Fun Suckers!

I put a pound on this week, so I’m not overly happy with myself. I think in a weird way I’m sort of maintaining my weight, so I’ve decided that I’m going to try cutting my points a little bit this week, just by 2 a day and see if I can boost my weight loss a little. Still the good news is, I know that when I do reach goal, I’m capable of maintaining, so every cloud and all that!

  One of the things I’ve always been good at (well despite what I’m referring to as my “purple and green years”) is looking for the positive in a situation and making the most of things. This morning, I dropped my toast on the floor and it landed butter side up and I thought "Yes, today is going to be great" and then I got in the car and this song was on the radio.

Then I found an earring I lost a week ago. These things however small made me happy!

I read an article the other day, it was in a newspaper by a proper journalist and the premise of the article was that he hated people who counted “sleeps till Santa’, because as an adult you shouldn’t do that you should be above that…blah…misery…blah…no joy…blah get over yourself! The irony of this was that it had been retweeted by someone who is a bona fida “Fun Sucker” This person mocked and scoffed at everything from people singing “Happy Birthday” to those that clapped along to the “Strictly Come Dancing” theme tune.

  Don’t get me wrong, we all have things we find annoying. For me I’m not a fan of Joey Essex and I don’t particularly like it when people put “LOL” on the end of everything, when clearly it’s not a laugh out loud situation. I used to work with a bloke who’d send e-mails, which would go something like…

“You forgot to send me a competition question......LOL”

And I’d think did that REALLY make you laugh out loud, because if it did, I’m funnier than I realised, I should take up stand up comedy. Move over Peter Kay, get out my sight Micky Flanagan, I have the ability to reduce people to fits of laughter by forgetting to e-mail them!

  My point is, these things slightly annoy me, but I don’t waste time letting the hatred of them consume me, cutting from my life those that think the fact Joey Essex can’t tell the time is amusing and write LOL after they put that fact on Facebook. I think get on with it, it makes you happy!

  There are lots of things in life designed to make us miserable and being an adult is tough, in fact if we realised how tough, we’d probably all develop “Peter Pan” syndrome and not bother growing up. I spent a lot of years letting my grief and depression take a hold of me. I let my fear of my stalker coming back blight everything. I was so unconfident that I wouldn’t even walk into a restaurant first to ask for a table, I’d make Lucy do it. 

   Depression is a horrible disease and it’s not as easy as one day saying, “right that’s it, I’ll jolly well pull myself together”. My depression wasn’t down to a chemical imbalance, it was the result of a lot of horrible situations all happening within a really short space of time.

 I can’t really remember the moment at which I started to feel better, but once I realised I was worth bothering about, that’s the moment I felt able to start to lose weight and put myself and my health first. For ages I thought I didn't matter, no one else cared about me, so why should I? Now I care about me and I try and do one thing for me everyday, even if it's just 10 minutes to read a bit of a book.

  I also try and find joy and fun in everything, even if I don’t want to. Lucy and I started to make a list the other day of our highlights of 2013. On it there was some of the big stuff you’d expect – going to see Robbie Williams, holidays etc., but then there was a lot of little stuff too. A day out with Laura and the kids that resulted in us getting lost, walking 10 miles and having a cheese and onion cob. Our “Pie-athon” where we watched all the “American Pie” films back to back and evenings sat in the garden talking nonsense with Dad and drinking red wine.

  There are enough things in this world designed to make you feel bad, so if you’re going to get stressed because someone is counting sleeps till Santa or singing along to a theme tune, then get over yourself, these are not big problems, they're things you don't like!

  Oh and it’s 26 sleeps till Santa and I will count those sleeps every year until there is no breath left in my body!

This isn't factually accurate, but you get the gist!