May 5

 Taken it very easy today. Lots of sleep. Not that it ever really helps. But. Uh huh.

Woke up a few times clawing for breath. Ah. Yes. The apnea. Shit. I need to do something about that.

I dreamed.

Of people and situations from a long time ago. Regrets basically. The girl I crushed on and never did anything with - not that she was interested in me. But we got on extremely well. One of my friends from childhood was there. He crops up now and again as a steadying hand on the tiller. An unusually straight arrow kind of a person.

I realised that I was just holding in secrets. I should admit to having a crush. I told him. But. Within a sentence I realised that it had been 30 years. 30. Years. There is my answer I told myself. Too long. Too much time. I lapsed into quiet silence, sad. The object of my crush on the other side of the room, the decades that have passed having no effect in the dream world, her person still being that of a young 20 something. But also blended with someone else I crushed on much later in life.

I woke up pondering that meaning of life. That in the back end bit of it you realise how stupid it is to just faff around and not actually seize the day. Do what it is that makes you happy.

But I've reflected that state always seems to be true, and you only properly grasp it in hindsight. In the here and now we always seem pinned in place by the rules, the things that seem important, and it's only in the aftermath we realise how meaningless all that shit was.

It's something I've thought about before. And become ever more sure that you should just go for it. I'm too fucking ill and old to just "go for it" now. Anyone younger. I tell them to go do the thing. Better to try. Than not try at all. Because at some point the luxury of being able to try will be taken from you whether you like it or not.

Oddly enough, the first article I read online after waking was loosely based around this premise. A 54 year old worrying about her legacy - she didn't have one. No kids. No significant other. A successful career woman. But now suddenly deeply uneasy that she would pass away with no one to notice or care. Her life, meaningless and unmarked. Just a series of old work meetings in Outlook that had been attended.

Worthwhile ? Almost certainly not.

I get it.

Very often, particularly in school, we are advised that This, Is the Way. Get a job. Do your work. Beaver away.

To what end ?

Salary. Afford a roof over your head. Maybe fancy luxuries. Sure. But there are many ways to live. Many ways to get to that place. I wonder if life lived as a corporate drone is a particularly worthwhile way of doing that. It certainly benefits the CEO. The shareholders. But the drone ? Drones are there to work, then drop, then be replaced. No one notes the passing of the drone.

Aside from trying to wrestle a meaning of life from the shitty capitalist model - spoiler alert, there isn't one, so stop trying to justify your bullshit corpo career beyond I Have The Money - in the interpersonal bit of life, the relationships, the crushes, the friends, the helping, the feuds, there is more to consider.

The advice in the article was to consider life, and realise which bits you would regret on your deathbed. What gives you that flicker of excitement.

For me. It would be the crushes I did nothing with.

But. Then again. In todays world with its punishing sensibilities and penalising social rules, would I get away with just seizing the day and declaring my crushes ? Or would I be labelled as disgusting, creepy, a shitbag. I guess context is king. I cannot help but think though that it would be frowned upon. Part of the creep of our ever more polarised extremist world - running from a compromising middle ground to each end of a zealous spectrum and a pitched battle about which neurotic ideology should win.

Meh.

I am too old for that shit.

I am left kinda sad by it all.

But also. There have been some minor crushes later in life. That I didn't exactly go for. But didn't exactly not go for either. The results are the same as doing nothing. So maybe. Whether I act on something or not is not as big a deal as I might imagine. My lot - as an uninteresting suitor - is already assured. Which figures.

Heh.

Foot has been more stable today.

I did some deep dive background reading on it.

Apparently it could be gout. It's unusual, but you can get it in the heel. I don't think it is. Not entirely sure. But I am no expert. Then again, the GP that I saw and said "gout doesn't appear there" was arguably less of an expert than me. Gout does and can appear there. Sigh. Honestly. Whilst some GPs I have interacted with are good, knowledgeable, approachable and good at their jobs. So many of them are shit. Error prone. And just plain wrong on their facts. It crosses my mind that I don't know of any kind of other endeavour where the bar for quality - and feedback on that - is so fucking low. You wouldn't put up with it if it was a mechanic and a car. A heating engineer. You'd give them a shit review and warn people they are shit. Which happens. No such mechanism for GPs. Any old shit goes. It gives the good ones a bad name I think.

Eh well.