My Own Personal Ball+Chain

So I'm back doing some shifts at Rios. If there's one thing that I really, really didn't want to be doing with my life, it's doing some shifts at Rios. I've put in my time there, I spent nine years and six months there previously, from July 2006 to December 2015 and quite frankly, all my love for the place and whittled away over those years.

But right now I'm a bit strapped for cash and I'm unable to get a proper job, what with the impending trip to Scotland meaning that I'm leaving on the 19th. So I'm back doing some shifts at Rios. Part of it feels like I've never been away, everything just came flooding back as muscle memory. Some of the little details have changed, sure. But mostly...

I dunno. I don't really like being back, but what I don't like even more is that I don't seem to mind being back. That niggles at the back of my head.

We'll see, won't we. As far as I know I'm just doing stuff this month, but there's a chance that going forwards into next year I might do more.

Other stuff.

My exercise routine is going well, I've kicked it up a notch from going swimming four times a week and thinking about doing some more into going swimming four times a week and going power walking twice a week. Apparently the best time to do that is early in the morning, when it's bloody freezing outside and there's not as much traffic around.

Apparently.

Get it in my Veins (pt2)

So why am I so addicted to coke and its various spin-offs, iterations and imitations? I don't really know. When I've been off it for a while, I don't really miss it. Sometimes I play that I do, but to be honest, I'm perfectly fine to carry on without it, it's just that I know I'll keep drinking it if I don't try to regulate myself in some way. Hence my efforts to count millilitres and all that malarkey.

I'm well aware that I need to change what it is I do with my life, mainly in the diet area (the exercise area is actually going quite well, I'm trying to build it up slowly). This is going to be difficult, since I'm nearly 34 and I have a lifetime of bad habits to try and break myself of. If only I could find some way to take my coke addiction and re-apply to something more constructive, like fruit.

Me and my guys, we play New World of Darkness quite a lot, which has a system in which your character chooses a Virtue and a Vice, these are used to define what it is he does when up against the wall, his best and worst aspects, as it were. Often in the past, Kerry and I and others used to discuss what would be on our 'real life' character sheets, should such a thing exist. Which then leads folk to vastly overstate their own capabilities. But the Virtue and Vice thing was always something that we never fully discussed with each other, since it could be viewed as too personal. The Vices are the seven deadly sins.

Mine is Gluttony.

There's no doubt in my mind about that. I eat to excess, I often don't really realise that I'm doing it and I need to figure out a way to change that. Coke is simply an extension of that. I look at how much I want and then figure not to stop there. It's my body, after all, part of me says. Can do what I want.

Which is true.

But it's not going to help me keep my health as I get older. I always used to say that I was super-healthy because I never seemed to get ill. The odd cold. That was about it. I figured I had an awesome immune system. Well, that will fade with age and I need to know that I've made some effort to shore up the defences of my body against the ravages of time.

But it's just so tasty...