Evergreen
Nightmare journey home this evening starting with not leaving the office until 6.45pm. Why? I don’t know. Was in the office on time this morning, well literally only a couple of minutes late. As usual, as I walked from the tube station I looked out for Scott to cycle past in the other direction. Its some kind of wierd guilt that I should stay at work long past 5:30pm – maybe to do with outlasting all the other people in my team who are still there or maybe its just my work / life balalnce is totally screwed. Its up there with all the big guilts: Catholic Guilt, Jewish Guilt, Buddist Guilt and how you feel after eating a Krispy Kreme or twelve.There was a person under a train at Hyde Park Corner tonight so the line was down to Hammersmith. I always wonder if that means completely under or just legs or head, dead or injured or just badly mutilated. They never tell you on the TfL website. End result best part of two hours to get home. Shite.
One week on from my birthday and a profound thing appears to be happening to me. Tonights tube incident didn’t help. I keep wondering could it be me? And not in the lotto sense of the word. People can die in their 30’s from bad living practices. What if I only have two more years left to live before a heart attack wipes me out? It’s stupid thinking like that but at 31 I don’t feel young anymore. I don’t feel old either but something else and quite fragile. The excesses of youth seem like a long time ago. Surviving nights out and copious amounts of alcohol seem a world away. I have the equivalent of hangover induced stomach pains brought on by stress and worry nearly every weekday anyway, I don’t need the real thing.
Physical health has never been at the forefront of my concern until now. As a compulsive worrier every little twinge has me failing to danger and thinking I’ve got cancer. Obviously I then don’t do anything but think if I can survive a week then it’s probably alright. But it’s all relative. My baseline health seems to have declined so a small twinge is now a bigger deal than it was 5 or even 10 years ago. And I could sleep forever now, although not much has changed there!
What if I’m halfway through my life now? What have I done? What have I achieved?
What if I’m over halfway through? I couldn’t have done it any differently because the choices I’ve made reflect who I am- unless I was schizo I would chose more or less the same path everytime. The optimism of my 20’s seems well and truely gone now. All I’m left with is the dawning realisation that life isn’t turning out as I’d imagined it (although all I’d imagined was that I would be a bus driver). Doing well at University hasn’t translated into naturally doing well in my career. Comparing myself to my contempories and the progress made by my peers, I feel like I’m becoming a journeyman rather than a stellar performer.
So maybe staying late at work is a sub-conscious effort to haul myself up to make me more than I am. In the real world unfortunately, perseverence and application to the task in hand doesn’t seem to translate into an accelerated career progression. Maybe I should demand more of someone other than myself for a change.
On the other hand, what’s the point? What am I looking for? I only see success in one area as failure in another. Where was the module for success when I was at Uni? Where did it say frightened child = frightened adult? Too many questions, too many and now with autumn the nights draw in around my mood. Sometimes I feel as if I am the only person looking out on a dark night, the only lights are those in the sky, far out of reach leaving me completely alone.
Last modified: Thursday, April 9th, 2026 at 9:24am
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