We mire ourselves in verbiage. Our actions light the path.
42
The Answer to the Ultimate Question…
In Douglas Adams’ book Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy aliens build a supercomputer called Deep Thought and ask it to compute the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything. After calculating for millions of years, Deep Thought announces the answer to be 42 – disappointing and anticlimactic. Fans have come up with many theories as to why Adams chose 42 and what he might be hinting at. Some incorporate numerology and biblical interpretations (understandably given the nature of the question); one is that 42 in binary is 101010. Adams himself always maintained that he plucked it at random while staring out of his window.
On my 42nd birthday I wondered whether the number might have some significance for me. Would this be the year that I started to understand the answers to some of the bigger questions, my place and purpose in the universe? I hoped for it to be a watershed year. Unsatisfied by the trajectory that I took in early life, I’d left a career in software development to explore other possibilities. I spent time WWOOFing, travelled and worked in Australia, moved to Taiwan to live with someone I’d met on my travels, ultimately ending up back in the UK, chastened by the experience and six years the poorer. Well, I should have been much more careful about what I wished for. Two months later and the UK along with most of the world went into lock-down in reaction to the spread of COVID-19. I, along with many other people, got a mega-dose of answers about myself and my pocket-universe.
Living alone, I at first continued to do what I had been doing for months before the lock-down: buried myself in distraction – YouTube, box-sets, DVDs, computer games, mobile games, the escapism of looking at cars I was never going to buy on AutoTrader and houses I could never afford on RightMove. If it produced a dopamine response and allowed me to escape the reality of my situation, I was all over it. It wasn’t the pandemic that had done this; I had been honing these behaviours for years, numbing myself to the reality of me. Sleep hygiene wasn’t a thing – I would keep going until I was exhausted and then cradle my mobile in hand and listen to a soothing ASMR video to make sure that the barrage of negative thoughts rushing through my head wouldn’t have a chance to keep me awake. CGP Grey’s 7 Ways to Maximize Misery had become an instructional in its literal interpretation. My wellness compass was completely demagnetised.
Walking with Ingress
Not all the movement was down the spiral though. My destructive self was being countered by my subconscious desire to get back up. I started playing Ingress again, an augmented reality game where you walk around in the real world to different ‘portals’, claim them for your faction and build ‘fields’ to “help humanity ascend” or “prevent humanity’s enslavement by alien technology”. For me it was less about the narrative and more a way of enhancing physical activity with another little dopamine drip – badges and achievements for moving. It also gave me a new group of people to connect and talk with. Ingress worked; I was walking for two or three hours a few days a week. I would finish home-working and then tramp around the streets linking up portals. I congratulated myself on being so clever as to find a way to get moving again and side-step the slump I’d been in (cue pitying laughter from my future self).
My first job working from home ended, Ingress continued and I thought everything was fine. “If I’m moving, things must be okay”, I convinced myself. My to-do list though remained untouched. Absolutely everything was a chore that I just couldn’t face. I wasn’t doing anything and had nothing to talk about, so I wasn’t ringing friends, or if I was I made believe that things were okay, it was just the lock-down.
Happy with my work ethic, my previous manager invited me to apply for another customer service role working from home. It was outside of my comfort zone, but I decided that I should try the job and see how it went. It was for the Green Homes Grant Scheme, so I told myself I would be helping with the move to renewables. At first I was doing well – I assimilated the scheme knowledge so that I was the go-to team member for advice on how to respond to queries, my e-workspace was organised and efficient so that I was on top of calls and emails that came my way. Fairly rapidly though things started to unstitch – I was taking complaints about the grant personally and becoming more and more frustrated that I had no agency to resolve any of the issues that customers were raising.
Losing Momentum
My feelings continued to pile up after each day and I wasn’t finding a way to unwind. Work was becoming the only thing that I was doing as I had no motivation for anything else. At the beginning I had been up and out of bed in the mornings excited to sign on. By month two it felt like I was dragging myself into the office room ever more full of anxiety before each call. Little of this showed on the outside at work. My manager and higher ups were happy with my professionalism and attention to detail. I was invited to assist with training new starters on how to respond to the emails. Once Christmas was over and the proportion of complaint calls and emails was ramping up, I couldn’t keep going. It was a temp role anyway, so I just gave a week’s notice and handed back my work equipment.
While deciding whether to stay or go, I had thought I would be fine and just pivot to looking for another role, but when I went to take the next leap it was like my legs just crumpled beneath me. I knew what I needed to do, but another part of my brain just pinned me down and told me to stay there – don’t move, movement brings pain. And so this is where I stayed mentally for two months, wilfully ignorant to the red flags that I’d already passed and the instructions on my self-penned care plan that I should have followed. It wasn’t until I scored my mood one day that I realised I needed to change. My mood had fallen to the next rung and I read the instruction – contact your GP, start meds. I knew I needed to reach out to a professional rather than a friend, that I had let things get to a point where talking to a friend wasn’t go to be enough. Finally accepting this was true, I realised that if I was going to ask for help and make this “real” instead of a back-and-forth within my head, then by implication, it was my responsibility to do what I could to change my behaviours and thought patterns.
Reaching Out For Help
A lot of the imagery in our words and language around depression and struggles with life seem to have aquatic themes – keeping our heads above water, sink or swim, feeling like we’re drowning. At this point I realised that I had been treading water with all my bad habits and distractions a buoyancy-aid to help keep me afloat. Letting go of the aid was going to be painful because without it I would have to start swimming, using mental muscles that were fatigued and out of shape, and I wasn’t sure whether I was going to make it. My call with the GP started me in the right direction though, not because of the content of the call, but because of the significance of the action of calling. I could have self-referred for talk therapy, but making it part of the conversation with the GP made it a reality, a beacon to guide me. With this step done, my sub-conscious started to throw forward ideas of what to do while I waited. The first of these was to start running again and to take a cold shower afterwards. Neither sounded like fun, but for some reason I knew they were two things that would help set me in the right direction.
Step One
The first run went far better than I expected. Yes, my body was yelling at me for the first five minutes and yes, there were sections where I had to stop and walk to catch my breath, but I kept moving forward. I kept my focus on my breathing as much as I could and on the outcome of completing the run. No thoughts about times or performance, just the act of running.
The first cold shower was an experience. The only time I can remember taking a cold shower before this was on a WWOOF homestay in Portugal and that was born of necessity (sort of). Time expanded in the moments before I turned the shower control. I was talking to myself internally about what I was about to do, being kind to myself, telling myself this was meant kindly and would be good for ‘us’. I could feel the push back, the alarm, the fear that I wouldn’t be able to go through with it, that it would be a new habit that I would fail to stick to. I was going to feel cold and miserable all day if I did this. That in itself was illuminating. Why was I talking about a habit, about many future events, when what was about to happen was one shower? This was one shower and it only needed to last as long as I could handle.
I turned the control and the icy water flowed on to my head. Shallow breaths. Pin pricks all over my skin and a numb feeling over my skull. My thoughts continued to flow. “It’s okay. Stick with it. You can do this. What are these feelings, outside and inside? Get the flannel, soap up”. Already, an achievement – a purpose to the cold shower outside of testing my mental resolve (and an excuse to turn off the water while I lathered up). A rinse and then the show was over. Three minutes, but a complete change in state. A new clarity and a warm glow in my torso and a chance to reflect on oh so many moments crammed into those few minutes. A point of inflection and new momentum on which to capitalise…
Mental Health Awareness Week
This week is Mental Health Awareness week in the UK and the deadline I needed in my head to finish and publish this post. Our mental health is important and needs to carry the same consideration as our physical health. If you broke your leg, you’d seek help, get crutches and give yourself time to heal. The mind is the same. The theme for this year’s Mental Health Awareness week is nature. Just a walk in the park or the countryside provides a small boost by itself and reconnects us with where we have come from. Our bodies react to the colour green with a feeling of calm.
I have started attending MenWalkTalk events on alternate Sundays and it has been a real help for me. It is an opportunity to talk in confidence to ordinary people like myself and to be there to listen to them too. It started in Littlehampton, but there are now walks along the coast including the one in Preston Park, Brighton that I attend. You can follow the links for more information on MenWalkTalk and other organisations that can help.
M-m-m-my Corona
We are now in to week seven of the UK shutdown in response to the corona virus pandemic. Like many, I am living alone and doing what I can to combat the isolation and lack of structure to my days. My YouTube habit isn’t a good one, but occasionally I stumble across a video that is interesting or helpful, like this one from CGP Grey:
I am going to keep watching it every day until the message sticks. Watching it has already helped: I’m getting the house clean, room by room, and making an effort to get up at a consistent time. I was already making a point of getting out of the house for a walk or cycle ride each day. Even after this shutdown is over, the advice on good sleep hygiene is something for me to keep practising.
Daily Dose of Internet
Finding things to lift my mood has been a consideration during the last few weeks and YouTube channel Daily Dose of Internet never fails to find something cute, interesting or hilarious to brighten my day.
Folding @ Home
The Folding @ Home project uses the spare processing power of people’s computers to simulate protein dynamics in order to help scientists better understand a variety of diseases. Covid-19 is one of the diseases they are currently analysing and they are currently striving to reach 1 million connected machines. It’s really easy to download and install and you can configure the software to run all the time or only when your computer is idle. I have installed it before and haven’t noticed it interfere with my computer use. Understanding the protein folding for Covid-19 could help with developing an effective vaccine against the virus.
Italy
Yet again I’m dusting off the cobwebs from this blog purely for another holiday update. Maybe one day soon I will write more regularly, but for now…
Rome
For most of my time in Italy I enjoyed unseasonably warm and dry weather. My first day here I hoped to visit the Borghese Gallery and Museum in the morning. Unfortunately I discovered upon arriving at the museum that tickets must be pre-booked, so I made do with a further wander around the surrounding gardens, later stumbling upon the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art. This provided an interesting diversion until the high-point of the day, a guided tour of the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel.
The Colosseum in Rome
There was a lot to take in on the tour of the Vatican and that was without seeing the whole museum. You could spend all day there and still not see everything if you took the time to appreciate each exhibit and each room in detail. The Sistine Chapel too was very beautiful to behold and our tour guide had explained the detail and history of many of the panels at the beginning of the tour as there is no talking in the chapel itself (and if there is, a stern attendant shushes everyone).
On Friday I woke up later than I meant to, so I didn’t arrive at the Colosseum until about 10:30 and the masses of other tourists were already lined up to enter or milling around the plaza outside. I decided quite quickly to try again the next morning rather than spend an age queueing and instead took a walk around the Trastevere district and Jewish Ghetto area accompanied by a free audio-guide from Rick Steves. Somewhere along the way I indulged in a lovely amaretto and vanilla ice-cream cone in the sunshine.
Saturday, and an early start made all the difference at the Colosseum. Arriving there at 8:25 I joined a much shorter queue for a ticket and spent all of the morning and some of the early afternoon taking in the Colosseum, the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill. It was amazing to wander amongst the buildings and remains of ancient Rome.
Naples
Sunday morning I whizzed down to Naples on the fast train, dropped my bag at my accommodation and headed straight for Herculaneum. Again I was able to walk around buildings from another age, preserved by the ash from Vesuvius after the same explosion that both destroyed and preserved Pompeii.
The next day I returned along the Circumvesuviana train line to look around Pompeii and I was so happy to have done so. The scale of the town is something to behold and the ash deposited on the town has helped to preserve the historic details of the buildings, including murals and intricate floor mosaics. I spent a good part of the day seeing as many of the buildings as possible and taking pictures of what I saw. By late afternoon I had seen everything I wanted to and decided to make a brief trip to the end of the train line – Sorrento. The town was very pretty and bustled with tourists and locals. Limonchello was available to buy from a number of the shops in the side streets, as well as one shop that stood out that sold Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings merchandise. Strangely out of place, but you know where to come to get your geek on if you are near Naples.
My last day in Naples; I tried to go to the Museum of Archaeology only to be told by the man at the ticket counter to come back tomorrow. I hadn’t done my homework – the museum closes on a Tuesday. Unperturbed, I carried on walking to the funicular railway for a ride up the hillside and a view across the cityscape. Rather than pay to go in the hillside monastery for a better view over the bay, I continued up and past the fort to another funicular that took me down to the Spanish quarter and the Royal Palace with an exhibition of the ornate royal apartments.
Scalea
On Wednesday I vacated my room and made the short walk to Napoli Centrale train station for an intercity train to Scalea and my dad’s holiday apartment for the second half of my trip. First class was very comfortable and as with all the trains here, very affordable. The first class seating configuration is a single seat, the aisle, then two seats together, with some seats facing in pairs and fours.
Once I arrived at the apartment, I unpacked and relaxed, waiting for my dad to arrive the next day.
The weather wasn’t so kind during the second week of the holiday, but any rain only came down during part of the day, leaving either blue and white skies or light cloud for us to explore local towns. Sapri was very pleasant to walk around the beach front and sit down for a coffee. We learned the hard way that the main line to Cosenza stops a long walk from the true centre of the modern town, as well as the old town further to the south. There is a local line that operates Monday to Saturday with a roughly hourly service to take you closer to the tourist sights, then on to Rogliano.
Scalea itself is a pleasant tourist town that was mostly dormant during my stay. Outside the centre, holiday apartments stretch out to the north and south and are occupied mainly during August by both Italian and foreign tourists, making some parts around my dad’s place feel a little like a ghost town while I was here. I felt very safe here and locals were friendly and said ‘bonjiorno’.
Hungary – Day 3
Thursday was March 15th, Hungary’s National Day, a remembrance of the 1848 revolution. Unlike the UK, lots of places were shut. The breakfast bar that I had planned for my early morning fuel stop – shut; the corner shops – shut; the Spar supermarket – shut. This theme continued for much of the day. It was a McDonald’s that stopped me from going hungry in the morning and I don’t think I needed to be so sheepish about speaking English to order. One thing that threw me was the breakfast menu structure – you buy a muffin and then add items at 200Ft each unlike the meal deals in the UK. I didn’t realize this difference as I tried to order, so I ended up with just a muffin and coffee. I could have gone back to order a hash brown, but my waistline is probably better for sticking with what I got, not by much, I know.
Today I splurged on a one-day ticket for public transport in the city. At 1650Ft (£4.70), it was good value for getting around and equivalent to roughly 5 single-journey tickets. It also meant I didn’t need to worry about validating a ticket each time I got on to a tram or entered the metro.
My first stop for the day was Heroes Square. Metro line 1 was a fun experience. I think it is the oldest of the lines and felt like stepping back in time. There were a couple of museums that I could have popped in to at Heroes Square, but there were long queues to get in (free entry for National Day, I think) so I decided to just continue with my meandering look around the city. As it started to rain I took a tram that circled the east side of the city, then a couple more transfers to end up at the government buildings. Again there were crowds gathering around a stage and this time the museums were shut.
More wandering and I found a place for lunch that served a tourist menu that allowed me to sample goulash, paprika chicken and a dessert that was tasty sponge cake. A very efficient use of a meal for sampling local dishes.
Late afternoon I visited Csak a jó sör, on a top 10 of list of craft beer bars in Guardian Travel. The beer I tried was a coconut accented IPA that was smooth and palatable.
Nick Hubbard 