Mission Complete - the 365daychallenge

Fucking hell, we did it.

I wrote in May about what made me set out on this epic trek into foolishness. A lot of things happened to me in 2018, not all of them brilliant. A low ebb thus reached, and without the prospect of The Ghost of New Year Yet to Come to show me the potential for self-improvement and change, I set out on making my corner of Twitter somewhere to visit, park your arse and respond to a daily question.

Initially the challenge of the title was an in-joke with me, the famed dreamer, the fabled failer of projects, pipe-dreams and plans. Could I really see this through till Dec 31?

Well, I did. Or rather we did. If we've achieved nothing else (and my greatest hope for all of this was to emulate the brilliant comment made by Viz creator Simon Donald - "no one has ever put down a copy of Viz any cleverer than they were before picking it up")* - then we've made friends, built a little community of people with little in common other than looking out for a silly question on Twitter each day to respond to.

We started out highbrow with questions about getting pissed with the Mr Men and which country do you think is shaped like a celebrity (Belgium is shaped like Godzilla) and never really got any deeper or more profound than that.

Some stats for you erm stats fans - the challenge has been viewed overall over 7 million times so far this year. The most viewed question was by Kate Andrews (k8andrews) who innocently asked "Why is your best friend your best friend?" - seen by 167,230 people so far. The most replies (1,074) was to a challenge giving you the means of finding your Victorian villain name.

I've had countless (well, at least 8) messages telling me how much they look forward to the challenge each day, how they've found new "virtual" friends online and connected with people. People have asked me how I cope with that many notifications a day (clue - quiet, undignified spells of weeping and lots of tea) and am I going to continue in 2020?

Well, we've done it once. We can do it again. If you have a question that hasn't been asked before, DM it to me and we'll put it to the people.

Proper actual journo Dorian Lynskey recently described the challenge as like a "dream radio phone-in". That single comment made me smile more than anything else this Christmas. I do feel like a host of some tiny radio show in a remote community, regular callers, in-jokes and all of that. It's like my dream job really.

So many people to thank.

@BigPaulinWales for being the first challenge regular to meet me in the flesh and for his perfect set of questions to end the year.

@zellishrose, @Rover9495, @TheStevenThomas, @JuiceTerry, @deanoB24 and all the other regular question contributors.

Thanks to @k8andrews for the most popular question of the year. Thanks to @drunkenbutcher for becoming our first resident expert.

Thanks as ever to the "lads" @michaelglasper, @nalaknip and @riffraffhands.

Thanks to @cherryaimless and @sgtrendall for hosting in my absence. Thanks to @NickPettigrew for the love and support. Thanks to all of you who trusted me with DM responses along the lines of "I can't say this out loud but this happened" - I have alerted the authorities and await huge cash rewards.

Thanks also to @DuncanMcVey for his questions, enthusiasm and suggestions, @KathyBurke and @jamajestical for bigging it up whenever possible. Thanks to @MariaDonovanWri for being inspirational and @Sianz for being the person who innocently told me in 2011 that I should join Twitter.

Thanks to everyone who replied, retweeted, shared and enjoyed the challenges. I was the Shit Ratio King of 2019 and I loved it.

And last, but by no means least, my daughter Martha who recently asked if "I was doing that stupid thing again next year."

Yes, Martha, I am. I'm very sorry.

Accept no substitute, this is the premier question-a-day-with-a-shit-hashtag game on the internet.

A very happy New Year to you all. Look out for the imaginatively titled #366daychallenge hashtag in 2020.

Yours

Paul

* I can't find the exact quote. It's something like that by someone like that.

400 Steps - Update One - No Treasure But Hope

A few friends of mine have got in touch with me since my last blog post. They want to know what it is I’m doing to make these final 400 days of my forties happier, healthier ones.

I’m 23 days into abstaining from alcohol. This is the hardest time of the year to contemplate knocking booze on the head and the sobering blow of the General Election threatened to topple me early on but I’m glad I’ve done it. Do I feel happier? Ironically I feel sad that that part of my life is over for now. I was a heroic drinker at my peak but there were many troughs and no longer having to deal with the aftermath of those is better than any intoxication.

Things I’ve done in the first week.

I’ve tidied and Christmas decorated my flat. A tree, lights and cards everywhere. I cleaned my oven. I packed a box full of clothes to donate to the homeless. I’ve done my Christmas shopping.

I had to do this online as I had two panic attacks on the occasions I tried to go into town.  One of them was a proper full blown grip the walls bastard – the type I thought I’d left behind a while back.

Inadvertently I confessed the full extent of my anxiety problems to my mum. Something I didn’t think I could ever do. We spoke about the mental health issues my family have faced down the years. I felt like I knew and understood my parents better afterwards.

I spoke to my son for three hours. I don't see him very often. He lives hundreds of miles away and we do not see eye to eye on some things but we connected and we spoke about his own children and meeting up soon. I talked about the reasons I find it hard to see him sometimes and we seemed to be in a better place at the end of it.

I spoke to my three best friends, each of whom are seriously ill. You may draw your own conclusion as to whether or not I am the cause of these illnesses. Each of them, and many other people I’ve spoken to are struggling right now with facing the reality of what is to come. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that this is the closest this country has come to electing an openly fascist government. And by a landslide too. People who are dependent on the NHS and other public services are genuinely scared. Those of us who want a country that acts up to the values and standards it proclaims it already has are fearful of fresh depths being plumbed. How do I, how can any of us begin to try to claw our way back to happiness in times like these?

I guess that in the end all we have is each other. That’s our strength to draw on, our winter fuel. The nights already are shortening, eventually Spring will return us to the long days and the bird-filled skies. For now, there’s no treasure but hope. Hold on to that. Hold on to one another. As long as we have that strength, the ability to support each other, then we can be sure that, just like the leaves on the trees, the good times will one day return and love will win.

Merry Christmas.

Paul.

The 400 Steps

“I miss the comfort in being sad.” – KURT COBAIN.

So, I’ve got 400 days left of my forties.

This is the kind of shit my brain tortures me with when I can’t sleep. I work stuff out like that. I recall each of the 92 Football League clubs in alphabetical order. Then the US states in alphabetical order. Sometimes I set myself new challenges. A 26 word sentence where each word begins with a consecutive letter of the alphabet.

Alan Brazil can drink eleven Fosters, go home in Jackie Kennedy’s lost minicab, nosh off pancakes, quails, radish sandwiches then urinate violently whilst x-raying young zebras.

That sort of thing.

Because if I think about that, I’m not thinking about any of the other stuff. The no money stuff. The health stuff. The alone stuff.

I wake up tired every morning.

So, the other night, I worked out how many days I have left of my wretched forties. And it’s 400 today. I’ve decided to try and do something each day to improve my life in some small way. A small step towards making sure my fifties are happy, healthy and productive. 400 steps.

It’s not been a great start. I had about five hours sleep and have just eaten a sausage bap. Brown sauce mind so it was lush.

The first thing I’m going to do is start challenging my mind-set. I had counselling for depression a few years back and I arrogantly told the counsellor – “I’m too self-conscious for CBT.” Is that arrogance? I don’t know, I was trying to say that I felt I was far too self-aware to be capable of listening to brave new core beliefs.  Like the voice in my head the whole day long is so confident, so loud, I can’t just pretend he isn’t there.

Because that’s the problem. I don’t believe I’m good enough for any of the things I know I’m capable of. And usually that’s something I manage to live with because I internalise it for the greater part. I try not to lash out at people, I think I’ve shouted in anger maybe three times in the last ten years.  I haven’t thrown a punch in over twenty years. But I still make mistakes and sometimes I say things online that I’m not proud of. Especially since Thursday.

The election result was more than a kick to the bollocks, it was like someone dragging your soul out of your eyes and kicking that in the bollocks and then stuffing it back down your throat. It wasn’t like that just for me of course, there’s millions of us feeling like it. I spoke to friends over the weekend who felt suicidal about it, people with serious health issues who rely on public services for a dignified existence.

We have all got to look out for one another, this will be a long, dark winter. Community still exists but we’ve got to show ourselves some love as individuals too. So that’s what I’m going to try. Every day I’m going to do something small for myself, even if it’s just something as simple as going for a walk for an hour to clear my thoughts and get some exercise in the bargain. I hope each day I’ll get fitter physically and mentally. I want to feel alive again and sleep without memory games or worries.

Anyway, I’ll be doing updates here with the hashtag #400steps. If it inspires you to make any positive changes in your life then wow fuck that’s great. If it doesn’t hey well then that’s cool also. I figure sharing it makes sense to me as a record of where I was and where I’m heading.

I don’t know why I put that Nirvana quote there but I was humming it on the bus. Which explains why I had the seat to myself. Unless I was humming in another way...