Saturday 29 July 2017

#204 Redemption

I never knew there was an app for mapping lightning. I saw a post about one on my friend Katie's Facebook wall. "That's cool", I commented. "All maps are cool", came the reply. Katie was a geography teacher.

Katie's friend had made the post following a large storm that had supposedly hit the south of England the night before. I hadn't noticed the thunder, yet I still woke up feeling like I'd slept in a tent. Read: exhausted, unrefreshed and grumpy. Maybe I hadn't slept through it as well as I'd thought.

Finding the will to spend days looking for jobs was hard enough without Raiden conspiring against me. Thunder gods aside, I felt like I needed some motivuhsation that morning, so I went cushion shopping.

The ability to control one's surroundings can have a catalytic effect on a person's overall sense of empowerment. While purchasing a grey cushion from Asda didn't have an awful lot to do with finding work, it did get me out of bed and by an extraordinarily long route, over to my sofa, which was where my laptop was, which was where the jobs were.

In the supermarket, I'd also picked up some green tea and a newspaper. The human mind is an awful lot like a cup. If you want to get anything out of it, you must first fill it up as much as possible. Or was it empty it as much as possible? I kept the newspaper anyway. Sometimes an article inspired me.

I once wrote a blog post on how best to procrastinate, the idea being to avoid whatever the chore is but to meanwhile pick an activity that sets you up to return to it. In a way, that's what I'd done with the cushion. I'd been getting fed up of moving pillows back and forth from my bed to the sofa. Now I had something to lean against and it made all the difference. I spent the rest of the day job hunting and submitted five applications.

I imagined being even more productive the following day. I did wonder though, what might happen if Raiden showed up again and ruined another night's sleep. At that moment, an even more terrifying thought came to mind. I'd just written a blog post about buying a cushion.

1 comment

Running on empty said...

Good for you, Dan! You've got to be in it to win it!