bathroom to clean my teeth. I usually try to carve out some time to read before bed, but sometimes I'm so sleepy that I simply can't. (Somehow, between all this, I also find time to do my Duolingo lesson, because I have a streak numbering over two-thousand days and I do not intend on breaking it).
Sleep. Repeat.
Well, I say repeat - it isn't quite, because there are certainly days where this doesn't happen. There are days where I wake up miserable, from a night where I have not slept, and I will wash and head to work without any other element of my morning routine being fulfilled. I don't always get the chance to read every day, because sometimes I'd rather just look at Reddit. And there are days - though thankfully they are few and far between now - where I will eat terribly and consequently feel like shit. However, one constant in my daily life in the sheer amount of time I spend locked in a daydream. Sometimes they're fun, sometimes they're miserable, but the characters in them - some of whom do end up immortalised in stories and novels that I write - are unique. They're not me (well, not always). It passes the time. Is it a coping mechanism? If it is, I'm never sure what I'm needing to cope for. But it is, at the least, fun. And it gives me something to write about.
See, I TOLD you that my life is boring.
Last Monday, in the evening, my uncle died. He was my father’s brother, my favourite uncle, and – although not the first loved one of mine to pass away – the first that came as a terrible shock. He leaves behind his wife, and his son, who is currently twelve years old.
My uncle joined the Navy when he was seventeen, probably as an escape from a subpar home life that has also affected my father and my other uncle to a significant extent. He remained in the Navy for over twenty years, climbing the ranks until he eventually reached a point where his duties were performed behind a desk rather than on the deck of a ship. A couple of years ago, he left. I won’t go into specifics – mostly because there was a lot he didn’t share with me about his own mental state and outlook, but also because it isn’t my story to tell – but I think he, like a lot of veterans, struggled to adjust to civilian life.
He died suddenly and due to a medical emergency. It would have been instant for him. No pain, and probably no understanding of what was about to happen. He was alive. His heart beat in his chest. The neurons in his brain fired. His fingertips found fabric and his eyes saw the sun, still high in the sky at that time of the evening. And then he didn’t. He found, I hope, peace.
Only a few days have passed, and yet my memory already fails me. I don’t remember precisely what was said; I just remember my hands shaking as I called my sisters – the job had fallen to me, for reasons I don’t remember – and told them what had happened. I like to think I was calm and measured, but I doubt it. I remember the hot tears dripping off my chin, with which I washed my face as I scrubbed it with my hands, desperately wishing for this to be a bad dream. I remember the splitting headache from the pressure of sobbing. I remember the grief, lodged in my throat, a round polished black stone.
I couldn’t go to work the following day. None of us did except my father, who went to work as normal, walked around in a daze, and came home shortly after, glassy-eyed, a vacant expression on his face. He is a traditional man, my father – when he and my mother left to go to my grandparents’ house on Monday evening he told us, dry-eyed, that we all must be strong. But later, when reminiscing and watching a silly video that he and the men of his squadron had made for charity, some twenty years ago, my father crumbled. His body wracked, juddering, a strangled sound coming from his mouth. Hand clasped to his brow to hide his tears. I put my hand on his shoulder. He did not react. Later, we sat in the garden. My father had a cigarette, which had burnt away almost entirely to ash that needed flicking. Tendrils of smoke smouldered into the sky.
‘Old memories keep flooding back,’ he said quietly, ‘things I had forgotten. He was my little shadow. He followed me around everywhere. When he was small, he would hold my hand when we went out, and his hand was so tiny that he could only hold my thumb...we fought each others’ battles. Literally. I got into so many fights with him – because of him. We were always by each other’s side.’ He fell silent, eyes to the sky. He remained that way for a long time.
Before they adopted my cousin, my uncle and aunt struggled to have biological children of their own. I think that’s the reason why, whenever they visited, they would bring myself and my sisters each a big bag of sweets. (The bags probably were bigger than they are today, but so are we. Regardless, as children who rarely had sweets, this was a big deal). I liked it when my uncle and aunt visited, but I liked going to their house, too. Simply being in a different place is enough to inspire enjoyment in a child. We stayed over at their house, once. For dinner, we had chicken fajitas, which my aunt served in separate dishes on the table. A plate of warm tortillas on the left side, then a bowl of salad, a container of grated cheese, a tureen of spiced chicken. It was the first time I had ever eaten chicken fajitas. I don’t remember much else of that night, though I’m pretty sure we also played board games. Being in their big house, kitchen island, white walls, carpeted stairs – eating chicken fajitas. Until now, the memory had always seemed like nothing special. Just another day. I wish it had remained that way. I wish it were not something to which I now attach special significance to. But so it goes.
After he left the Navy, we were able to see him more. I saw him at a family barbecue, where he told me a joke about dogs in foreign countries being able to speak different languages (the punchline was that in Mexico, dogs said ‘bow-wow!’ like some sort of grizzled cartel leader). He arm-wrestled my dad and photobombed a few selfies. He came to our house, too. He practically walked my girlfriend out of the door to go to the shops with him, so that they could have a chat because he had already decided that he liked her and he wanted to get to know her. When they returned, she was carrying the crates of beer – something for which my uncle caught jovial flack. At the time, she was wearing a jumper, emblazoned fashionably with a NASA logo, the stars-and-stripes on the arm, and a little red tag, reading ‘Remove Before Flight’. My uncle saw it, and smiled in his lopsided way. He went rooting around in his pocket before pulling out a replica of the tag, except this one was older, more worn, and real. It was certainly no fashion statement. Without saying a thing, he affixed it quickly to my girlfriend’s jumper.
‘You can have that,’ he grinned. ‘Something to remember me by.’
The day after he died, we went to my grandparents’ house. My cousins were there, and so was my aunt and, of course, my grandparents. A stone got caught in my shoe as we walked the length of the drive. This was no time to go digging it out. We were all dry-eyed, knowing that we had to put on a brave face for his wife and his mother. We remained composure as we unlocked the back gate, went past the kitchen’s open door and into the garden. I saw my cousins, who smiled sadly; I turned and saw my grandmother, who looked older than I have ever seen her. Our eyes locked, and she crumpled.
‘My baby,’ she whimpered into my shoulder when I fell against her. My body shook. ‘My baby. It should be me. It should be me. Why isn’t it? I’m in my eighties. It should have been me.’
I think I attempted to speak. Words failed.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she sobbed. ‘Please, don’t leave me.’
‘I won’t,’ I whispered, pathetically. ‘I won’t.’
My aunt, for her part, remained dry-eyed. I expect she was still in shock, though I was still sobbing when I turned to hug her.
‘It’s alright,’ she said, quietly. ‘It’s alright.’
The last time I saw him, he had been visiting our house. I had heard him having a conversation with my father late into the night, though the exact words I don’t remember. Just the low, sad rumble of their voices. He slept in our conservatory. The next day, I got up to go to work. I imagine I took a hot shower and had a quick breakfast before leaving. I had to walk through the conservatory to leave, but my uncle was already awake. He sat on a chair, a cup of coffee steaming softly in front of him. The sky, beckoning the world into morning, began gold before spinning into blue, the deep azure of summer. A light breeze blew. Above, birds sang and jettisoned across the sky, the silhouettes of their wings painting black against the horizon.
My uncle looked out at it. His eyes were wet, and his cheeks were red. He didn’t see me until I spoke.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Yeah, darling. Where are you off to – work?’
‘Yep.’
‘Have a good day, sweetheart.’
‘Thanks. You as well.’
I wondered what could have wrought such emotion in him. Perhaps the shift to civilian life after so many years institutionalised in the military was taking a toll? The thoughts eventually dropped off as the early morning breeze hit me, until eventually, they dissipated from my mind entirely.
A few hours after we found out about his death, my girlfriend and I took her dog for a long walk in the nearby farmer’s fields. I walked quietly, tearfully, sniffling. The dog ran through the fields of wheat, which grazed my ankles painfully. We stopped on a bench, the checkpoint. I leaned back, looked up. Saw the outlines of each leaf individual, whispering mournfully on each branch. They looked inky black in the early evening light, against the canvas of the sky. It was just how it had been that day, but in reverse. Blue bled into gold. The sun stretched its final sleepy rays across the sky. When we stood to leave, her arm around my shoulders, the clouds – low and far off beyond the fields – looked like the sea. Somewhere I heard waves, gulls screeching, a boat moving through water.
We walked back, slowly. I craned my neck to see the sun as it dipped finally beyond the hills, gilding the horizon. I wanted to see the sun as it left. I kept looking, turning as I walked, until it had gone completely. Then we went home.
Wednesday was his birthday. He would have been fifty. We all got together, raised a glass for him. It had been a hot day and was still warm at eight in the evening. Bees grew fat on the lavender plant in our garden. My sisters’ children were delighted with my aunt’s dog, a five-year-old part-poodle who moved lethargically, softly, and not far from my aunt. My father cleared his throat, got our attention. He raised his beer, sweating in the heat, to the sky.
‘Today is his birthday,’ he said, in a voice that stood firm and did not waver. ‘He is not here. But we are.’
Goodnight, my dear uncle. I will miss you.
Right now my country is experiencing a heatwave. This happens every year around this time, and each time, God turns up the thermometer by a degree. Soon enough, we'll all be boiling in the pot. (They could at least put some salt in. If I'm going to be eaten, I want to die deliciously).
Anyway, even though I work inside in a nice air-conditioned room, the walk to and from work leaves me drenched in my own sweat, frustrated and sopping. I keep a stick of deodorant in my locker for this express purpose, but I get paranoid that I smell bad, so I try to stay away from other people for a bit, at least until the sweat is able to dry into a thin layer of frosting. The air conditioning in our staff room is no joke - actually I think it's because my colleagues are by and large menopausal women - but actually I end up getting a little chilly, usually after lunch, and I have to put on my cardigan (which is usually draped lifelessly over a chair). Today I dispensed with the cardie, but I did end up poking my head out into the car park to feel some warmth. It was, quoth my supervisor, 'like stepping into soup'. The heat is oppressive, hangs low in the air, transforms into cement in your lungs. I feel its chain wrapping around my neck. Every step I take is imbued, frothing with an angry staccato -
I
want
to
be
But cold I shall not be, at least not until July is over. There's still August to go yet. Summer has only just begun.
Anyway, that isn't really the point of this entry. I was just hot and frustrated and wanted to vent.
Today I had a Driving Crisis (proper nouns, please - they are elaborate, frightening experiences in my life). I had to drive somewhere, for work, with a friend (who began as a coworker, hence why she was in the car). I failed miserably at parking and, by the width of cigarette paper, barely managed to avoid damaging somebody else's (parked) car. Once we were there, I realised that I had forgotten my work ID, so I had to dash back to my car to fetch my driving license to verify my identity. I then scraped my wing mirror, and the body of my car, against the gates of the place we drove out from whilst we were leaving. (My girlfriend also yelled at me at the weekend, because she said she doesn't feel safe with me when I drive, even though I really hate driving and she loves it). My friend, also a writer, attempted to console me on the way back.
"You know, Lauren, it isn't so bad. This time next year, you'll have published your book and made millions."
(I always enjoy this particular daydream, this particular silly conversation).
"And so will you," I replied, sniffling, threading the wheel between my hands as I turned a corner. "You'll be winning awards."
A little bit of imagination isn't a crime. We often engage in such spirited discussions; mostly, I think it makes the both of us feel better about the fact that neither of our lives necessarily look the way we expected them to.
There were some other things I wanted to mention. First, I am working on a new short story, that I won't publish here yet, because I'm planning to submit it for a competiion soon, and it has to be previously unpublished work. So keep an eye out for that, I guess.
Also - and this is random - I can't stop listening to this Chinese pop song. It's called 'Ye Hua Xiang' by a singer named Mo Si Man, though the YouTube video attributes it to somebody named Jiafei (who is apparently not the woman in the music video - her name isn't even Jiafei. It's a weird TikTok thing).
Anyway, hopefully I'll cool down a bit soon. I'll just keep fanning myself and wait for global warming to stop.
Oh, wait...So a few years ago, I got dumped. Yes, it is very sad. Yes, you may bust out the world’s smallest violin. Yes, I promise I’m over it now.
My ex was very into fitness. She went to the gym multiple times a week and rarely snacked, eating food that was usually vegan and on the whole, very healthy. I would stand dumpily next to her in shops whilst she bought tofu and pak choy, filling my trolley with multipacks of Kinder Bueno bars and boxes of Tunnocks tea cakes (as an aside, eating a whole box of the latter in one sitting is what I imagine mainlining heroin feels like – beautiful and exhilarating. Stellar in the moment, devastating in the aftermath). She always acted like the fact that I would have preferred to sit on my arse and eat my weight in Rowntree’s Randoms whilst she went to the gym on campus and lifted weights didn’t bother her, but deep down I knew it did.
For a little while, I kept a food diary in the notes app on my phone, probably as a result of heavy conditioning from an adolescence of using My Fitness Pal and then immediately going off the rails when I had one piece of chocolate over my calorie allowance. Here is an example, from June 2021, of what I used to eat:
(Here there is a section on the page simply reading “1pm”, so I have to assume that the tray of Krispy Kremes was breakfast).
Then, in the afternoon –
So, as you can see, I did not have the best relationship with food. I’m also not sure exactly what a “small piece” of either cajun chicken or chorizo sausage is, but if my idea of a “small piece” was anything similar to my idea of a sensible number of doughnuts to eat in one day, I’m not holding out much hope.
You can probably glean from this, then, that I was sort of big. To put it plainly, I was obese. Not morbidly so, but had I kept going, it’s possible that I would’ve ended up there. Now, nobody deserves to be shamed or belittled for the way they look, because everybody is worthy of dignity and respect. But it isn’t healthy, no matter what people want to say. And if nothing else, I was fucking miserable, man. Did I like the stinging pain that inevitably appeared between my thighs if I wore shorts in the summer? Did I like being too out of breath just walking that I couldn’t speak? Did I like the way people looked at me if I got dessert in a restaurant? No, no, and no. But I wasn’t sure how to change it. I’d tried exercising in the past, but I’d never been able to stick with it properly. I’d tripped over enough times whilst running for one-and-a-half minutes (all I could handle then). And besides, my problem was with food. There’s no outrunning unhealthy choices. Eating a diet of almost entirely saturates and sugar made me miserable, uncoordinated, and sluggish. I was tired all the time, and pretty depressed to boot. Almost like eating nothing but ultra-processed food has some nasty side effects.
When my ex and I split up, I spent the following day crying in bed, eating the Lucky Charms that I’d bought from the American section of the supermarket and watching the lesbian series of The Ultimatum. I can’t quite remember the exact thought process that led me to decide to exercise, but one night at 1am, in a fit of the vapours, I bought a sports bra, shorts, and some running shoes online. The next day, spirits buoyed by my new purchase, I found what looked to be a relatively simple home workout. I borrowed a couple of never-used dumbbells from my sister and cracked on.
I hated it. I hated every minute. Every goblet squat, every deadlift, especially every renegade row. It was all horrible and I was a sweaty mess and even after working out every day for a solid week, I was still fat. Irritated, I was prepared to give up, but I forced myself through. If I didn’t, I’d be miserable forever. The alleged ‘endorphins’ I was promised from regular exercise were yet to arrive, but I still held out hope. Something had to change.
And then, somehow, it did.
I was getting a little stronger. My biceps now had small walnuts beneath the fat when I tensed and prodded them, and I could feel the hard plank of abs beneath my abdomen if I tensed really hard and held my breath. My breathing was getting better, something I’d really struggled with since contracting Covid (but that’s a whole other story). I was beginning to enjoy the feeling of soreness in my muscles the next day, from moving in a way that I never had before. I was even beginning to enjoy cardio. And – wouldn’t you know it? – I was dropping pounds. Then stones. I had to buy new clothes, because my others were falling off of me (as well as new workout clothes). Then – and this is the best bit – those endorphins began just flooding through.
That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. It turns out that runner’s high isn’t something made up by Big Exercise to sell trainers. I have drunk the proverbial Kool-Aid (except it’s actually ice-cold water with added electrolytes). I am now a proud Big Exercise shill. And all because I started lifting dumbbells.
Around this time, since I was doing so well on the exercise front, I decided to change the way I ate, too. It wasn’t even as much of a conscious choice as it was a lessened desire to consume sugary slop. I was sleeping better, breathing better, being better. Why not eat better, too? I’d always liked to cook, and was confident enough in my skills that I could make anything I put my mind to. I started eating fresh fruit and Greek yogurt in the morning, wholewheat bread sandwiches stuffed with lettuce and tomato for lunch, and home-cooked dinners every night. I do still snack, occasionally, but the desire to buy a whole trolley’s worth of junk food and eat it in one sitting has pretty much diminished entirely.
Now, I’m not 100% there yet. I still have some weight to lose. Inasmuch as I do now have a schedule (30 minutes a day, Monday to Friday; cardio three times, strength training twice, plus the two-mile round trip to work on foot), sometimes I slip up and miss a day. Sometimes I have a biscuit from the staff room at my job and fall into my old pattern of thinking, “Well fuck it, seal’s broken –
Well, to be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what this entry is really about. I sat down to write about a gnarly experience I had making a fool of myself at a reformer pilates class (yes, I go to pilates classes now!), but once I sat down to write I couldn’t stop and now here we are. It’s the first time I’ve really laid out my experience like that. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I am proud of myself, and if you’ve been in a situation like mine, and you’re willing to take steps to change it – you should be proud of yourself, too.
No, Sunday Scaries isn't the title of some cool new horror series, where I write a horrible, gnarly spine-chiller once a week for the benefit of the two or three people who read this site. (Actually, that isn't such a bad idea...) Rather, it's the idea that, on a Sunday - particularly in the evening - one is filled with trepidation for the week ahead. The weekend is over, motherfucker. Gone are your two blessed days of freedom, of drinking in a beer garden or sitting curled up under a blanket, watching the most recent true crime slop on Netflix. Back to work. Back to reality. Back to your wanker boss and irritating colleagues. Back to getting up at five a.m. to RISE AND GRIND and back to drinking PURE PROTEIN and RUNNING FOR TEN MILES, ALL BEFORE WORK. (Damn, I've been absorbing way too much Ideal Morning Routine Content).
Sunday Scaries is sort of taken as a given for most people, but to be honest, I don't experience it very much at all. A big part of this is because I actually really like my job, for the most part (though there are things I don't like dealing with so much, and one of these days I'm sure I'll come home from work in a fit of rage and slam out a post about it). In this respect, I'm pretty lucky. I work full time, but my hours are less standard than the Mon-Fri 9-5. For one, I work on Saturdays, which means my weekend automatically shrinks. By the time I've done everything that I need to do on the weekend - laundry, grocery shopping, housework, ironing, getting my studies organised for the week ahead - I have maybe half a day to do fun weekend stuff - which amazingly, sometimes, does include going out of the house. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that by the time I've reached, say, ten p.m. on a Sunday, I'm usually tucked up in bed with a novel or my laptop, and the Sunday Scaries could be about to set in, but then I fall asleep and time resets.
Another point to make is that my job is pretty easily and - usually - low stress. I'm one of only two full-time colleagues at my workplace, save for the manager; the rest of my colleagues are all part-time, which means by virtue of the fact that they're missing entire days in any given week, there's stuff they don't know, or fail to pick up on. Some colleagues are worse at this than others. I feel like I'm the one picking up the slack quite a lot, probably because I'm something of a perfectionist in many regards. Another reason is that one of the mottoes for my life is 'If You Want Something Done Properly, Do It Yourself', which probably causes more trouble than it ought to. People seem to expect a lot of me because I do quite a lot at my job, but it's a problem entirely of my own making. You might say that I've made a rod for my own back, but at least being busy keeps me out of trouble. Besides, something that gets me through tough times is thinking about what will happen when I eventually get another job (ha! Like the job market isn't completely broken right now), and these LAZY colleagues of mine will have to pull their collective fingers out and start cracking on. It's a bit like in an American high school film, where the nerd - who's had his head flushed down the toilet by the jocks for the last time - starts thinking up a great new plan to run a business that will, in the future, have the loser jocks begging for a job. At least, it's about as pathetic as that.
That's not to say that I dislike my colleagues. Generally, I get on with all of them, although some better than others. Three of them I hang out with outside work occasionally. Getting on with your colleagues is important to the performance of the team as a whole, as well as the morale, and makes you less likely to want to jam sharp pencils into your eyes when your idiot colleague asks your manager a question in a meeting that they'd know the answer to if they ever read their fucking emails.
Anyway, another thing that prevents me from suffering too badly with Sunday Scaries is the fact that I live, constantly, in Lalaland. What I mean by this is that I have a constant running fiction in my head. When customers at work yell at me, it's okay, because I can dip into the staff room after and make myself a cup of coffee whilst imagining myself as some sort of cool assassin who is just refueling before she goes out to plant a bullet between the eyes of an international criminal and general Bad Guy, who also yells at customer service workers. I don't, like, talk to myself or anything. I'm good at keeping it inside. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that, since I am barely tethered to reality as it is - since gravity's grip on me is astonishingly weak - it doesn't matter if work is hard, or if there's too much to do. There's always tomorrow. And there's always a place to retreat to.
Perhaps that's a little cowardly? Maybe I ought to work on my mental fortitude, you say. And perhaps you'd be right. But the thing is, I'm actually happy with things as they are. A lot of people today can't say that. Of course, there are things in my life that I'd like to be changed, but rather than ruminate, surely it's better to work on it, even if that work is slow? That's what I think, anyway.
Well, there's only a few hours of Sunday left, and the sun is shining. I think I'll sit in the garden and have a vodka lemonade.
Until next time!