A time of change

I went out with the intention of going swimming. For some reason Leicester doesn't have a pool in the city centre. My chiropractor (should that be ex-chiropractor, since I only saw him like 3 or 4 times?) told me the council knocked it down to build a car park, and never replaced it.

Anyway. On the edge of where I do my district reporting I knew there was a health and fitness club, and since I bought an all day bus ticket this morning when I was out chasing news I just headed back there this afternoon.

Of course, you can't use the pool if you aren't a member. But I didn't want to be denied my chance to go swimming, so I joined. I filled out the forms, and had a vaguely annoying but kind of cute chick show me about the place while I made non-commital comments about it all.

It's a nice place and still very new. It's more modern than any other place I've been to. The weight room was full of scary guys, but that's fine since I don't ever intend to go in there. The room with the cardiovascular equipment had about five different music channels showing on the tvs, and was less scary, so I might go in there. The pool was big enough for my liking, and had an added bonus of sauna, steam room and two hot tubs.

Okay, so all I really wanted was a decent sized pool so I could swim lengths every day for an hour or so. But the other stuff is good, too. Is it £50 a month good? I don't see why not. Was it worth the £90 I paid for joining fee, deposit, and the remainder of this month's use? It is if I damn well tell myself that it is.

This is part of my quest for emotional (or mental) stability. I take anti-depressants every day, see a counsellor every week, have cut caffeine out of my diet as an experiment, am cutting down my drinking to weekends only (though that is also an attempt to tone up) and now will be swimming daily. I'm thinking I would like to join a climbing group, I like the idea of rock climbing -- even if it would only be indoors on a wall.

I can't say I feel a whole lot better yet. Thoughts of self harm or worse are almost second nature to me, even when I am not particularly unhappy. I find myself considering how I could step out in front of a bus and nobody would suspect it was anything other than an accident. But I don't do it. And I don't harm myself. And I try to keep getting up each morning.

One of these days I will work out what I want to do with my life. I actually applied for the air force to send me an information pack. Non-violent me. Anti-war me. I haven't changed my opinions on any of that either, I just figured it could there could be some interesting career options. And there's always the option I could get to be an astronaut...