million miles away

in review of the challenge this week, i kind of passed.

i spoke to some complete randoms. but... i feel i kind of cheated because it took going out on a friday night and intoxicating myself to ensure i passed.

any idiot can get a few drinks in and be 'mister talk to strangers', so it's not much of an achievement, and nothing that really felt like a test.

however, there are learning points.

1. if you talk to people, they will engage you in conversation, and if they're a decent kind they'll be happy for it.
2. the just before and just after work times are a really unfulfilling time to contemplate talking to people - they look so miserable. it's almost as though smiling costs them their hard earned money, and yet they must loosen up when it comes to their real free time. personally i find it hard to switch off my sense of fun and i think that has presented difficulties within a work context in the past. imagination and humour don't go too far when you're simply a commodified employee.
3. not being too judgemental is a good way to start - i had a great time with a guy who i might not label as my kind of friend but he had a great outlook. he claimed he knew a number of celebrities and frankly, if i was a celebrity i'd welcomly share a few pints with him, so why not? and that for me is all that really counts. the truth to me is less important than the dream.

conversation kills

When my friend Alex came to London, he pointed out to me how London is unusual in that people are so averse to talking to eachother in public. He's got a point too.

It's understandable why people are hesitant to talk. The tube is a good example. It's much easier to sit on a tube train and look around than it is to talk to someone else. I think for a lot of people, myself included, it's very much a case of going outside of your comfort zone to talk to someone else. It's fine when someone talks to you but to initiate is very different.

Another reason is that if you have no need to talk to anyone, then why do it? I think that's a big reason. Most people aren't the sort who feel they need to converse with others. The gain of the conversation doesn't override the risk that they'll be rejected or look awkward in one way.

However, I think there is something to gain. Right now, I'd love to meet some more interesting people. There's a lot of different qualities I like so the chance to find someone with one or two of the qualities I like shouldn't be too hard. There's potentially a hell of a lot of contacts you could pick up from just talking to people on the train, in queues etc.

So here are some of the qualities I'd like to find in people:

• Adventurous spirit
• A party spirit - the kind of person who doesn't regard a night out as a night out unless hometime falls after midnight
  
• A particularly interesting take on life
• An open personality
• People with a good/ interesting sense of humour
• Great music taste or films or something
  
• A knowledge of good nightspots
• Potential business contacts

So I have an incentive to start a conversation and if anyone gets nasty and says why are you talking to me, I can say that my friend said London was the most antisocial city and I wanted to prove him wrong. I can vary that depending on how nasty they are about it.

My challenge
My challenge should be to try and get into one proper conversation this week. I.e. I should at least make some inroads into seeing if the person I talk to qualifies for one of the points of interest above.

price i pay

The sleep and sugar levels are under some kind of control. Neither perfect but hovering at acceptability.

My next problem to work towards sorting out, is to rid myself of paying interest to banks. The last time I checked my bank balance it was roughly £1,000 overdrawn and a £3,500 credit card balance on top. Both overdraft and credit card have high interest rates; over 15%. I've been disappointed with how sucked in to an increasing cycle of debt I've become.

This isn't going to be something I can sort out overnight but, I'm going to have a go at reversing the trend. I've set myself quite a tough target; to erase all the debt by 6 months time.

I've decided to allow myself a bit of room for cheating. I have a large paypal payment about to go into my bank, I know I've just been paid this month and I think I may still have a 0% overdraft up to £500.

That said, it's still going to take some dedication to get free from the debt. I'm going to give it a go.

live to fall asleep?

With the blood sugar levels pegged down to something more controllable I turn my attention to my other demon, my battle with controlling my sleep.

This week:

Sunday-Monday: went to sleep for 2-3 hours in the car on the way back to London (3am to 6am), then another 2 hours when I got back to London before work. Got to work at around 9.30am

Monday-Tuesday: finished work at about 5pm, went to sleep at 7pm. Set alarm for about 7am but slept all the way through til 8.30am. I was expecting this, to be catching up on the lost sleep last night. Got to work around 9.30am

Tuesday-Wednesday: finished work a bit late, 7.15pm. Went to sleep before 9pm. Set alarm for about 6 or 7am but woke after 8.30 again. Into work just after 9.30am.

Wednesday-Thursday: Wednesday was odd. Work had no cold water meaning you had to leave work to get something to drink. Not exactly practical. The result was a nasty headache which carried through til the evening and also into the next morning. Went to bed really early for the third night running, around 8pm. Took a long time to actually get to sleep, at around 10pm. Woke the next morning before 8am but didn't get up til about 8.45 again. Got to work around 9.45am.

Thursday-Friday: Wasn't greatly pleased on thursday. Went to sleep at a normal time for the first time this week, just after 12am. Took advice and put my alarm at the opposite side of my room. Woke sometime after 7am but set snooze and went back to bed then woke again about 15 mins later and got up properly. Got to work at 9am.

Friday to Saturday: Got out of work at about 5.20pm. Went to sleep at about 1.30am. Set alarm for 10am but woke at about 12.15pm.


The problem
I'm used to waking and having almost zero control of whether I go to sleep. It's like needing to get a dice roll of 2 or more and finding that 5 of the sides are 1s. The more times you go back to sleep the more chance you have of finally getting the side with a 2 or more but by the time you do, you've run out of time.

I got asked, "why don't you put your alarm out of reach?". I responded that when I was younger it never had the effect of working for more than a few days before my base instincts began to work the situation over and do things like turn the alarm off - kind of against my waking will.

Addicted to sleep
I was kind of annoyed that when I was given this piece of advice I didn't have a decent come back. I knew I should have a come back because I know it's failed in the past, but I didn't have a good reason for why.

When I thought a bit more about it about after work on thursday, I saw it like having an addiction. Similar to a drug addict may need 3 lines before he can feel he's fixed, I feel the need to snooze on 3 or 4 times before I can feel fixed enough to face the day.

So putting the alarm clock out of reach is one thing, disabling the addiction to lay my head down is another. When I took the advice of placing my alarm out of reach on Thursday night, almost out of necessity, it worked but I am sceptical of how long this can last for.

Things I've learned
I've learnt some things this week. A good night's sleep, 7 hours at the least, really helps to get at least some clarity of thought when you wake. It's like having an extra non-1 on the dice when you try to wake.

Incentivising waking up may work, but it hasn't so far.

Associating going back to sleep with pain, awkwardness, shame, feeling pathetic and helpless, and wanting to die, seems to help rather more.

Walking back to bed gives you more actions to complete and therefore more chance to think about how fucking awful you'll feel when you wake up if you put your head back down on that grave stone of a pillow.

In conclusion
I've got a plan or at least something to work with to help get some control of this situation and I'm hoping that, like with the blood sugars, opening my weaknesses to the public domain will help my mind feel obligated to get a fuck load better.

So with that I'll see what happens between now and next week.

blood sugar part III

Here are the results since the last time I updated this

	0	2	4	6	8	10	12	14	16	18	20	22
09		7.7	2.8							5.9		5.2
10							4.9
11	7.8						3.8					8.9
12									5.9
13									3.3
14							5.9				4.5
15					3.8						6.1
16					8.1	5.1					3.5	3.6
17	9.7						4.9

I couldn't have predicted how much better the results would be.

It goes to show what a difference a bit of focus can make.

Knowing that I didn't want to post set of shabby results, I started to do the things I should have been doing for ages:
putting insulin injections in either just before or just after eating - previously I'd sometimes put them in an hour or so after eating, which causes trouble later
thinking about how much carbohydrate is in things - I've had success with this before but it's always been short lived
doing regular blood tests - this used to be a strong point when I was younger but I became more erratic more recently, sometimes going days without a test during times I was perhaps in most need of a test

All I've got to do now is keep doing this and watch I don't slip. Not always the easiest thing to do but I'll see how I get on at the end of the month.

blood sugar part II - January's results

...and here are January's results so far. Thankfully, these are slightly better than December's.

	0	2	4	6	8	10	12	14	16	18	20	22
01	5.5									7.2
02
03
04							2.9
05		15		10		9.3			8.6
06					5.3						3
07				13		13					13
08					16						6.2
09		7.7

blood sugar

One of the things I really struggle with is keeping my blood sugar levels from going all over the place. I have way too many things about myself I want to fix. My sleep's all over the place as well and I think the sleep and sugar levels are related to an extent. Control one and it should be easier to control the other, however, they seem to be either working against eachother or working together against me (yes, this second statement is ludicrous).

I thought about why I didn't seem to have any control of the blood sugar levels and came to the conclusion that it was because I didn't have anyone to essentially appraise the results. There was only myself and frankly I've been awful at self-appraising my results.

Admittedly, I go to a diabetes clinic every 6 months or so but it's too long a time I find to help me sort myself out. I feel really bad about letting myself slip, about a week either side of the appointment but the rest of the time I'm floundering without giving my sugar levels very much thought at all.

I went to a clinic earlier yesterday and for the first time in well over a decade I showed my doctor an honest set of results. Previously I'd either made the results up because I was too disorganised to write them down each time (and that old blood glucose monitoring meters I had before didn't say when the test had been done - luckily my present one does) or I'd changed the values of the worst results so that I looked like I was doing better.

I don't know why it took well over a decade to realise that lying to myself was a bad idea.

Possible reasons are being too proud to admit I was doing badly and perhaps a certain amount of arrogance in thinking I would be able to rectify problems at the drop of a hat.

So one reason for starting this whole blog thing was an attempt to take some accountability for my well being. By posting the numbers I get, my friends (and anyone else who might care in future) can let me know how I'm doing, offer encouragement and if necessary, help me to deal with problems.

So without further ado here are my (admittedly terrible) figures for December 2008

	0	2	4	6	8	10	12	14	16	18	20	22
01	3.2						3.3
02										12.3
03							6.1			3.1
04
05	8.6					2.4
06		7.2								16.4
07			20.3				4.2			16.9		4.6
08									5.1
09	8.6
10
11		6.3
12					13.3				21.4
13
14												6.4
15
16												14.2
17
18								5
19					18.2	13.8
20									7.1		8.6
21										8.9
22							8.3
23
24										19.3	14.3	13.1
25					10.4		3.8				12.8
26			18.1							3.3
27			9.6						5.4
28												5.1
29				11.7
30	11.5							6.5
31