9-12-2021: Day 182
The clock was ticking close to midnight, as I sat in the coal black glooming, brewing over an argument from earlier in the evening. I was stewing over a miserable feeling of abject failure, tainted with the scorpion sting of anger. The anger felt like fire in the belly, and cortisol flooded the system like a nightshade strychnine. The words and deeds were being replayed on a loop, no room for tranquillity of the mind. Just painful monologues on a replay. The needle caught in the record groove.
Time like these, I feel alone, to shoulder my own self-belief, like Atlas holding up the world. Alone in the world, in a dingy corner of regret, remorse, and recrimination. The thought of two steps forward, three steps back, rattled like a fifty-pence coin round my brain.
And glowering into the dark bathroom mirror, a look of grim resignation carved on my face, I stole myself away for another restless dark night of the soul.
11-12-2021: Day 184
My chest was heaving, hood up, all out of puff, after running a few km along the beach houses of the seafront with my local running club. I was drawing breath at the bottom of Shoreham high street, where there looked to be a happening about to happen.
A Christmas night market, starting to busy and bustle, a union of wayfaring souls, gathering as the sun went down on the town and the shadows began to lengthen in the cold chill winter air.
The traders were offering a smorgasbord of seasonal bounty – from mulled wine to posh bangers to fairground donuts – the jury was out on the taste test. And the seagulls, lords of the air and scavengers of the earth, wanted in on the action. Co-ordinating a pincer attack on the food and drink stalls, the tyrannical sea birds began their anarchic campaign of ruthless disruption as the daylight waned. A timely reminder of nature being the law, or so it seemed.
13-12-2021: Day 186
The photo went viral within hours of being snapped. It was taken by a Nepali mountain climber, of a human centipede of hundreds of fellow climbers, all waiting to ascend to the summit of Everest. All were gambling with their lives, climactic conditions, and good fortune at the oxygen depleted rooftop of the world.
I was watching a pulse-raising documentary on the streaming media giant about the resolute mind, heart, and soul of this crazy Nepali endurance climber from an impoverished family in Kathmandu.
He was, by his own frank words, a man who comes alive in the dead zone – on a mission to ascend all fourteen of the world’s 8,000 metre peaks across three countries. Ex-Gurkha and special forces, he was single-handedly flying the flag for humanity, undertaking this ‘Project Possible’ with a smile on his face and hip flask by his side.
Classic lightweight. I fell asleep before the conclusion of his mountaineering mission – but was left with a striking metaphorical goal for the challenges lying ahead in 2022.