Kept it on the flat today, down the Taff trail, looping around by Hailey Park. Another 5 miles in the bank, which is my daily aim. I had banked a few extra so when I had a derailment recently I managed to maintain the average, and now can maintain it.
On that derailment – I am signed off work for a prolonged period, for the first time in my professional life. It’s telling that I need to state that ‘for the first time’ to people, as if it validates this period more. In dealing with work I have found myself stressing that I haven’t taken time off before, I haven’t had these kind of issues previously in 27 years, etc. They smile politely, but the implication is that this history is irrelevant. Maybe that’s a good thing, each case is weighed on its merits at that time. Patterns are immaterial. History can be used to justify all sorts of misbehaviour – “Steve may be a sexist bastard, but he did a really great deal in 96, so we let him off”, that sort of thing. And it’s not like you get credit to cash in – 25 years of not taking sick leave wins you a year off. Or less dramatically, it doesn’t give old timers a privilege because they have history to draw on compared with new recruits. It is only about the value of this instant, now.
But as a human, still, we are creatures of narrative. Continually reconstructing our own one to make sense of the world and our role in it, to act as a salve or beating rod for our psyches. To have only the current situation be assessed feels unmooring, depersonalising. It goes against the way we frame our lives, as if we shift from a chronological narrative to a random disjointed one, like thinking you’re in a Dickens novel but finding out it’s Vonnegut and can be read in any order. Or maybe it’s just being more dog. They only know the now really – in this moment they’re sleeping, eating, walking, playing. And that’s all fine, as long as there’s treats involved eh Teilo?
