Working hard is hard work

It's a good few weeks since I have posted, largely down to being constantly on the move with work and also down to having very little to say of any real entertainment value. It is now six weeks since I introduced my healthy living changes and since then I have lost 1 stone 2lbs, drank only 8 units of alcohol (those were on two nights) and most importantly not smoked a cigarette. I fully intend to keep it that way, particularly now that the physical cravings have gone which occured about the three week mark. I still have the occasional hankering but that is linked to certain events or situations and passes soon enough. I have already started to develop a disdain for other smokers and the smell knocks me sick so I am well on the way to becoming a self-righteous, smug ex-smoker. Which is nice.

The beginning of February marked our annual sales kick-off in Cardiff which is ordinarily a fairly heavy weekend in terms of drinking. I somehow managed to abstain completely from alcohol barring a solitary pint on the Friday night whilst watching the England V Wales rugby game at the millennium stadium. I'm not the biggest rugby fan in the world. In fact if you were to produce a list of the worlds billion biggest rugby fans, you would find my name would not appear anywhere on it. However, my company kindly took all 500 or so of us to the game, which to be fair was an experience but not one I would repeat with my own money. I spent the entire game asking the two people next to me what was going on and despite being fully fledged egg chasers there were times when they were unable to explain it themselves.

I think any passion for a sport is a good thing and I won't knock rugby fans mainly on the basis that they are all bigger and harder than me. It's just never a game I have enjoyed on any level. We played a little at school but my memories of those few occasions are of being pissed wet through, cold beyond discomfort and completely bemused as to what exactly it was I was supposed to be doing. I've always struggled with the concept of a ball that is not round and all that rolling around on the floor with other men has always seemed a bit homo-erotic for my tastes, but each to their own and all that.....

Either side of that event I have been travelling all over the country with work and generally wearing a face like a bulldog licking piss from a very spikey thistle. I'm sure once I get used to my new healthy regime and work pressure subsides a little, I will learn to smile and laugh again but on the whole my sober experience has been a very sobering experience.

Tension and frustration levels remain high in our house as Mel's deadline for her MSc dissertation submission in May is looming on the horizon and there will be no holidays for us until that is out of the way. Work for me remains extremely challenging and fun is something that at the moment only happens to other people. I remind myself hourly, that all our current challenges are steps on the way to our chosen destination. I risk annoying myself with by using a motivational quote but I have always liked......

"The only thing that overcomes hard luck is hard work." - Harry Golden


....in which case, we are due some outrageous good fortune any time now.