Balance

Last night I was supposed to give a young lad a lift to cadets. I forgot.

Aside from inconveniencing the cadet and pissing off my boss it got me thinking. Everyone was saying “that’s very unlike you”. and they’re right – it is.

After leaving the Squadron I sat and smoked and pondered for an hour or so, concluding that actually, I’m not really happy at the moment – I don’t have the right balance.

Although I’ve been very organized lately, and I’m moving all my projects along at an unprecedented speed, I’m just not that cheery. In an effort to understand the reason for this I wrote down the things that I think aren’t so good:

• I’m in debt by about £1,500.
• I don’t have a fixed job so I can’t pay back the money. It also makes me wonder what I’m doing with myself.
• I have a girlfriend that I only see at weekends – she lives 40 miles away.
• I have been working on a website for a customer and haven’t moved it on in ages. It’s an urgent project but it’s gone a little stale.
• I’m always feeling that I should be somewhere else, doing work.
• I have nothing sorted out for my move to University.
• This guilty feeling means that whenever I’m out with friends I don’t really enjoy myself, I keep thinking about these problems.

So, now I’ve identified these problems I need to address them…

Today I confirmed a place at Sussex University and defined a bunch of Next Actions for the move. That’s one point addressed then. I also applied for a job as a postman, addressing my first and second points. I applied a new theme to my blog, getting the thought of it off my brain and allowing me to fully concentrate on the “stale site”.

As if that wasn’t enough I cleared a bunch of surplus clothes & kit out, giving me a nicer environment in which to work and banged off a whole bunch of little things I have to do, clearing my mind of it all.

I feel sure that when I have a steady job and I’ve finished this project, I’ll be far happier to go out and have a drink, and will accept more easily the fact that I only see my girlfriend at the weekends.

So it seems that the first step to dealing with problems is to identify them… pretty bloody obvious really.