PlasticusForkus

I stood by the worktop in the kitchen this morning, looking out into the garden. It was blustery, just about to reach a full-on storm anticipated by the headlines. Periodically the grey sky thrashed the earth with heavy rain showers. The birds were out though. I had seen a fieldfare for the first time earlier that day, grazing in the orchard along with the finches and bickering Blackbirds.

I watched a cock pheasant stride up past the window, fine with his mottled brown body and iridescent blue head. He was unconcerned by the the human watching him a couple of metres away. It was normal, as he went about his morning, and I prepared my breakfast.

My life consists of rushing about the planet, taking on tasks larger than I should be able to manage, seeing things that I will live with me for the rest of my life. I crash back into my parents more sedate country lives before launch off again on some mad quest. 

But at that moment, watching the pheasant, I had a sense of where I wanted to end up.

The pheasant paused for a moment, and his backside convulsed and squirted out a blob of white shit onto the gravel, then continued on his way.

10 years ago (and about a month) I set up an account on this site. Once upon a time this was noteworthy.

I've been on here longer than I've done anything else in my life.

Weird.

Years ago, I could waste whole weekends playing computer games, logged on to dA... killing time. Sometimes it was a bit tiresome, sometimes I enjoyed it. Either way I coped with it well enough. Idleness was fine.

Now, my life consists of periods of extreme intensity which last weeks, sometimes months. I will bounce from one thing to the next, and there is very little time between activities. These activities are mostly work related, and when not, usually something to do with travelling somewhere. (Three months of deployment rolls into office time into travelling to two different countries before back to work). It's relentless, tiring, but very engaging. It keeps my thoughts occupied. Then I'll stumble into a period of inactivity. I go from fifth gear and 7,000 revs to nothing.

It's terrifying.

I start counting the hours until I can sleep. Facebook is a demon. I reflexively check, without realising. Refreshing the same page until I catch myself and close the page, only to reopen it two minutes later. It's not based in logic. What might be a relatively busy day for most people is characterised by hours of intractable boredom. I'm used to hours disappearing in a flash. Now minutes drag by.

My mind, used to running at full speed thrashes itself to pieces over relatively simple problems. My mood plummets, and minor or major stresses come crashing in on me. The prospect of finding something to do for half a day or a day is almost too much to cope with.

Days or weeks ago, I would have simply stepped from one thing to the next, on a roll. But I've stumbled, my home becomes a prison and outside is unreachable and beyond my reach.

I'm used to crises. I'm used to high-stress. I'm so used to being 'out of my comfort zone' that home and normality--the things that are most peoples' comfort zones--is now unbearable.

Of the 116 days and nights that have passed of this year, tonight will be the nineteenth I spent in my own bed, and only the 27th I have spent in the UK.