...hyaah *kick*

I'm going to admit it now - the only reason I took up taekwon do was because I wanted to be like the redheaded Korean guy in Tekken, and the only reason I stayed was because there was a really hot guy there [another story].

Nerdy, undeniably. Embarrassing, certainly. Cool, not so much.

So my friend and I would potter along to a primary school hall somewhere in Northamptonshire that had cold floors and ugly decorations and make colossal tits of ourselves [me especially] trying to kick a mat in the same place over and over again or memorising terminology for our exam and mispronouncing everything or dying of oxygen deprivation with eighty pushups still to go, all the time thinking to ourselves: this is bollocks. How will a forearm guarding block [or 'palmok daebi makgi'] ever protect us from all the nonces out there? Some of those guys carry knives and, quite frankly, all this was doing was making us more aware of how vulnerable and pathetic and defenceless we were, damnit.

It only really occurred to me after I stopped going [not through my choice - the guy only got hotter. Again, another story] that that kind of thing is progressive. You get better and more able the longer you learn and practice it. In retrospect, it's a given, but at the time I wanted to kick butt and skip the embarrassment that is yellow belt. It was about then that I realised how impatient I can be. Screw starting out small - I want to immediately be able to juggle with four balls, make a perfect pancake, write a bestseller, fit in at a new school. You'd think someone would have told me before then that I need to work on my patience but, alas, everyone was too polite.

So. In the two years since I stopped going, I have indeed worked on my patience and I think - feel free to disagree - that I'm pretty damn patient now. 

[Admittedly my newfound tolerance was put to the test with the unwelcome existence of an extremely bothersome ex, but after a solid year of despising him I think we've reached a bitter medium.]

Anyway, I was bouncing a tennis ball against the wall the way I do when my brain needs some brain time and my body can be helpful by doing some menial, repetitive, pointless action that doesn't take a lot of thought, and I got thinking about times in life when everyone has to be patient. From a sentimental perspective, there's waiting for him to pop the question, waiting for the big day, waiting for the baby to hurry the hell up and arrive. From that of a career girl, waiting for a promotion, a big break, the opportune moment to obtain maximum profit or whatever. From my perspective, waiting for a text to arrive, waiting for news from my brother in Asia, waiting for dad to bugger off to work so I can claim the laptop back - I wonder how old Kat would have liked all the proper waiting in store for me in years to come? I wonder how current Kat will do?

One area in which I'm still struggling with patience and persistence is the awkward few hours before I catch some zees. As I'm writing this, it's just past midnight and I'm knackered. I can feel the sleep beginning to consume me - but I'm sleepy, I don't want to wait several hours with nothing but my overactive thoughts to occupy me, I want to sleep now, and my insomniac habits aren't letting me. It's been this way for years - I've never been an easy sleeper. I was never one of those kids who, one bedtime story - dead to the world. For as long as I can remember, whenever I couldn't sleep, I'd turn on my bedside lamp to the lowest setting and read. More often than not, I'd wake the next morning after less than four hours sleep, light still on and the book down the side of the bed, never to be seen again. It's a habit that's failed to change much in the ten years or so since it began - maybe a deeper fatigue the next day, covered in a blanket of tiredness I've been wearing for so long, to have it gone is alien. I'm not as young as I used to be.

I don't help myself, I admit. If I exercised my brain more in the day then I wouldn't think so much at night. If I didn't have books near my bed then I'd be less inclined to leave my duvet to go to the bookcase. If I didn't attempt a running jump yesterday evening, my bedframe wouldn't have collapsed underneath me and I'd be sleeping on something more substantial than a mattress tonight. [Most depressing moment of my life. I didn't realise I was that fat until I landed on the bed and kept going.]

There have been times [in the past, I hasten to add] when excessive boredom mixed with drunk-like lethargy has led me to think of some biologically inadvisable habits as a good idea, a healthy release. Older, wiser, past behind me and all that - but I'd be lying if I said the masochistic mindset wasn't still there, even if it's subdued most of the time.

I have a friend called Callum and, this was some time ago and I don't remember the context exactly, he asked me once what was going on in my head. I told him I was tired, and explained the two different types, in my experience. Tired A - the feeling you get after a late night and an early morning when there's no coffee left. Tired B - sinking in what you don't realise is barely suppressed despair and frustration until it's gone, questioning the meaning of [your] life, catching your reflection in the bathroom mirror and not being able to look yourself in the eye, wondering why everyone's talking about  and watching you, bearing the brunt of your inability to meet your own unrealistic expectations, lying to your own diary because you don't want to admit even to yourself just how low you are.

For me, Tired A is a permanent state of being. I flit in and out of Tired B with worrying regularity and I want to stop and sleep and get the hell on with life.

Sorry for the massive change in tone, just noticed that.

Quote of the day: The only limits are those of vision. [James Broughton]