A couple of months ago I joined the gym.

I never believed I would ever join a gym, I dismissed them as an unadventurous, over-priced way of keeping fit and believed that there were far cheaper alternatives, like cycling out towards Bekesbourne and getting a puncture that entailed a much earlier than scheduled return home with very few sweat beads accumulated, or jogging enthusiastically down the Old Dover Road only to feel dispirited within seconds from the first humored honk of a passing van.

My ‘cheaper alternatives’ never really had any scope to keep me fit, and so when I recently signed up to a Triathlon I knew that I probably needed to finally accept this, else run the very real risk of letting down a valuable charity by an inability to do what I’d promised to do.

Much to my surprise, it turned out that not only did I actually know the way to the gym, I wasn’t allergic to it either.  Having made the risky decision not to update my will before entering, I had half expected to come out of the building with a huge rash or congruous fever, but instead all I came out with was a membership card and a desire for more exercise.

Perhaps the place does make me unwell afterall.

I now spend a good few hours a week at the gym.  It’s a great place to go to fence off the working day and let those endorphins bop about to the tunes on my MP3 player, and much to my surprise it’s a great little place to learn about life.

The instructor told me that each time I go to the gym I need to push myself a little harder.  He gave me a record sheet which I complete each session of what I’ve done – what pace, what incline, what level, what weight – and I’m in a constant competition with my last attendance.

And that competition hurts. Pull-downs are painful.  Abdominals ache.  Running almost ruins me.  I’m relieved when I come to the end of the hour, but so happy that I’ve done it.

Last week I racked up the weight of the pull-downs to 25.5 kg (which comparatively isn’t much) and almost felt tears in my eyes as I disciplined myself to do 8 sets instead of the previous day’s 6.  Although never doubting the long-term benefits, part of me wondered why myself and others around me put ourselves through this pain.  Life doesn’t demand that we do, it only tells us that things might be a bit better if we do it, it’s not an obligation, so why am I disciplining myself like a strict Victorian headmistress?

But then I thought about how I’d feel if I reduced my targets, and it led to a bit of a philosophical moment (which I’ve not had whilst profusely sweating before).  What if we just stuck to what we know we can do with ease?  What if we never challenged ourselves? How boring would that be?  We’d never know the extent of what can be.  If we don’t ever reach the wall, how can we look over it to see what else is there?

I suddenly became extremely thankful for some of the hardest and most stressful moments of both my professional and personal life.  Where would I be without them?  Curled up comfortably in a blanket of naivety, I suppose, with much less knowledge, much less resilience and much less appreciation for when things go right.

Life is exceptionally challenging, particularly when you have a tendency to worry neurotically about whether or not you put the lid back on the highlighter pen before leaving the office.  Gratitude for life does not make anyone exempt from having shit happen – sometimes repeatedly – or make stress vanish as fast the box of chocolates next to my bed.  Life is hard.  Work is hard.  Personal relationships can be hard.

The gym is hard.

However, each of these little seedlings of hardness will most often bloom into something greater.  Life provides enough beautiful moments to counter the bad; a christening for every funeral or a success for every failure.  Work provides opportunity, and the ability to afford good things.  Personal relationships are the essence of our heart and soul; and I’m hoping that the gym will eventually blossom into a stomach that no longer resembles one of those classic childrens’ stack toys with the colourful rings.

It’s all so obvious yet it’s something so often forgotten with the expression of each expletive or the shedding of each tear.  Some of the greatest decisions you’ll ever make are made on the back of an unpleasant experience, and some of your greatest strengths are those you develop through adversity.

“Clever gym”, I thought to myself,  “not only do you make me feel a tad better when I’m tucking into the third packet of crisps a day, you also remind me why there’s a value to pain”, and with the energy from that thought, I completed set number 8 and went straight to the rowing machine.

Song of the Day:  Erasure – Stay With Me (Acoustic Cover)

Not normally big on acoustic stuff but this is simply beautiful and is well worthy of a listen.

I had planned to do so many things today, but last night’s Tequila put a stop to them all, flushing my to-do list down the drain with a latin American grimace.  How can a drink that has a red plastic sombrero for a lid (marketing genius) prove to be such a menace?

‘Tequila… it makes me happy!!’ we sang with vigour last night before downing a shot (and nobody on Earth has been able to drink Tequila since Terrorvision’s 1998 hit without doing the same thing I’m sure).

This morning’s rendition of the song would probably sound like more of a depressing ballad featuring a more notable string arrangement and a sombre fade-out..“thaaaaat’s the curse of Tequilaaaa” .  The video would be in black and white and end with a clapped out brown Ford Cortina breaking down on the hard shoulder of the M25.

Urgh – just – urgh.

So, there was no trip to the gym today.  Nor was there a long afternoon drive with which to explore Kent in the sun.  Various incredibly boring yet essential tasks relating to online banking and other admin-y bits and bobs will have to be done tomorrow now, all because for most of today I didn’t have the strength to do much more beyond drink water and fall back to sleep whilst watching classic sitcoms in bed.  Cool – just – cool.  I am so proud of today’s achievements and will remember with certainty this milestone day for years to come.

But sarcasm aside, I know that in reality it’s important to have days like this once in a while.  Life demands so much from us, every single day, and we wouldn’t want it any different because if it was we’d no doubt be bored stiff, but still, it’s important to occasionally just relax…

The problem with daily sleep is that we can seldom acknowledge that we are actually resting.  We just close our eyes and either doze off quite quickly or stay awake worrying about in what order the world will end if don’t complete the 10,000 tasks we’ve set ourselves for tomorrow.  Once resident in the Land of Nod we awake in what feels like minutes to acknowledge the crushing reality that it’s time to get up; and usually – in my case anyway – we’ve overslept and end up rushing around at a military pace to get ready in time, rather than slowly coax our bodies out of bed.  I’d be reluctant to describe sleep as relaxing, because we just don’t know that we’re doing it!

What’s really relaxing is not having to wear a watch for the entire day and just lying around in your set of jim-jams with a break every now and then to go and make a self-gratifying big, fat unhealthy snack.  What’s relaxing is laying in the garden with no concept or care for time and staring at a serene cat lying amidst flowers in the sun:

True relaxation is not something we tend to have the time for whilst in the mix of the usual daily grind. Sometimes it’s good just to pause, completely, and give our brains and bodies a day off.  Sometimes it’s good to dispose of that to-do list, or at least put it to one side for day.

Maybe Tequila does make me happy after all…

And with that, it’s time to round-off my incredibly lazy day by eating a Trio in bed and channel-hopping only to hopefully land on some U.S reality show that features titillating footage of massive portions of food.

Song of the Day: C Duncan – For

Christopher Duncan is an emerging solo artist from Glasgow.  Spotify introduced me to this beaut… and beaut is truly the most accurate way of describing it.  Perfect song for a somewhat lazy, sunny day.

In recent weeks I have experienced some of the most wonderful days and what made them so was that they involved the winning formula of nature and good company.  Nothing flashy.  Nothing purchased.  No long-distance travel.  Just nature and friends.

Spring makes me fall in love with the countryside all over again.  When the sun is shining – or even if it’s not – there really are fewer places I’d rather be than in the great outdoors amidst the elements, blinded by the bright yellow hues of the rapeseed or feeling the soft breeze of the sea on my face.

It’s been five years since I moved to Kent and the landscape back in Hertfordshire just does not compare, sporadic bits of beauty sliced apart by the likes of the M25 or Watford (a wonderful place in many ways, and also home, but my gosh it’s ugly, and if you don’t believe me just Google Streetview the Rickmansworth Road!).  Five years is long enough to have visited most of the key areas of a county, as I have done, but there are still plenty of little villages and hamlets out there to experience, and I love discovering them.

I think we can learn an awful lot from nature and it’s no surprise that the likes of Thich Nhat Hanh use it as the basis for spiritual metaphors:

For me, nature distinguishes between what we need, and what we want.  These are two areas that are often blurred into one and consequently leave people feeling unaccomplished for no real reason.  We want many things and feel that we may struggle without those things… but we don’t actually need those things, and knowing the difference between the two is conducive to contentment.  Much like the natural landscape that surrounds us, the only thing we really need is life.  That’s it.  There are ways to deal and cope with the absence of everything else, once you look for them.  It may all sound obvious – because it is – and perhaps that’s why it’s so surprising that as humans we can all be horrendously guilty of getting overly concerned or frustrated by things that really don’t matter at all, because they’re not intrinsic to our ability to just be.

On those recent, enjoyable outings I referred to above, we didn’t need to pay a penny for the sun to shine on us, or for the sight of lambs bounding about in the fields.  We didn’t need to pay to look at the pretty yellow rapeseed, or to hear the sound of the birds in the trees.  We didn’t need to top-up a machine to ensure that the waves kept rippling in relentlessly whilst we were at the beach, or activate an app to tell us how to walk up a hill.

We didn’t need to do anything, because life – in this instance in it’s natural form – was all we needed.

I bloody love Spring, and Kent.

Song of the Day:  Public Service Broadcasting – Lit Up

Simply stunning; I love the concept behind music like this – combining historic samples with cutting edge musical technology.  Enjoy.  You will.  Especially the final minute and a half.

I’ve yet to meet anyone who wouldn’t admit to having a secret love of watching the long-running gameshow, Catchphrase.  In fact, I’m going to be a little bit unconventional with this post by throwing in a classic clip before I even start:

The bright colours, the amusing animations, multiple opportunities for humour upon the unveiling of each panel, and sound effects reminiscent of your ’80s toys… what’s not to enjoy?  Thus I conclude that most people, if not everyone, love a bit of Catchphrase every now and then.  If they don’t they wouldn’t enjoy visiting my house, where the Catchphrase card game lies in wait for unsuspecting guests.

The strength of the game lies in its simplicity.  Forget the over embellished, confusing formats of the more contemporary gameshows – which are often overtly complex for the sake of how much harder it is to be original now – Catchphrase’s objective is much more straightforward.  An hidden image is revealed one small panel at a time, and the sooner you can correctly identify the image as a whole, the more points you win.  You are simply not supposed to know straight away, otherwise the whole purpose of the game would be completely defeated.  With the revelation of each individual panel you will probably find yourself trashing some of your ideas as to the possible solution, and feeling even more convinced by others.

Not only do I think Catchphrase is a great thing to watch in accompaniment with a bowl of crisps and a fizzy drink on cold Winter weeknights, I actually think the concept of it demonstrates a key message…

How often in life do we reach ‘infallible’ conclusions when we can only see a small part of the picture?

An optical illusion has taken the Internet by storm in the past week.  A photo of a bald-headed man kissing a baby was taken from such an angle that upon the first glance of it, the viewer may have been running to the child protection authorities.  I won’t share it here but if you have yet to see it, head over to Google and type in ‘bald head kissing baby illusion’ and up it will pop.  It’s only when you view the image in full that you realise that what you instantly thought was the opening to somebody’s rectal passage is actually just a hairless chap’s ear as he leans down to kiss his baba.

In its reality it’s an image of warmth and love, but what kind of feelings would we have been left with had we not looked at it a little longer, or been able to access the full image to see this?  Rage? Disgust? Concern?

The point is that it’s very easy to make assumptions and formulate opinions based only upon the information which is immediately available to us.  Humans are naturally very reactive types driven by inner sensitivities and if we have a strong sense or feeling about something, it’s very hard not to allow it to develop into what we believe to be knowledge. Waiting to see the full picture requires the necessity to shelve those gut reactions that can envelope us in an instant, and whilst that’s not easy to do, in the long-run it’s critical to making better informed choices and decisions.

In the clip above, what were your initial thoughts about the solution?  You may well have found that these were of significant contrast to the actual answer.  Time and thought can make a huge difference to our beliefs, we just need to permit it to do so.

Song of the Day:  Animal Collective – Floridada

One of my favourite bands are BACK!  Never ones to shy from experimentation, the Maryland quartet return with more of their unique brand of music you won’t hear from many artists out there.  This is a classic.

As we rapidly reach the end of 2015, it makes sense to write about one of the year’s personal milestones, a topic I’ve yet to really write about here but which was quite a significant event of this year… I turned 30.

Uh-oh…

I’m pretty sure that in previous years, during all those countless discussions about the future and what it may hold for us, friends and I would reel off these stupidly excessive-sounding years which back then sounded so distant, and talk about what life may be like by then.  “We’re gonna be 18 in 2003, 21 in 2006, and 30 in 2015!” went the conversations that used to take place of a lunch-break as we sat in the classroom squeezing cartons of Capri Sun and bitching about Maths teachers.  We were just a bunch of naively ambitious thirteen year olds who believed we knew exactly what our futures would look like on the basis of what our parents had done, or how people lived in Albert Square.

Like most, I fell into that trap as well, although I was marginally more flexi-minded about the future than some of my friends.  Unlike them, I had no idea what I wanted to do for a career – and to be honest, I didn’t really care – all I wanted was to do like my siblings and go to University, and then get married and have a couple of children by the age of 25.  And own a Dyson hoover.

I’m quite sure that the thirteen year old me would probably have choked on her Capri-Sun straw had she been able to see the reality of what would be:  Thirty years old, still single (and beginning to think – after numerous soirees with Tinder – that I’m just too used to my own personal space and too afraid to give it up to be anything but) and still living with my parents, albeit purely for financial reasons.

It just doesn’t sound good, does it?  Thirteen year old me would’ve been most ashamed had they known this.  In fact I’m pretty sure I made several vows to enter lesbian matrimony with a few school-friends of the time should we mutually have arrived at this same conclusion in life.  It’s a pity I can’t remember which friends, or that we didn’t archive some official decree, written with a scented gel pen on a piece of recycled A4 (with margins).

It’s very easy to use the value of hindsight and sit back now labeling the above as naive close-mindedness borne from a lack of worldly wisdom and exposure to only the likes of Bliss magazine and Blue Peter, but as somebody who will forever preach the value of living a life that is true to yourself, and not baying into mainstream trajectories just for the sake of it, I’ll admit that even the more adult me had apprehensions about 2015, and turning 30.

Very early into my twenties I had decided that I wanted to use that decade to learn purely about myself and the world – and have my own story – rather than expend my energies into making a family of my own, and I like to think I did just that, but as 28… 29… rolled around I was finding myself feeling the doomed breath of 30 down the back of my neck once again.  I set some targets to achieve by October 2015 and suffice to say I didn’t achieve all of them because I’m still sat at home in my parents’ house with no idea how – as a single person who is determined not to rent a property- I’m going to afford any alternative.

But it’s okay.  I’ve reached the milestone I dreaded, and I’m not worried anymore.

Many people have told me that your 30’s are your best years.  It’s early days, of course, but from what I’ve seen so far, I think they might be right.

I loved my 20’s but only now can I see how much pressure I was putting on myself in those later years by setting 30 as a deadline for various things.  In small doses pressure can be powerful, and a useful catalyst for self-improvement, but if you’re not careful it can also be exceptionally detrimental to your well-being.

In February this year I saw the familiar face of one of my best friends all over the national press.  A coroner’s report had deduced that she had taken her own life on the basis that she was “about to reach 30 feeling as though she wasn’t where she should be in life”.  Those of us who knew her were enraged by this most simplistic of conclusions which was clearly written for mass impact rather than to reflect truth.  There was a great deal more to her circumstances than that, but at the same time, reading those articles and particularly the comments attached, written by anonymous internet users all over the world, was enough to demonstrate to me that this whole ‘fear of thirty’ is a real and genuine thing that many people experience, albeit quietly.

Reading those comments alerted me to the fact that those insecurities often attributed to our teenage years really do last until much later.  Many of the comments left had been written by people of a similar age, who expressed their empathy for my friend, and explained that they too felt as though they had “failed at life”. The comments all alluded to the idea that 30 is an age twinned with macro judgment, but having now been there and got the t-shirt, I can honestly say it’s not as bad as people may expect.

In truth I can think of a lot of things that have had a worse effect than turning 30: A much-loved Primarni pump dissolving in a puddle on the seventh straight day of rain in a row when I was a student, failing my 93rd driving test, the takeaway pizza I ate in Crewe… all of those prompted more disappointment and woe than the milestone birthday I had been dreading.

In fact, turning 30 has – so far –  proved to be nothing but a positive thing.  And why?

Purely because it was as though the needle on the ‘giveashit-o-meter’ reached zero without there being any kind of penalty.  It’s like with any kind of fear; the run-up and the trepidation that ensues can be the worst part.  When you’re finally faced with it, it’s a lot easier to confront, because then, you’re actively dealing with it.  You don’t have a choice, so can no longer float around fearfully in the circumspect.

The way to stop caring about being 30, is to actually turn 30 and be able to accept that this is the way things have turned out, and all that has happened has happened with reason.  Where there’s any dissatisfaction, rather than allow it to be the subject of disproportionate focus, it should be used to identify where any changes can be made, and if something can’t be changed, then it’s out of your control, so stop judging yourself for it.  Speaking of judgment – we all know how great other people can be at it too, and that’s bound to be another reason why many people fear turning 30 – but it’s important to remember the basic rules of Science here.  Unless two people have lived parallel lives and had exactly the same set of circumstances, it wouldn’t be a fair test to compare their current situations.  Anyone who fails to realise this, and continues to judge others, is probably not the kind of person whose approval you’d want, anyway.

Those who extolled the virtues of the 30’s in response to my expressions of fear were adamant that one of the best things about these years is the fact that you no longer have to worry about turning 30, silly though that may sound.  With that perceived deadline now just a part of history, the pressure dissipates and the freedom to do the things that we really want and are destined to do – whatever those may be – begins.  Decisions become bold because we take off the shackles of fear and allow them to be.

That’s the reality of thirty, and so far it’s been fun.

Song of the Day:  Weezer – Da Vinci

This band have been around for years and are still producing the tunes.  This one is particularly energising.