Day 44: FATIGUE

2010 is here, and it's hitting me like a ton of bricks. January? That was just a preamble. Looking at my work diary, it's not likely i'll have any free time until Christmas 2010, and not arriving home from work until 9:00 at night has already become a fairly regular occurance.

I'm not complaining about that though to be honest- as painful as it often is, I genuinely love my job. Today however my optimism has been shattered by the realisation that it is however going to utterly destroy my attempt to complete a year of #oneaday, sadly.

I'll keep it up for as long as I can, but unfortunately I just can't work out a way of reasonably accommodating it into my life. My work is utterly draining, and the minor amount of free time and energy I have remaining at the end of each day is going purely into writing this. I barely manage to balance my work and social life as it is, and writing every day is basically removing a huge chunk of the latter. I've barely even had a chance to play videogames since I started, which is an awful shame as it's basically my favourite thing to do.

I'll keep going for as long as I can, but realisations like this that make me genuinely very miserable. I'm naturally driven towards jobs where the work is remarkably hardcore, but at the same time I'm so very jealous of all the people who can be home by 6 every day, and get the luxury of being able to take functional brain home with them too.

The most frustrating thing of all, is that I really want to do this. It means a lot to me, and I love doing it. But I can't keep doing it through bleary eyes late at night, the full extent of my intelligence and creativity quota sapped by a day at the office. I'm an awful perfectionist, and it's not the fact that I have to write every day of the week that I find so upsetting, it's the fact that I know I'm rushing through most of what I write so I can squeeze in a life on the side.

Anyway, fuck this - i''m going to bed.

Day 38: THINGS I CANNOT DO #2

Add value to any conversation about Football, or accept the concept that it is in any way some kind of valuable or important pastime

Well known for my ability to inject impressive insights such as "DO A GOAL!" and "KICK ON THE BALL!"- It's true to say that the only thing that can ever get in the way of the enthusiasm I have for football is my complete and utter lack of enthusiasm for football.

If I wanted to see a bunch of men aggressively kicking something around a field, I'd go and live in Wales. Whilst I've never actually seen this happen in Wales, it's a stereotype that somehow makes a vast amount of sense in my head but thinking about it now, this is probably more related to the hugely unfair level of disdain I have for the country in general.

My favourite teams are the red ones, although failing that I will happily support the blue ones too. Luckily these days I don't often find myself trapped in a pub surrounded by men fixated by green static lamps, but whenever I do I make a point of repeatedly asking them to explain the rules whilst purposefully struggling with comprehension and attention. Whenever it seems like they're getting irritated by this, I ramp up the feigned enthusiasm to truly intolerable levels. Depending on how gullible the target is, I can sometimes entertain myself with this for the entire ninety minutes - usually I dip my toe in at the start by enquiring if the game is Arsenal against England.

Possibly because of the above, people don't tend to invite me to watch football down the pub all that often these days, which is brilliant. I can kind of understand the appeal - to an extent - but essentially it seems like a pretty brain-dead and worthless outlet for human passion. I mean, it's easy to argue that most things people get passionate about are often well known for being repetitive or unoriginal; but there's only so much variety to be had when it comes to the medium of twenty-two pricks running round a field.

BALL BALL BALL, FOOTY FOOTY FOOTY!

Day 37: THINGS I CANNOT DO #1

Listen to anything you say whilst there are bright lights in my peripheral vision.

Televisions/ iphone stuff/ videogames: I am a moth, and I cannot hear you. Ask me a question whilst i'm playing a videogame and you're unlikely to get a response before the 3 minute mark. In the past I've been known to literally take 10 minutes to respond, before quietly slipping back into my fixated coma of silence. By this stage, most people have forgotten their initial question, considerably adding to the awkward confusion. Basically if I have bright lights in my line of vision, you simply cannot hope to maintain my full attention, because the flashing fruit machine will always win.

Sorry, it's not my fault. Every time I visit Piccadilly Circus at night there's about a 60% chance i'll get hit by a bus whilst gawping skywards at the wall of rainbow above. I'm worried that if I ever visit Time Square my brain will give up the ghost before I can even turn around a full 360 - leaving me a burnt out husk of a man wandering the streets of NYC - begging for spare change so I can buy a torch and a selection of coloured acetate sheets. Keep me away from naked flames, please.