Why do I do this to myself?

I think I know the answer already.

For the past few weeks I've been quite tired. I spend the first hour or two of the day wishing I was back in bed and the last couple of hours yawning and knowing I should get to sleep but avoiding shutting-down in favour of tv or games.

More specifically, for the past ten days a tv show has been keeping daughter and I up until 10pm, which is the time I'd usually be asleep by. Once she goes to bed, I stay up for an hour or more having 'me time'.

There's my answer right there. My routine has almost always included some time alone or chilling out before going to sleep. Having a tv, Playstation etc in my bedroom, which is also my living room, makes it too easy to lose an hour or so once I get into it.

The problem with all this is that I get up at 5.50am and I need around eight hours sleep to be properly rested, so every time I stay up a bit late I increase my tiredness. Another problem is I find it very difficult to lie-in, especially on a weekend when I tend to get woken up before 8am.

The symptoms I recognise from being over-tired are obvious to me:

• poor mood - specifically an increase in frustration and anger. I lost my temper at work yesterday morning - the office had been left in a complete state by the person who used it before me and I lost the plot, slamming doors and throwing rubbish bags. I felt much better afterward and pleased that I'd kept the outburst proportionate, but I'm not sure it'd have happened if I'd not been too tired.
  
• lack of motivation - obviously I'd rather be in bed or prostrate on the sofa than cooking or doing the fourth load of washing today or anything at all thanks. It makes me resent having to do the day to day tasks normal people do and it's holding me back.
  
• exercise - my walking has suffered, not simply due to tiredness but the weather's been terrible too. However, being tired doesn't make me enthusiastic about getting outdoors in the cold and wind and rain to tire myself out even more, even though I know the benefits walking has for me.
  
• concentration and performance - this one's obvious too but my general performance and brain function is really suffering because I'm so tired.
  

The only way to remedy this is to get more sleep. I must once again become more regimented in my sleep patterns. I need to make sure it's lights-out and to sleep at 10pm latest every night and try my hardest to nap and catch up on lost sleep.

Before the summer, I was so proud of the positive work I'd done on myself. This included getting my sleep patterns into a positive routine and feeling brilliant every day because I was rested and not tired. Now I feel the opposite and I can feel it dragging part of me down. So, it's time to get back on track with my sleep and return to my happy, well-rested being.

Taking care of business

and having a business to take care of is such an attractive possibility. I'm sat at my desk in my dead-end job waiting for the phones to ring and watching the rain out of the window, dreaming of getting mucky up a ladder somewhere out there.

I can't wait to get out of this bloody job. March cannot come too soon. I've got to spend the next few months planning what I'm going to do and trying to build up interest in my new business as a window cleaner.

I'm really looking forward to doing something for myself, for working towards producing my own income and having a business to call my own. Running my business will give me the chance to run my charity project with more flexibility. I really enjoy the physical aspect of cleaning windows and I know for a fact there's work out there to be done.

It's comforting to know I feel ready to take such a big step and strike out on my own. I really wish I'd done it before when I was still in the swing of things, but I didn't really have the motivation then. Having daughter full time has given me a kick in the arse that I should be doing more to make her teenage years enjoyable. It'd be nice to take her on holidays, give her regular pocket money and maybe start saving towards her university fees. It'd be nice to treat myself occasionally too.

I'm looking forward to the driving, to working outdoors, to having a very active job instead of sitting on my arse all day like I'm doing now. I'm excited about seeing people's houses and meeting pets and kids and all the aspects of the job I liked when I used to do it for someone else. The main difference will be that it'll be mine. All mine. Noone taking a fat slice of the cake and stringing me along. Noone being pushy and bitchy and annoying me all day. Having the resources to look after my vehicle and keep my gear in order. Increasing my self-esteem by being solely responsible for my own income. Having the opportunity to make some proper money for the first time in a long time and it'll be mine. All mine.

I'm looking forward to working in the sunshine, in the rain. To calling it a day if it gets too windy, or sitting in the car waiting for a torrential downpour to stop. To having to work harder to keep from getting cold in the winter. To having a car again - big woo to that! To having bills I need to pay and being able to pay them. To having responsibility for keeping my household in order and paying my way without making the mistakes I've made in the past.

What a star I'll be! What do you do? I'm a window cleaner. Do you work for yourself? Yes, it's my own business. How smart is that?!

I'll be able to take holiday. I know I won't get paid for it, but I'll be earning enough to justify the occasional day off or weekend at the beach. I won't get sick pay but I've only had one and a half sick days in the year since I finished my counselling. I'll be able to pick and choose my hours, to define how tough and busy my day will be myself according to how I feel. I'll be independent and flexible and busy and responsible and reliable and full of energy and enthusiasm for my job because it's MINE.

Stumbling blocks

After almost twelve years dreaming of waking my daughter up for school every morning and cooking dinner with her and helping her with her homework in the evenings, I finally have the opportunity to take her on full time. Having spent the past few years worried whether her mother was at all capable of being a stable and dependable role model for our child, she's proven that she can't and I'm here to take that responsibility.

So why am I frozen to the spot like a scared deer in the sights of a clumsy hunter?

I'm supposed to have contacted social services and got things moving in terms of financial support and an application for housing but I've procrastinated for more than a week. It's only slowly dawning on me what I'm feeling and why.

I'm scared. Apprehensive. Uncertain and insecure of my own ability to carry this all through.

So, what's stopping me? Primarily, I'm very scared that I'll get my hopes up, take the decision to go ahead with the massive undertaking it's going to be, and her mother will come along and fuck it all up. I can definitely see this happening. She's already told daughter she would never let me have full residency of her, which I think is a cruel and disturbing thing to tell a child. From her past actions, I can see her mother doing everything in her power to screw things up for me just to get her daughter back on her side. She can be incredibly manipulative and aggressive and it really wouldn't surprise me if I had a huge fight on my hands sometime over the next few months.

I think that's my biggest fear. I know daughter still hopes and dreams that her mum will sort her life out and give her what she wants, what she needs, but if I'm honest with myself I can never see that happening, at least not without massive amounts of counselling for her mother and plenty of time for her to correct the mistakes she's made over the past ten years.

Personally, I've spent the past two years trying to get things right. From more than a decade of crippling depression and everything I've managed to screw up along the way, including friendships, jobs, relationships, bank accounts and financial obligations, I've tried my hardest to claw my way back to being level-headed, financially responsible and perhaps, dare I say it, a little grown-up?

Despite all this, and despite motivation from the outside that I'm doing the right thing and I'm capable of following through, I still have horrible doubts and even the thought of putting letters in the post or clicking 'send' on an email gives me the willies.

I suppose it's a little like a bungee or parachute jump. I know I'd be bloody terrified standing on the threshold of jumping, but the thrill and benefit I'd get from it would make taking the plunge totally worth it. I need to take that philosophy and apply it to my current situation...

But I can already feel myself tensing up...

My attitude to cleaning

I'd intended to write a post yesterday about the state of my house and my general attitude towards cleaning up, especially now that daughter is living with me full time. Due to an administrative cock-up, I hadn't credited my phone enough to qualify for free internet so I used my remaining credit up at £3 per megabyte which is a fucking disgraceful price and the only thing I hate about O2 - not least that I didn't have any warning that I was using up my credit.

I'd left a note asking my landlady to leave the vacuum out for me to use, spurring me into action when I got home yesterday. I said hello to daughter, put the shopping away and decided to tidy the house.

With daughter sorting and putting clothes away in the bedroom - her bedroom now, effectively - I raced around the living room finding appropriate homes for everything and collecting piles of things to go to different rooms. I ran around the whole house with the vacuum and was thoroughly satisfied with the final result. It's lovely to have such a clean and tidy house after a few months of being a bit apathetic about the whole cleaning thing.

The reasons for this became obvious yesterday while I was itching like a crack addict wanting to use my phone for the internet. When I live on my own, I'm reasonably tidy and my dwelling is usually quite presentable. Conversely when I'm living with someone else, if they're not a tidy person I resent having to clean up after them. This is totally natural behaviour of course, although I realise I should cut my daughter some slack and tidy her stuff up occasionally. It just grates on me, you know? She's more than capable of being tidy, but I know that at her age, and even up until two or three years ago, I had no qualms about my living area being a shit pit.

I think that fundamentally I'm quite a tidy person, but I've lived with a number of people who haven't shared the same enthusiasm for household order. Once their standards slipped, I saw no fair point in tidying their crap up along with my own. I'd feel like a bit of a bastard just cleaning up my stuff and leaving theirs - it did come to that a number of times, especially with washing dishes - so eventually I'd just give up altogether and make no effort to keep the place clean.

When I started living on my own at the start of last year, I made a particular effort to stay tidy - at least in the living room. I'd have a regular clean before daughter came over every fortnight which meant I kept on top of it. Now that she's living with me and making her own mess, I'd let my standards slip somewhat, but I'd like to be more proactive about it and get over the fact that daughter leaves the occasional hair clip or item of makeup in the living room.

The house looks great. I even bought a feather duster, FFS!