Time & interest

It's June 2026, it's raining a perfectly dull grey sky exists which would seem the perfect metaphor for my current mental state. although the weather as reported using my wttr integration would seem not that bad 🌤️ 🌡️+11°C 🌬️↖26km/h perhaps it is just the fugue of depression, having suffered all week with a bad cold & lost the drive to "do" - everything from updating this blog and other jobs has stalled, the bikes remain in the garage in part because I no longer ride in the rain (unless caught out) and time (hours at work & travel) even gaming provides no impetus.

This XKCD comic captures the apathy

But taking some lines from my favourite book & film …

• "But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.
• "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." ¹

It will pass although the frequency of return maybe an issue and so one must fight, fight the darkness within, find the spark and let it shine much easier to write/think than do but you may ask what has this to do with age?

Well thoughts of time passing, taking a view of my internal architecture was never a concept I dealt with before, never considered growing older nor the subject of friends but watching the comraderie and genuine affection seen on Junk & Disorderly² sparks a little envy. Even riding, in my CBR/ZX days I'd think nothing of getting up leaving Derbyshire and heading to Dracula's landing place via the coast road for a coffee & returning over the moors a full day of riding, now I sometimes struggle to pick a route/destination even though one reason for riding is the cathartic emptiness of my brain - just me, my bike & the road and environment, its a reflective experience that no other form of transportation can give. A long straight road gives you chance to zone out, meditate on self, twisties focuses the mind, the environment impacts more forcefully smells, wind, the heat reflected off the road and yet even this is not enough at the moment.

So internal reflection on my surroundings and the utilisation of time is, I feel, an age related input driven by the loss of people, changes in body and perhaps an ever increasing frustration with the world around and the decline of it.