I cried myself to sleep last night

OK, before I start this isn't an attempt to get everyone to feel sorry for me. It's not that kind of post - it's just a 'this is where my mind's at' sorta thing.

So I feel like I'm in a bit of a rut. There's not necessarily one particular reason for this - more the cumulative effect of several things. My cold is probably one; where I'd normally be out at running club tonight feeling fit and energetic, I'm instead at holed up in Sparky Towers where the only thing running is my nose. What else? I think I'm a bit bored at work (which, admittedly, happens now and again), and I think I'm in one of those sort of moods where I'm inclined to make excuses not to do things whereas I'd normally shout "yay!" and scamper off ready for excitement and adventure. Well, not adventure in the grandest sense of the word, but you get the gist of it. I think there's a general sense of melancholy hanging around me at the moment.

I'm fed up arguing with people over the slightest little things. I'm fed up with people trying to put things on me, or get me involved in things I don't particularly want to do. Have I perfected the art of feigned interest? Perhaps. Maybe a little too well, in fact. I'm fed up with people who act selfishly towards others, and by the fact that I've come to the conclusion that a significant proportion of people I deal with on any given day are self-serving morons whose only way of making themselves look good is to step on everyone around them. And somehow they always seem to get away with it. Should I do that? Is that genuinely the way to be noticed - to make an impression? Be a total arse? I can't believe that – I won't.

Don't start prescribing the prozac just yet - this happens to me every now and then. It's not depression, nowhere near that, in fact (to call it that would be offensive to the people who really do suffer from it), and for all I know I might be perfectly cool tomorrow. At the moment, though, I just want to curl up on the sofa and ignore the outside world. 

I had dinner with Sparky Nan tonight and afterwards I sat down to watch the telly with her for a while. On one of the chairs was a photo album, and I started glancing through it. It was full of pictures from many years ago - a lot of me as a baby and a toddler. And there were a lot of pictures of us together as a family - all of us, I mean; me, Big Bro, Sparky Ma and Pa, and my grandparents on both sides. There were eight of us then, and there's just five of us now, and that kind of gets to me a bit. I don't think I've seen a photo of Dad's parents in a long while now, but seeing them there in those tiny faded images - they were exactly as I remember them in my mind's eye. My grandad in particular - he did not change one bit from when those photos were taken in the late 70s to when I saw him that last time at the very end of '99. 

I often wonder what they'd make of me now - my Nan and Grandad on Dad's side. I hope they'd like the sort of person I've become. I hope they'd approve of the choices I've made in my life. I'm pretty sure my Nan would let me know if she didn't, because she was a cheeky bugger. 

Around this time last year we were getting ready to celebrate one of the happiest occasions I can remember in a long time - Sparky Nan and Grandad's 60th Wedding Anniversary. Sixty years! I can barely deal in 60 minutes let alone 60 years. But everything's changed this year, and I'm not afraid to say that it's been tough. I think of my Grandad every day.

Maybe it's the looming winter that's affecting my mood? I usually like the colder months, but this year just seems a bit darker than previous ones, and I can't say I shall be terribly sorry to see it pass.

*sigh*

(Oh, and by the way, I didn't actually cry myself to sleep last night - it's a line from a Sufjan Stevens song I was listening to while driving home and it just sort of seemed appropriate)