What the fuck did I do?

Although still somewhat gloomy this morning from being pushed around by the corporate thugs, an e-mail and a text from two separate friends cheered me a bit.

Down to the running track tonight for a hard interval session and then tomorrow I head south to the old family mansion to help clear the detritus of a life lived. Started reading Herzog finally and realised I had found a book that me and the old man would have agreed on (we could agree on TV, films and politics but never on books and music).

Toying with playing away on Saturday but can't decide whether it would cheer me up or make me feel emptier. She definitely cheers me when I'm with her, but after, sometimes, I feel...I don't know...sad I guess.

There's also someone missing and is missed by me.

I said fuck. The dog said woof. I said fuck again and the dog narrowly escaped a bend-it-like-beckham flight into the canal. I'd run 15 miles with less than one to go. I was knackered and yet again a bloody, yappy, ankle-snapping dog who'd let its owner off its lead did its best to trip me up. Dog owners amongst you wont sympathise, but the runners amongst you will. When you get put off your stride for the third time in as many minutes and you're making the final push for home, expletives fly (better the expletives than the dog I guess). But the truly embarassing bit was that the person in front (not the owner thank the Lord) was a fellow member of my running club who I failed to see as I stumbled and swore whilst he took a quiet constitutional with his wife. So my short-tempered swearing was exposed and I felt duly ashamed (actually I did at the time too and it only made me run faster in case the owner took offence).

And while I'm at it, I just want to say I hate bullies. And I particularly hate corporate bullies who throw their legal weight around to make life miserable for the small business. You know who you are, you pus-filled fuck. I hope they make you redundant, your wife leaves you for a younger sexier model and you end up swimming in your own piss in the gutter.

Guess I'm in a bad place right now, but an opportunity for change has appeared and I may well take it. Change is as good as a rest.

I log on but then blog off. I stare at the white box on the screen and find myself bereft of words (except for words like "bereft"; what a lovely word that is).

I could give you update on my listening pleasures (TV On The Radio, Fleet Foxes, Bruce Springsteen and The Killers live in Manchester Monday last), but I can't be bothered.

I could bore you with Achilles tendons and tight calves, but let's face it, you've got better things to read.

I might even submit book reviews (Huraki Murakami, Saul Bellow, my father's manuscript), but I can't summon the energy.

I've consumed TV (Mad Men, The Daily Show, Red Riding, a return to ER) and movies (Man on Wire, Ghost Town, Sin City), but am unable to spew it back out (that said, Mickey Rourke is awesome in Sin City and Jessica Alba a sinful revelation for me!).

Am I underestimating the emotional punches that life has thrown me these last few weeks? I think I feel alright. But I'm not sure that I am alright. I think I'm a bit numb, cold, some might say unfeeling. I don't want to be, but I'm not sure if I can affect change, I think only time will do that. I feel like an automaton: walking as needed, talking when required, smiling as necessary, but all without motivation.

For a while someone cheered me up through text and e-mail, reminded me what being alive is. And she can still make me smile, it's just that circumstances have made that less frequent.

And so I search for the words inside me and find husks instead, empty shells, the remains of words, used and discarded as if abandoned on the forest floor by some sociopathic squirrel. That's me, right now, the sociopathic squirrel...but not yet a psychopathic squirrel...that would be weird!