Run Out of Decent Journal Entry Titles for this Year!
So the Christmas thing is over for another year and so indeed will the year itself in pretty short order. I can't say I feel any much sorrow to be leaving this year behind, it has been a time long on struggle and effort for not much obvious progress or reward. The hopeful promise it showed at the beginning dissipated inexplicably swiftly and the rest seems to have contained more than its fair share of misfortunes and scary things. Not that I can say I really feel any great sense of anticipation or renewal as far as this coming year goes either. Much of that though may well be due to the heavy, squirming anxiety I feels ahead of the job assessment day thing I have scheduled for January 2nd. Of course, anyone might be nervous at such a prospect but I fancy that the flavour of my nerves may be somewhat different from those that might be felt by most others. I can't say that for a fact though of course, and mayhap I shouldn't be so hard on myself nor so egocentric, but I should like to feel at least some hint of excitement at the positive opportunity that I know this thing should be. Instead, through the prism of my instincts, all it seems to look like is some ravenous tiger standing in the road in front of me and all my feelings shout at me that I should run away. Indeed it would be so much easier, so it feels, to do. In the words of Keats from the poem that forms the title for my journal; 'Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,'. Seems my nature still sees avoidance as the best way, the reward for forcing through those unpleasant sensations not worth the risk of discomforts, nor the loss of missed opportunities great enough a punishment to warrant stepping out from the comforting shadows. Still I know this is unhelpful and illogical and self-defeating and I shall yet try my best however much my own feelings endeavour to push back, but my little puppy willpower is still a limited resource and it's not something I want to keep having to do or even can do. One day my instincts are yet going to have to learn, at least to some greater degree, the things I already know to be right if I'm going to make real progress towards actually getting anywhere. If I've had any new thoughts on that struggle from my exploits over the Christmas period it is that I must learn to want life and find value and worth in it as much as I may need to teach my nerves to be less sensitive over irrelevant matters. Well, I can't say whether the future might yet hold anything better for me, but I shall keep shambling on as best as I may prove able.
In the meanwhile though, Christmas itself proved to be reasonably tolerable if never really threatening any great festive excitments. Mayhap that be due to my being a grown up now, or perhaps the relative lack of excessive drama or incident rendered the experience somewhat less of an intense affair than my senses had perhaps been anticipating. I was however still feeling something of a nervous and unsettled puppy on the journey down to Sheffield. I'd slept particularly badly, only venturing into the very shallowest waters of unconsciousness before nervous tensions brought me back to the surface again. So I was a bit of a wearied wolfy as I made my way down to the bus in the morning, still nervously pondering quite how I was going to get myself from Sheffield train station to my Dad's address at the end of the journey. My mood though was lightened by glimpses of an unusual quantities of cats, including a brief glimpse of little Cloud kitty as I made my way down to the bus although she seemed not too enamoured the soggy effects that the clouds themselves were having. Meanwhile, water was pretty much the theme of the journey with many impressively sized new lakes to be seen out the window and rivers straining angrily against their flood defences. A soggy sparrowhawk perched upon a telegraph wire looked like it was in an incredibly bad mood indeed. Where a thick fog didn't shroud the view from the train window, everything appeared decidedly grey and wet and probably the least festive view you could imagine for a journey on Christmas Eve. Despite all the stories on the news however of delays and cancellations due to the floods in the south, my trains all went pretty much on time and the journey itself was really relatively trouble free. Eventually arriving in Sheffield I padded up the familiar hill to where the Internets had told me I could get a suitable bus and was happily surprised when the nice driver man allowed me onboard with the magic bus ticket thing I'd got at the same time as the train tickets without any much of a word. Meanwhile my stop was rendered hard to miss as everyone else on board seemed to be getting off there too and so it was I found myself feeling somewhat relieved, needing only to walk up the big hill and down again along the road to get to Dad's house, if still a little intrepid at how I might find things when I got there.
I was pleased to discover my Dad was on his own in the house when I arrived, which made things easier for my brains to acclimatise and get used to the idea of conversations and being pleasantly social. After a time, step-mother came back from seeing her own parent and we made our ways to the nearby hostelry where the noise and the crowds overwhelmed a little but the alcohol had me feeling somewhat more settled. Some conversations were had on the state of my brains and the world they inhabit. I wonder how helpful any of the words exchanged may be, I don't think I quite want to go into too much detail on these public pages just now, but I detect there have perhaps been some alterations in the attitudes and perspectives of parent and step-parent over time, though how much of that apparent change comes from me and from the passing of time is probably incalculable. Needless to say there are some things I don't think they'll ever quite see as I do, but then I have a bunch of work yet to do on myself as well. In any case, after a little while in the pub we were joined by big brother and his wife and shared a reasonably placid evening, though I yet went to bed with a certain anxiety at whatever time I woke at or appearance I gave being of some disdain to the parent modules. These sorts of nerves continued throughout my time there, though I largely managed to push through them, I would doubtless have had more enjoyments without such things. Still, Christmas Day we were joined by step-sister and the small creature that is slowly developing within, along with her husband and we shared an impressive five course feast beginning with a pea and mint soup inspired by Heston Blumenthal, the traditional prawn cocktail and then the main of an impressive goose, and a side of beef, a tureen of miscellaneous game birds, and a variety of variously prepared vegetables and sauces. Desserts included a home made sorbet, the traditional Christmas puddings and cake along with a mere trifle. The remains of this impressive feast would last us well into Boxing Day and beyond. Oh, and not to mention the selection of cheeses and the wines and beers that eased conversation and my sense of security although in amongst a group of people I am very much the natural wallflower. There were moments I did but wish I had more of a voice of my own and the ability to join in a little bit more, but although I wasn't on the greatest form, it wasn't too terrible, and hangovers were kept to a relative minimum.
I think perhaps one thing that did make this Christmas somewhat easier for a little puppy is we didn't have quite so many people around all at once as may sometimes be the case, and far less dashing around too. There was some traditional drama and argument in the Polish step family but that all took place elsewhere and meanwhile the socialising largely came in small, steady doses. So as step-sister and husband left us on the evening we were joined on Boxing Day by sister, husband and rampaging nephews and also had our second present giving session. More foods were consumed and a walk to the park was taken where small people fed ducks who seemed not to especially eager in their race for the bread but then I should imagine they were yet digesting their own Christmas dinners of loaves fed to them by various families all gathered together for Christmas. We had another brief visit from step-sister and husband and then as the afternoon wore on the crowd dispersed, big brother and wife returning to London, sister and husband dragging the nephews back to their home so then it was just a quiet evening with Father and Step-Mother, watching bits and pieces of festive television and pondering just how exceedingly different my tastes are to those of the step-parent! Overall then, I can say it was a nice experience, largely ok as much as my inherent inhibitions would allow me to enjoy it. Indeed I might almost go so far as to say it was quite the most unremarkable Christmas I can really remember having which I suspect is quite possibly a good thing! The morning before my departure we had another walk in the park and parents provided we with their differing sage advice on the sort of things I should say for my forthcoming job interview. Having long been used to the diversity of my family as it now is I can't say I'm too surprised at the differences of approach between parent and step-parent but I mention it as note of how, growing up, I may have developed a somewhat confused idea about what direction I ought to be going in. Anywho, Christmas provided some moments of nervous and discomfort but nothing that wasn't too intolerable and there was some pleasantness to be had as well. Meanwhile Dad drove me back to the train station in the afternoon and though there was some lateness of trains on my return and I had to stand between Sheffield and York, I returned to my home without any particular incident, wearied but not especially troubled by anything that had passed, or having experienced no great revelation either. So, yeah, Christmas was, fine I suppose which in this day and age is something I probably shouldn't complain about too muchly!
I have felt a certain sense of awkwardness about my schedule since my return however and I thinks some of that may be exacerbated by the increasingly looming sense of the day of my judgement in the new year! It's also of course the traditional thing at Christmas time to entirely lose track of what day of the week it was. Anywho, the day after my return I was at the shop and a surprisingly busy shop it turned out to be too! Having watched the scenes of havoc on the news at the Boxing Day sales with a degree of wry perplexity, it was intriguing to discover that even the humble charity shop is seemingly perhaps not immune to the voracious Capitalist hunger for the acquisition of things but quite how a half price sticker manages to render the statue of a dog dressed as Georgian dandy any less nightmarishly hideous is beyond my understanding. I hadn't even had time to properly look through all my pretty presents yet. Still, I've got some nice new musics I'm still to actually listen to, a biography of Shelley and a copy of Diablo III which I've only just got round to installing and yet wonder how I'm going to work out the time play that and keep up with Guild Wars 2 as well. One thing I have leafed through a little was an entertaining copy of 'Nightmare Abbey' the classic light-hearted parody of the gothic novel and fond satire on the romantic movement. Perhaps though the most exciting news for my Interweb friends though may be that I also have myself a new camera which should mean you can all look forward to new pictures appearing of some of the most traumatically ugly and frightening objects that make their ways to my little charity shop! Sadly at the moment though, most of our ornaments are all largely of more mundane cheap and ugly persuasion, but as soon as I come upon something more properly twisted you may be assured that I shall be swift to share the horror with you all! Anyways, after the shop I made my ways over to the caravan to see how mother and step-dad's Christmas had turned out. As it turns out though, they had both been struck down with a squashy cold virus thing, which I may or may not yet be incubating which will now doubt be more than helpful for any important appointments I might have coming up! By and large though they seem to have had a reasonable Christmas, although the microbes rendered my time there a little more awkward than usual, I still had a relatively restful time and finally came upon a kitty I could actually pet and share the odd head bump with. I also very briefly caught a glimpse of a little goldcrest amongst the various other birds coming to nibble seeds at the bird feeders which was another excitement of note. It won't be too long of course before parents have to move out and little kitty gets left on his ownsome for a month but mayhap at least he won't have to struggle through such a very cold and snowy winter this time around if present conditions are anything to go by.
Anywho, back now for Sunday at the shop and though the day started somewhat slowly things did eventually get going and at some points we did seem to get just as busy as we had been on the Friday when I saw the sort of crowds I might expect to see in Summer. As has become the tradition I yet found myself somewhat puzzled at to how I seemed to manage to sell more stuffs on the till than my little helper elf despite much of the time being behind the scenes, herding small flocks of books down the stairs and into suitable pens in my little book cupboard. I wonder quite what he actually does when I'm not on the shop floor and just how much he should be complaining that he'd been asked to work on New Year's Eve given the amount of work I put into the place but maybe such grumblings is just selfish of me. For the main part though, although I did at some point feel the size of the crowds grow a little overwhelming, the day was by and large fairly straightforward and I was also happy to have a little visit from manager who had been off these last three weeks and whose absence had certainly been missed. Now though I has a couple proper days off ahead of me, except that really I needs to be going about preparing for the scary job interview and assessment that lies ahead. Meanwhile, I haven't had any time to sort out foods for the next few days either, though Dad had been kind enough to pack me off with a small selection of the remains of our Christmas meal so I can yet has my own gourmet New Year feast if nothing else! Still, there are yet shops open tomorrow, although is a little puzzled the supermarket should be open longer hours tomorrow than it was today, even if it is a Sunday. Hm, now I comes to think about it, I still haven't watched the Christmas Dr Who either! Oh I do feel rather disorganised at the moment but also rather unsettled and frightened and other parts of me are just wanting to run and hide but still, hopefully this evening I can rest and then tomorrow start to focus properly on the challenge that lies ahead. If the last few days have shown anything, though it may not be a new thing, it may seem to be that my puppy brain is much better when it can focus on one thing at a time otherwise it can get a little easily overwhelmed. I'm a bright and clever puppy, in quiet and calm circumstances when I can properly focus my fuzzy little head on the matter of concern, but it would seem I'm not necessarily quick and the confusion of the world can easily confuse me if I gets faced with too much of it at once. Hm, my nature is perhaps not always the most helpful, but on the other hand it's not evil either, and in the right circumstances can still do great things. Hopefully then I may yet be able to make some changes to both my nature and my circumstances in the year ahead, although I must confess I don't really feel any especial degree of anticipation or hope right now, I will shamble on and do my best. In the meantime though I do be much appreciative of all those kind enough to share some small part of my journey with me, wherever it happens to take me, and I leave you with all my very best wishes for shiny goodness and fortunes in whatever lies ahead in the coming year. Care to join me as we stumble onwards? *offers a fluffy paw*
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,'. Seems my nature still sees avoidance as the best way, the reward for forcing through those unpleasant sensations not worth the risk of discomforts, nor the loss of missed opportunities great enough a punishment to warrant stepping out from the comforting shadows. Still I know this is unhelpful and illogical and self-defeating and I shall yet try my best however much my own feelings endeavour to push back, but my little puppy willpower is still a limited resource and it's not something I want to keep having to do or even can do. One day my instincts are yet going to have to learn, at least to some greater degree, the things I already know to be right if I'm going to make real progress towards actually getting anywhere. If I've had any new thoughts on that struggle from my exploits over the Christmas period it is that I must learn to want life and find value and worth in it as much as I may need to teach my nerves to be less sensitive over irrelevant matters. Well, I can't say whether the future might yet hold anything better for me, but I shall keep shambling on as best as I may prove able.
In the meanwhile though, Christmas itself proved to be reasonably tolerable if never really threatening any great festive excitments. Mayhap that be due to my being a grown up now, or perhaps the relative lack of excessive drama or incident rendered the experience somewhat less of an intense affair than my senses had perhaps been anticipating. I was however still feeling something of a nervous and unsettled puppy on the journey down to Sheffield. I'd slept particularly badly, only venturing into the very shallowest waters of unconsciousness before nervous tensions brought me back to the surface again. So I was a bit of a wearied wolfy as I made my way down to the bus in the morning, still nervously pondering quite how I was going to get myself from Sheffield train station to my Dad's address at the end of the journey. My mood though was lightened by glimpses of an unusual quantities of cats, including a brief glimpse of little Cloud kitty as I made my way down to the bus although she seemed not too enamoured the soggy effects that the clouds themselves were having. Meanwhile, water was pretty much the theme of the journey with many impressively sized new lakes to be seen out the window and rivers straining angrily against their flood defences. A soggy sparrowhawk perched upon a telegraph wire looked like it was in an incredibly bad mood indeed. Where a thick fog didn't shroud the view from the train window, everything appeared decidedly grey and wet and probably the least festive view you could imagine for a journey on Christmas Eve. Despite all the stories on the news however of delays and cancellations due to the floods in the south, my trains all went pretty much on time and the journey itself was really relatively trouble free. Eventually arriving in Sheffield I padded up the familiar hill to where the Internets had told me I could get a suitable bus and was happily surprised when the nice driver man allowed me onboard with the magic bus ticket thing I'd got at the same time as the train tickets without any much of a word. Meanwhile my stop was rendered hard to miss as everyone else on board seemed to be getting off there too and so it was I found myself feeling somewhat relieved, needing only to walk up the big hill and down again along the road to get to Dad's house, if still a little intrepid at how I might find things when I got there.
I was pleased to discover my Dad was on his own in the house when I arrived, which made things easier for my brains to acclimatise and get used to the idea of conversations and being pleasantly social. After a time, step-mother came back from seeing her own parent and we made our ways to the nearby hostelry where the noise and the crowds overwhelmed a little but the alcohol had me feeling somewhat more settled. Some conversations were had on the state of my brains and the world they inhabit. I wonder how helpful any of the words exchanged may be, I don't think I quite want to go into too much detail on these public pages just now, but I detect there have perhaps been some alterations in the attitudes and perspectives of parent and step-parent over time, though how much of that apparent change comes from me and from the passing of time is probably incalculable. Needless to say there are some things I don't think they'll ever quite see as I do, but then I have a bunch of work yet to do on myself as well. In any case, after a little while in the pub we were joined by big brother and his wife and shared a reasonably placid evening, though I yet went to bed with a certain anxiety at whatever time I woke at or appearance I gave being of some disdain to the parent modules. These sorts of nerves continued throughout my time there, though I largely managed to push through them, I would doubtless have had more enjoyments without such things. Still, Christmas Day we were joined by step-sister and the small creature that is slowly developing within, along with her husband and we shared an impressive five course feast beginning with a pea and mint soup inspired by Heston Blumenthal, the traditional prawn cocktail and then the main of an impressive goose, and a side of beef, a tureen of miscellaneous game birds, and a variety of variously prepared vegetables and sauces. Desserts included a home made sorbet, the traditional Christmas puddings and cake along with a mere trifle. The remains of this impressive feast would last us well into Boxing Day and beyond. Oh, and not to mention the selection of cheeses and the wines and beers that eased conversation and my sense of security although in amongst a group of people I am very much the natural wallflower. There were moments I did but wish I had more of a voice of my own and the ability to join in a little bit more, but although I wasn't on the greatest form, it wasn't too terrible, and hangovers were kept to a relative minimum.
I think perhaps one thing that did make this Christmas somewhat easier for a little puppy is we didn't have quite so many people around all at once as may sometimes be the case, and far less dashing around too. There was some traditional drama and argument in the Polish step family but that all took place elsewhere and meanwhile the socialising largely came in small, steady doses. So as step-sister and husband left us on the evening we were joined on Boxing Day by sister, husband and rampaging nephews and also had our second present giving session. More foods were consumed and a walk to the park was taken where small people fed ducks who seemed not to especially eager in their race for the bread but then I should imagine they were yet digesting their own Christmas dinners of loaves fed to them by various families all gathered together for Christmas. We had another brief visit from step-sister and husband and then as the afternoon wore on the crowd dispersed, big brother and wife returning to London, sister and husband dragging the nephews back to their home so then it was just a quiet evening with Father and Step-Mother, watching bits and pieces of festive television and pondering just how exceedingly different my tastes are to those of the step-parent! Overall then, I can say it was a nice experience, largely ok as much as my inherent inhibitions would allow me to enjoy it. Indeed I might almost go so far as to say it was quite the most unremarkable Christmas I can really remember having which I suspect is quite possibly a good thing! The morning before my departure we had another walk in the park and parents provided we with their differing sage advice on the sort of things I should say for my forthcoming job interview. Having long been used to the diversity of my family as it now is I can't say I'm too surprised at the differences of approach between parent and step-parent but I mention it as note of how, growing up, I may have developed a somewhat confused idea about what direction I ought to be going in. Anywho, Christmas provided some moments of nervous and discomfort but nothing that wasn't too intolerable and there was some pleasantness to be had as well. Meanwhile Dad drove me back to the train station in the afternoon and though there was some lateness of trains on my return and I had to stand between Sheffield and York, I returned to my home without any particular incident, wearied but not especially troubled by anything that had passed, or having experienced no great revelation either. So, yeah, Christmas was, fine I suppose which in this day and age is something I probably shouldn't complain about too muchly!
I have felt a certain sense of awkwardness about my schedule since my return however and I thinks some of that may be exacerbated by the increasingly looming sense of the day of my judgement in the new year! It's also of course the traditional thing at Christmas time to entirely lose track of what day of the week it was. Anywho, the day after my return I was at the shop and a surprisingly busy shop it turned out to be too! Having watched the scenes of havoc on the news at the Boxing Day sales with a degree of wry perplexity, it was intriguing to discover that even the humble charity shop is seemingly perhaps not immune to the voracious Capitalist hunger for the acquisition of things but quite how a half price sticker manages to render the statue of a dog dressed as Georgian dandy any less nightmarishly hideous is beyond my understanding. I hadn't even had time to properly look through all my pretty presents yet. Still, I've got some nice new musics I'm still to actually listen to, a biography of Shelley and a copy of Diablo III which I've only just got round to installing and yet wonder how I'm going to work out the time play that and keep up with Guild Wars 2 as well. One thing I have leafed through a little was an entertaining copy of 'Nightmare Abbey' the classic light-hearted parody of the gothic novel and fond satire on the romantic movement. Perhaps though the most exciting news for my Interweb friends though may be that I also have myself a new camera which should mean you can all look forward to new pictures appearing of some of the most traumatically ugly and frightening objects that make their ways to my little charity shop! Sadly at the moment though, most of our ornaments are all largely of more mundane cheap and ugly persuasion, but as soon as I come upon something more properly twisted you may be assured that I shall be swift to share the horror with you all! Anyways, after the shop I made my ways over to the caravan to see how mother and step-dad's Christmas had turned out. As it turns out though, they had both been struck down with a squashy cold virus thing, which I may or may not yet be incubating which will now doubt be more than helpful for any important appointments I might have coming up! By and large though they seem to have had a reasonable Christmas, although the microbes rendered my time there a little more awkward than usual, I still had a relatively restful time and finally came upon a kitty I could actually pet and share the odd head bump with. I also very briefly caught a glimpse of a little goldcrest amongst the various other birds coming to nibble seeds at the bird feeders which was another excitement of note. It won't be too long of course before parents have to move out and little kitty gets left on his ownsome for a month but mayhap at least he won't have to struggle through such a very cold and snowy winter this time around if present conditions are anything to go by.
Anywho, back now for Sunday at the shop and though the day started somewhat slowly things did eventually get going and at some points we did seem to get just as busy as we had been on the Friday when I saw the sort of crowds I might expect to see in Summer. As has become the tradition I yet found myself somewhat puzzled at to how I seemed to manage to sell more stuffs on the till than my little helper elf despite much of the time being behind the scenes, herding small flocks of books down the stairs and into suitable pens in my little book cupboard. I wonder quite what he actually does when I'm not on the shop floor and just how much he should be complaining that he'd been asked to work on New Year's Eve given the amount of work I put into the place but maybe such grumblings is just selfish of me. For the main part though, although I did at some point feel the size of the crowds grow a little overwhelming, the day was by and large fairly straightforward and I was also happy to have a little visit from manager who had been off these last three weeks and whose absence had certainly been missed. Now though I has a couple proper days off ahead of me, except that really I needs to be going about preparing for the scary job interview and assessment that lies ahead. Meanwhile, I haven't had any time to sort out foods for the next few days either, though Dad had been kind enough to pack me off with a small selection of the remains of our Christmas meal so I can yet has my own gourmet New Year feast if nothing else! Still, there are yet shops open tomorrow, although is a little puzzled the supermarket should be open longer hours tomorrow than it was today, even if it is a Sunday. Hm, now I comes to think about it, I still haven't watched the Christmas Dr Who either! Oh I do feel rather disorganised at the moment but also rather unsettled and frightened and other parts of me are just wanting to run and hide but still, hopefully this evening I can rest and then tomorrow start to focus properly on the challenge that lies ahead. If the last few days have shown anything, though it may not be a new thing, it may seem to be that my puppy brain is much better when it can focus on one thing at a time otherwise it can get a little easily overwhelmed. I'm a bright and clever puppy, in quiet and calm circumstances when I can properly focus my fuzzy little head on the matter of concern, but it would seem I'm not necessarily quick and the confusion of the world can easily confuse me if I gets faced with too much of it at once. Hm, my nature is perhaps not always the most helpful, but on the other hand it's not evil either, and in the right circumstances can still do great things. Hopefully then I may yet be able to make some changes to both my nature and my circumstances in the year ahead, although I must confess I don't really feel any especial degree of anticipation or hope right now, I will shamble on and do my best. In the meantime though I do be much appreciative of all those kind enough to share some small part of my journey with me, wherever it happens to take me, and I leave you with all my very best wishes for shiny goodness and fortunes in whatever lies ahead in the coming year. Care to join me as we stumble onwards? *offers a fluffy paw*