First world problems...

Last night very little in the way of sleep. And now very little in the way of time. I've only just made myself a cup of tea, having overslept by an hour. Somehow I must have got around 30 minutes or so sleep as I awoke and found I needed to jump out of bed and get ready for work. I walked into the kitchen and stood there for a good 10 minutes just thinking about breakfast and how there was nothing that really appealed. No Added Sugar Alpen, not that adding the sugar would do me any good, was the main attraction; and then there was cornflakes of which some say there's more nutrition in the box than its contents. Porridge. Fine, but when you've overslept and need to be thinking about getting a train to work, it's too time-consuming and then there's the added dilemma of do you make it with milk or water, the latter being as depressing as hell. Bread. High in salt, and if you add marmalade you're basically eating a salt and sugar sandwich. Boiled egg. Fine, but not on its own and if you make fingers you're back to eating a load of salt again...and it takes time and you've got to time it right; I like a four-minute egg. I decided to eat nothing at all, just a huge mug of decaffeinated tea which will take some time to cool down enough to drink. It doesn't matter what you eat, it won't do you any good and it's either salt or sugar you have to worry about. Constantly. And then if you add them together, like with bread and marmalade, well, you're doing yourself more harm than good. So sod it, I won't eat.

Outside of breakfast I've managed to break the chocolate habit, albeit for all of a few days. I simply turned around about a month ago and stopped and I did it sub-consciously, I didn't know I was doing it, I just realised I hadn't been eating chocolate and for that I felt good, but all this is just the tip of a huge iceberg of worries that I am constantly thinking about and some times, like last night, it stops me sleeping. Cheese is another one. It's full of fat that does you no good and yet it's ubiquitous. For a while - for a long while - I kidded myself that I never really ate a great deal of cheese. A small slab of it would turn up in the refrigerator once a week and I wouldn't touch it. Alright, I might have a sprinking of Parmesan if pasta was on the menu, but that was about it, and don't get me started on spaghetti bolognaise, something I once enjoyed until I was told that too much red meat is bad for you; now, whenever I tuck in, the poor health benefits mount up behind me or in a dark cloud above me and I start to fret, inwardly most of the time. "Right, this is it, my last spaghetti bolognese" or "Right, this is it, my last chilli con carne" and I feel the need to go for a walk, burn off some of the fat I've been eating, but I don't go because it's cold and it's raining or I just can't be bothered. And going back to cheese for a sentence or two, have you noticed how cheese is everywhere: ham and CHEESE panini and cheese in virtually every panini on the menu (it's certainly the case in most caffs I visit, you cannot escape cheese.

Instead of hitting the tarmac and taking a walk, I sit in front of the television skimming through all the movies on Netflix and Prime and realising that there's nothing I want to watch. And I'm still worrying about how much exercise I'm not getting and how I could do with one more bike ride a week, but I never get around to it because when I get home the last thing I want to do is go out on the Rockhopper, so I fret about that, again inwardly, and whether instead I should join the gym and do that instead, keep myself out of the bad weather, get back to swimming, like I used to. But I don't. I never do anything I intend to do, not one thing. It's all talk. Nothing gets done and the fretting mounts up and up until I foolishly eat a slice of sugary bread and marmalade late at night and then find it contributes to my sleepless night and was probably the main cause of it.

Food is one thing to worry about, but there's loads of other stuff too. First that I'm not getting enough exercise and should do more and then there's whether I should buy this or that or whether we should be moving house or job hassles, family hassles. All I want is a beach if I'm honest. I just want two weeks by a pool doing nothing but reading books. At this precise moment in time - and by that I don't mean right this minute here at the breakfast table with the laptop in front of me, I mean now in a less accurate sense, I am reading The Horse by Willy Vlautin and it's the only thing that takes me out of myself. I take it with me on cycle rides and when I find a coffee shop I order tea and possibly a Bakewell tart, and then sit and read for a while, normally a chapter. It's pure escapism, but soon reality hits me and I have to ride home, which is no walk in the park. And when I get home I have to go straight out again, in the car, no peace or relaxation, just out and off to Tunbridge Wells or Guildford where I should really find a coffee shop and chill but I don't. Instead I head for Anderton's, a music shop on the outskirts of Guildford town centre, where I admire the bass guitars and wish I could buy myself a Fender precision bass, not a Squier, not second best, but a Fender, a decent guitar as a replacement, perhaps, for my Rolex watch, which I had to sell to pay off a debt. That has always annoyed me. I had a decent watch and I had to sell it, although whether I had to or not is debatable. I should have simply buckled down and stopped spending, but instead I sold the watch. And of course it wasn't long before I was in debt again. So I started thinking about buying something good to compensate and because I used to play the violin at school and both the bass and the violin have four strings, I've kind of kidded myself that I could play the bass, or learn how to play it. Initially, money stood between me and purchasing the Fender, it was far to pricey and still is to be fair and then I have to ask myself why. Why play the bass? Will I be joining a band? No. So why? It's just a comfort mechanism, something to take me away from all the fretting and worrying, except that it becomes another source of stress as I question whether or not I really want one. 

I try to blank my mind and at night the best way is to listen to music, Night Tracks on BBC Radio 3, and then the next thing I know is it's early morning and I've survived the night, had a good night's sleep, but it's rare, Invariably I'm awake in the dead of night wondering if I'll ever get back to sleep. I count down the hours until I reach a legitimate getting up time. 

And now here I sit. I've had a slice of bread and marmalade and I'm half way through a large mug of tea. My mood swings back and forth. Yesterday night when I got home from work I was feeling on top of the world, but now I'm not, I'm feeling down and there really is no need at all, I've just got to snap out of it, but I can't. I'm up and I'm down and I'm looking forward to a Christmas break.

I wish I had the answers to my dilemmas. In the old days, dad would be there to tell me to pull myself together and after a little reflection I'd do just that and scold myself inwardly for being so stupid. But dad's not around anymore and never will be, he's been gone since May 2011 and I've ended up hoarding my problems in a huge metaphorical sack. My problems that aren't really problems at all, at least I know that much. If anything they're what Ian Brown calls 'first world problems' and he's right, but either way the fact that I perceive I have issues is a problem and I need to shake myself out of it.

I've finished my tea and while I have considered another cup, I've got to head upstairs to get ready for work. Shower, shave, clothes on, head out of the door and march to the station, jump on the 0809, then the 0827 and then walk to work, past McDonald's, through the High Street, past the Wetherspoon's and then through the door, key fob in hand, up the stairs and then on stage to perform my role in the working day, looking forward to lunch time and ultimately leaving the office and heading home feeling tired and preoccupied.