Fetch a crucifix and some garlic: this diary is undead
7:00 p.m. -- 2009-10-25
I have been gone for a long, long time. Submerged in work, mostly.
Sometimes, you don�t realize just how far you�ve sunk, health-wise. At the time it all seems rational and necessary. These reports have to be written, that budget has to be done. This and that event have to be organised... and there�s nobody else to do it, so you get on with it.
Not long ago, I was regularly working until midnight (sometimes 2 am), and then sleeping until the alarm went off at six. Sometimes I was so keyed up that I�d find myself awake by about four, and I had to abandon any pretense at sleep, and get up and begin again. Victoria and I spent a long weekend in St Helier, but I still had to sneak out of the bedroom and work while she slept. And on the flight, and in the car on the way to and from the airport... never miss a chance. She was very supportive about it all, but I have to admit I haven�t been the best husband in the world.
Coffee, Pro-Plus tablets, sugar... and remedies for the omnipresent cold. A cold that you know has been brought on by a lack of sleep, but equally, you know that the instant you relax, it�s going to knock you flat. So even though you�re getting less and less effective, you keep plugging away.
Well, the coffee worked. I didn�t fall asleep at the wheel and smack into a motorway bridge support. I did a number of jobs, and met an important deadline. Still... I hope never to have to do that again.
Anna demanded news. So let�s see�?
I finally got paid for some of the work I did. I haven�t managed to recover the pay I was owed (old story here) but at least I managed to claw some expenses back. I�m missing the actual wages from that work, but hey: let it go. It�s not worth turning into Gollum over. I feel like less of a chump, now; and my other client paid in full, and reasonably promptly.
That feels quite liberating, in terms of the potential that it brings, for some of the things I had been meaning to get around to doing; like getting some new glasses, arranging breakdown cover on our cars, and maybe even getting some dentistry done. (Yeah: how wild and adventurous is that? Pathetic, I know, but I�m in steady work again, and I got a final injection of cash from my former life, so I�m happy. It could be worse! I think that a lot of people at the moment have to settle for a little bit less than we might once have done.)
But you know what? I just had a free holiday. And the best thing about a free holiday is� squandering it.
You know, the kind where you�re finally off the hook, and you find yourself sleeping until about half past nine, and not going out until about noon? I have recharged the old batteries a bit.
And they are old batteries; I�ve had a birthday since the last time I wrote here. I can�t be too specific about my birthday because that might dent my anonymity, but it was a pleasant, low-key sort of thing. I had the day off... and did absolutely nothing with it. What luxury! Nothing is worth quite so much as time, is it?
The free holiday was courtesy of the in-laws, who invited us to share their holiday apartment in Scotland. We would borrow a boat, and I�d row Victoria on the loch while she drank wine. We did a few forest walks, and climbed a few of the humbler peaks. Although I had become a wheezing blob of ill health, I�m gradually getting a bit fitter now. Victoria paid my gym membership as a birthday present, and it�d be rude not to make use of it, right? I�ll be down there, swimming, half an hour from now.
In terms of news from the gender-confused no man�s land left over from the battle of the sexes, not much... I�m still the same old me; a transvestite in remission. One or two insights during my time away, but I�ll save those for another time. Not least because it�s usually a chronic lack of material that causes me to stop posting here.
Just one nugget for now:
I ran into a friend, quite by chance, that I got to know as a result of this blog. He�s a fellow tranny. We�d met up for a lunchtime chat once, during the summer. Now, as those of you who have communicated with me will have discovered, I sign myself as �J�. This is actually misdirection; �Jon� is just one more layer beneath which I conceal my identity, and a �nom de guerre� in my quarrel with $ci�nto�og�.
Some of you know my real name� as does (or did) this guy, but that didn�t stop my friend introducing me as Jon.
Ack! What a tangled web we (okay, I) weave. I might have handled it better, but I was in my overworked zombie mode, so I let it go. Better that than he introduced me by my �femme name� I suppose. Fortunately, I haven�t used one of those for years.
To quote American author Nathaniel Hawthorne:
�No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.�
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