Small Battles

Earlier in the week, I was invited out to bingo and for Nando's with what I thought, was a couple of friends.

I agreed, even though I expected some form of panic to proceed the evening. I was not wrong.
Sure enough, as I was getting ready, I in fact did have a panic attack.

I managed to get myself together, and made my way the bingo hall. I got there early, so decided to go in and get a table, and messaged my friends to say where I was sitting.

The response I got was to try and get another table as there was nine of them.

Nine.

I was expecting three people, not nine. I immediately started to try and think of a way I could just go home. 

I stayed put. But I was not at ease at all. I felt myself get light-headed, and was aware of my increasing heart rate through the evening.

Somehow, I managed myself through the whole night, without having a further panic attack.

This is progress. I was proud of this minor achievement. So I shared my feelings on Facebook.

I typed this and debated whether or not I should post it. It was gone one in the morning, so I decided to post it, and I could always delete it.

I then went to sleep. When I woke up, I didn't goo straight on Facebook, but when I did, I was surprised at what I saw.

Messages of support. Public and private ones. I had been worried about sharing a bit too much, no one had known how bad this problem had gotten.

I feel lighter for it, and I feel like there might be light at the end of the tunnel.

London MoonWalk 2016

26.2 Miles.

I can hardly believe it.

I entered the MoonWalk months ago with four other people. One by one they dropped out. I only knew one of the others anyway, and she had to drop because she needed her gallbladder removed.

Initially, when Rachel dropped out, I also wanted to drop out. How was I going to be able to get through this with people I didn't know and had never even met? It seemed like a nightmare to me, and I considered not doing it many times.

In the end there was only two of us left to walk it, and we met at Kings Cross just a few hours before we were due to start.

We got along fine, which was a relief.

I found the begining of the event to be a bit of a mess; fifteen thousand people setting off in six start times. That meant that early on, it was very slow moving due to congestion.

And the early toilet stops were very long; the first one was about fifteen minutes, and our second stop tipped just over half an hour. I wish I had timed how long we were stationary, it must have been close to an hour and a half.

But that complaint aside, I muddled through. I had some low moments, and my lower back, my thighs and my feet ached.

But at 10.57AM, about 10 hours and 57 minutes after we started, we crossed the finish line. I was a little disapointed with the time, I had wanted to get under ten hours, and without the terrible waiting around at bottle-necks, we would have been.

But still, I am proud of myself. I am a marathon finisher.

I ache a bit now, and I am still incredibly tired, but I do feel that maybe I can do it again next year.

Online Dating/Dating

My love live is in a pretty sad state.

I am fairly sure that I am not in a fit state to even attempt a relationship right now, but the lack of options is still disappointing. A single date at this point would be pretty nice.

After some random chat with a few girls fizzled out, and after an abnormal number of the usual 'straight' girls and a few couples, I decided to deactivate my two online dating profiles, tinder and POF.

I came to the realisation that I am probably more likely to meet someone in the 'real world', which is actually really unlikely. 

I'm more likely to find a unicorn.

After this hit me, I figured I should just give up for a while.

Weight Loss

Over the past few months, I have steadily been losing weight. Some of this was been contributed to by the depression I suffered over the summer. 
Although I want to lose weight, I haven't really put an awful lot of effort into actually doing anything about it.

I am not comfortable with publishing my weight, so I have blocked those bits out of the above graph, but this is my progress over the past few weeks. That is very nearly a stone.

The differences in my life between now and a couple of months ago is that I am now cycling, and I will be doing so more often now that I have a new bike through my employers cycle2work scheme, and that I have, without much thought, cut a lot of sugar out of my diet.

My sweet-tooth as disappeared over the last few years, but I have had a weakness for fizzy drinks. For the last month or so, I have barely touched them, only drinking them when out with friends, which has only been a handful of times.

I reckon if I put some decent effort in, I could do even better than I have been.

2016 'Predictions'

I did one of those Facebook things, where you follow a link and it 'predicts' your future for fun;

Party in January? That seems unlikely in the month after Christmas.

I actually wouldn't be opposed to time to myself in February, I'm okay with my own company, and its a short month anyway.

Seeing as I have recently gotten myself a permanent position at a company I am very happy to work for, a new job isn't on the cards for me, I'm not even interested in browsing.

I'd welcome a jackpot in April. I suppose 'jackpot' could be a little vague. Hopefully it will be a financial jackpot, which would explain why my May prediction says Caribbean.

Hopefully my June surprise is a nice one. 

Considering my position, I don't see a promotion of any kind happening in July. A pay-rise would be nice.

August and September seem to conflict with each other; new love followed by a timeout? Not actual love then.

An October adventure would be kind of cool, maybe a little trip to a foreign location could be on the cards?

Not sure I like the idea of change in November, I do have a year to think about it though.

And a new car in December? Definitely up for that.

Tinder Messages

I have over 60 matches, but not really talking to anyone. There is some chit chat here and there which more often than not, dies down after a couple of days. Some of it is pointless.

To start with, I have no idea how I matched with a guy. I was really confused when a guy said hello to me. He also doesn't have very good English, so I'm not sure that he understands me.

Then we have this:

Ugh. Couples looking for someone to join in.

And the friggen straight girls.

Cute Bird

Found a cute bird on tinder;

Speed-Dating Update

So a couple of hours after posting yesterday, I received a text message from the cafe where we had gone speed-dating;

Excellent idea. I responded that my friend and I had actually been discussing the idea ourselves, and that I definitely would be interested.

I told Rachel that she will have to come along when they do hold one; think she'll be the one getting drunk next time.

Speed Dating

The idea of speed-dating comes up every now and then. After being single for a while everyone starts thinking of ways to get 'back in the game' and someone will always mention speed-dating with a giggle and we'll all laugh it off.

Last week I was walking through the Old Town when I saw a board outside a cafe that advertised speed-dating the following Friday.

A friend and I discussed it, had a laugh, then just left it at that. At some point during the week, what started as a laugh, became a plan; we added a colleague, rang the cafe and booked ourselves in for the event.

None of us had been before, so had no clue what to expect from the evening.

I also couldn't decide how I was going to go about the evening; I was about to have a serious of short dates with guys. Do I tell them I'm gay?

I decided that I would just go with it, everyone is up for a chat, if it comes up, it comes up, I didn't want to accidentally lead anyone on, but I didn't want to distance myself either.

I'm a naturally shy person, so I needed to go into this with some liquid courage. Not having a lot on money to waste, I did a work-time, lunch-time dash to buy some cheap booze from town, which was a great idea.

A less great idea was drinking most of it, plus the frozen cocktail already in my freezer, in such a short space of time. By the time I arrived at the venue, I was actually reasonably drunk.

Luckily for me, I am not an obvious, slurry, messy drunk, so it wasn't overly noticeable. It did give me that little boost that makes me extra chatty, which helped me through the evening.

The evening started with us getting our name-labels and sheet of paper for us to write the guys names down and what we thought of them. While waiting for everyone to turn up, we drank in the garden and mingled with each other a little bit.

The it was time to go inside and get the evening started.

I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. A few of the guys were super nice, and people I'd actually like to go drinking with. Not that that was the point of the evening.

In the end I think I only told a couple of the guys that I was gay, and here as support to a friend, and also to try something new. None of them had a bad response to it, but one of them made a couple of comments that I didn't think were particularly nice to make to someone you have just met. He said something about me fancying all the girls there, and then another thing about people 'thinking/knowing' they're gay if they have never slept with a member of the opposite sex.

Eye-roll. Face-palm. Head-desk.

Obvious answers to those comments, but he was my last date of the evening and I brushed it off, eager to get to my friends, and he clearly wasn't interested in me anyway, and wanted to go find his mate.

So the final bell went, we filled in the rest of our sheets and got ourselves another drink and went back to the patio.

I actually wish I had taken a photo of my piece of paper; I had filled it all in nicely, but indicated that I didn't wish to date anyone (obviously) so at the bottom I wrote that I was gay, but had a lovely evening anyway, and drew a little smiley face.

By this point, everyone seemed to be getting on well and enjoying themselves, so plans were made to go to a bar a short walk away. This is where the evening started sliding downhill a little bit. The bar was very loud, so it was hard to have conversations with anyone, and as more alcohol was added, a couple of people might have started grating on each other.

One of the girls I went with had left a little earlier, so me and my other friend decided to go and get a curry as neither of us had eaten all day, something I needed, still being somewhat drunk.

The cafe that hosted the evening shut fairly early, which is why we went to another bar, I think for future events they should maybe stay open a little later, because I think everyone was happier and more comfortable having a drink on their patio instead of yelling over loud music.

It is something I would do again. We were talking with one of the girls who ran the event and their plans going forward, they are going to alternate months with different age ranges, which is a great idea. I should have suggested they run a LGBT themed speed-dating event, I'm not sure how popular and successful it would be around here, but I would go to one.

I think I might email them and see what they think.

One other thought I had, the vain, ego-boosting part of me wants to know if anyone put me down as a match, sadly, I'm not going to be able to find out.

WTF

Not only do I have a giggle at tinder bios, but some of the photos too, some of them are amusing.

Some of them are pretty random.

Who knew that moles had an internet dating need?
Some of them make you actually go WTF.

And some of them are actually, pretty frightening.