Today I had to minute a committee meeting instead of my wife, which worked perfectly well. I can’t talk much when I’m concentrating but it was alright. For some reason I can’t now place, I’d expected this committee to be full of sharp-elbowed sharp-tongued people but they were all really nice, which made it easier. I was identified by my resemblance to my son before I’d introduced myself. Hm.

Earlier I’d taken the kids to school and nursery and got on with filling in some forms in the time before picking the boy up. Then home where I collapsed into sleep for a while as my wife took over.

I can still sleep anywhere, any time. But otherwise things are getting better. I think I’m more well now. I hardly like to start to hope, but I think this might be it.

(in other news this blog is showing up for some very strange searches on Google… people being looked up, or looking themselves up, who are obviously digging pretty deep into Google results to find themselves. I suspect political shenanigans but I don’t think I’ve ever been unpleasant about anyone on here, so it’s probably safe enough to leave the blog on Google. When people have hurt me I’ve tended to anonymise my more hurting complaints, and I usually take them somewhere else entirely. The internet remembers things long after we’ve forgotten. It’s got nothing else to do.)

I love running. I run up and down and up and down. Stomp stomp stomp stomp stomp I go. Everybody waves. The butcher waves. The baker waves. Here is the policeman. He is not waving. He looks cross. Now I am going in the van. He says I have to put some clothes on. He is very annoyed. I say I am comfortable with my body but he says he isn’t.

“When the ego is immobilised, intuitions are free to soar.”

Sallie Nichols, Jung and Tarot

Just been out for a run. Feel a bit better.

INFPs tend to feel incomplete – we are known for our continual search for those who will understand us. Although I recognised long ago that being perfectly understood is a largely mythical goal, that doesn’t save me from the feeling of incompleteness, because it’s not something rational. And it probably won’t matter what happens, I’ll keep looking.

It’s not as bad as it was in my teens. For one thing I don’t have the pressure of testosterone driving me to find someone to bed (because I’ve found someone, thank you very much). I can’t tell you how much that further confused an already baffling issue, although if you’ve experienced adolescence as a biological male I suspect you know what I’m talking about.

But it does get tangled up with depression and create a horrible snare into which I fall again and again. I end up pretending to be something I’m not, for all sorts of reasons of social awkwardness, and nobody can understand you if you’re pretending to be something else. It’s hopeless.

I mentioned in an earlier comment that I once dreamed I met my guardian angel, and she looked and behaved pretty much like Calamity Jane from the film – eager, excitable, encouraging, irrepressible and energetic. Well, I have been thinking about it, and not to put to fine a point on it, I think I misinterpreted the issue. This was a straightforward projection of my anima – she’s not my guardian angel, she’s me.

If I’m ever going to relax enough to find the right people, I’m going to have to confront her. I probably need to let her out. The way she behaved is very close to the way I behave when I’m entirely relaxed, which isn’t often. Almost everybody gets presented with something else, I suspect only my family really ever see her. It. Me.

I have literally no idea where to go from here, and I would like to be understood and hugged. I cannot get both from the same people.

night night x

Dear Wibsite

Please excuse Ross for not blogging yesterday as he had concluded that all existence was ultimately futile, and went to bed in a huff. He has now had a coffee.

Yours faithfully

Ross’s Super-ego

Sometimes it feels like you pass just inches from the truth, like you can make out the shadows in the fog for a moment. It’s never less than tantalising but there’s no grabbing hold of anything solid. Just an echoing, aching feeling of nearness. Anyway, I’ve had one of those tonight. It was around the idea of no longer trying, simply being – that as I get closer to that kind of stillness, I become more and more exactly where and who I should be.

But it’s gone. I’ve been for a run since. Now it all sounds like such pseudometaphysical hogwash I can barely stomach it. All I have left me is the dim awareness that when I’ve come near such things, I have seldom been entirely mistaken.

I’m trying to resist lunging towards mania. That’s not going to help. I need balance, I need peace and clarity. The only thing I don’t need is routine. I’ve got plenty of that.

I don’t go manic, not nearly. But I do get my hopes up, about silly things. And as I slowly get well, hope is getting to her feet again, and I want to drive her far away from me before she breaks my stupid heart. I’m just getting better, bit by bit. Someone said today they could see I was depressed just by my face. I was actually feeling pretty good, but I could see the comedy in it.

I’m afraid to hope, though, and that ain’t right. Needs fixin’. I just need to find something realistic but not miserably banal to hope for.

I wish I could just relax a bit. I’m so intense all the time. If I’ve got a guardian angel the poor thing must be exhausted. Probably has to keep taking cigarette breaks, I know I would.

God. I could really use a cigarette.

Went to see Avatar. It did not suck. It’s essentially an extremely optimistic Dances With Wolves. Revealed by this viewing were the following four facts, which I add to my database on the universe:

1. Sigourney Weaver is smoking hot at 60 years old. She looks better now than I have ever looked or will ever look.

2. Every film – every film – which involves a stand-off between good and bad must and will at all times come down to a fistfight between the main bad guy and the main good guy. I don’t care how big their armies are, what species they are, I don’t care whether they’re from the future or the past or anything else. Two of ‘em. Fistfight.

3. Even on other planets you need a training montage if you expect to get good at anything.

4. We still know very little about the universe, its origins and the ways in which life comes to be – but we are sure aliens will usually be pretty sexy.

5. 3D’s great. Maybe I just like the glasses…

Not that I have much to be ungrateful for this month, but I’m hoping February will be a happier time. I will continue to blog. I notice that my Twitter stream often becomes a sort of stream-of-consciousness flow of gags, whereas this blog has tended toward the unbearably maudlin. Might be able to balance this up a bit. If I do keep slipping, please understand that I do it because I often feel much better after I’ve told someone how I am. It becomes very difficult to keep it in.

Anyway, see you in February. Who knows what it’ll bring, if I keep taking chances? A recent Twitter post of mine read: “Am I going to have to go to bed now? I wish I was in the Netherlands on my way to an all-night meteor-watching party.”

I hereby dedicate February to AWESOMENESS.

Feeling awfully grateful for my family. My daughter Rosie beat me at chess earlier but it turned out she’d invented all sorts of extra uses for en passant which I don’t think actually exist. I’m just happy she’s playing at all. Then we looked through her fossil set, which she got for Christmas. Fossils are great presents, they’re really interesting and cheap. Meanwhile my son Charlie dances his way round the house singing made-up songs, usually while riding an invisible horse. My wife holds us together with calm energy – and tea, lots of tea.