Pain

Today I went to work with a neck pain, let me explain why...

At 19:30 there was a loud noise and I turned my head very quickly. The noise came from outside, some traffic incident I believe. The rapid movement of my head caused my neck that was nearly healed to be re-injured.

Here's the problem, I said I would come for overtime and It was close to the start of my shift. I had to come because it would damage my reputation as a reliable worker. I rely on my good reputation to get overtime regularly. It would cost me a lot in the future if I didn't come. I'm at a stage in my life where I had some very large bills so I have a policy of always accepting overtime when it comes even though I work full time.

Here I am at work with pain in my neck. I took some pain killers and I am focused on the work. No one knows I am in so much pain. If they could see the true me, they would see a man in tears. A man that is fighting for completion with crippling pain.

Here is the end of January with fire and resilience. Will power and hope.

Slide out

One of the best feelings in this world is to lay down on your bed after you have been working all day and night,  and you feel very tired. When I have been working perhaps for 15 hours or more I feel exhausted and I lay down on my bed. My feet feel like they are passing through an energy field and I feel the blood flowing back freely to my torso. It is a feeling of being slightly high. The feeling spreads from my feet to my shoulders and I take a deep breath. As I breathe I feel like more and more strain in my body is melting away. Sometimes I will put the tv on and watch the news as I lay down and set the timer to turn it off after 30 minutes.

Soon, one by one, the different parts of my mind switch off, like a family leaving their house to go out for leisure. Self-awareness off, sense of time off, concerns off. Soon all that is left is the sound of my breathing and that is the only thing I am aware of. At that point, I am no different to all the other beings on this planet both man and beast.  The sound of my breathing is all that is left in my consciousness, it is like the surf zone of a beach with waves gently rolling back and forth. The rhythm of the tides moving in then out, a flow of energy and mater to the deepest part of my body to the surface of my mouth.

Then I turn off, but I don't know I am turning off because my mind has already shut down. 

Car college

When I drive my car, I play a CD that teaches you Spanish so my car has become a learning center or classroom. Most of the Spanish I have learned is from my car. When I get into a traffic jam I don't mind because I am learning Spanish so the time isn't wasted. In fact I learn more when I am in traffic because I'm not distracted by road hazards.

My car is not just a Vehicle, a machine that takes me to places, it is a place of learning. I try to turn all my possessions into assets when I can. My Car is an asset because public transport is more expensive than my fuel and I am learning Spanish which is hard to value.

Induction Hob

Today is the first time I used an induction Hob. An induction hob is a cooking hob that uses rapidly changing magnetic fields to heat steel or magnetic surfaces. It does not work on aluminum pots unless they have induction panels at the bottom. The Hob I got was portable and uses up to 2,000 watts.

The goal of buying an induction hob was to save money because I buy microwave ready meals from the shop and they usually cost close to £4 in price but with the hob I can cut up vegetables and make my own stir fries. Vegetables are still very cheap, a bag of carrots costs less than £1. I slice just a few of the carrots into thin sheets and broccoli and onions. The meals I prepare now cost less than £1. This means I have brought the cost of food down by two thirds and I sense that I am eating more healthy.
Vegtables don't taste good but you can put chilli source on them or spices and then they taste very good and they go well with rice or pasta.

I am grateful for vegtables and I love to eat them.

Buying Money

Very often I try to buy things that save money in the long run.
I bought LED light bulbs that emit over 800 lumens, they use 10 watts of power. Compact fluorescent bulbs that emit 800 lumens use 22 watts.  I saved about 10 watts per bulb. In the UK, one kilowatt-hour costs about 10p so each bulb uses 25p less per month because I use two and a half kilowatt-hours per bulb. Heating your home with gas is still cheaper than electric so I bought a Butane heater. I got an induction hob so I  could prepare my own food instead of heating up microwave ready meals.

I buy rice that weighs 12 kilograms because it costs less per kilo than a smaller packet.
I am so sleepy now. I wish the person reading this blog right now lots of good deals and easier living.

Neck pain

I woke up today with neck pain, the cold weather does that to me. I took pain killers at work and they helped a lot. In the past I would have submitted to the situation and stayed at home, but not now because I found that ibuprofen seems to work for me but only if I take it with food.

Yellow pages

When I was a young boy living in the 80s and early 90s, there was no internet as we know it. The internet was still an experimental network between universities and military installations. There was certainly no internet in people's homes and no one knew what the internet was.

The closest thing we had to the internet was yellow pages. The Yellow Pages directory was a large printed  bendy book that was posted to every home once a year. It contained the telephone number and address of every business in the whole area. If I wanted to find the number of the local pizza hut, I would open the yellow pages and then call the number listed using a landline phone. The whole book was arranged in alphabetical order by category.

The yellow pages book had a nice but funny smell and was yellow in colour. It was free I think, I think they made their money from paid adverts. The pages inside had a slight yellow tint. The logo of the yellow pages was two fingers but it was small and most of the book was just a featureless yellow book with the words yellow pages written on it. Every English person of my age group knew what was straight away. I was surprised it stayed around so long after the internet was wide spread. The yellow pages played a role in getting my first job when I was a young man.