This is a story about burden...

Heavy is the head that wears the crown. While it might not seem like I have a lot of responsibilities, I feel as if I do. Nobody dies, loses their life savings, job or otherwise suffers catastrophe if I fail to complete my duties and fulfil my obligations, but I feel honour-bound to keep my promises and satify my commitments.

If I say I'm going to do something - perhaps just to myself - then I take that commitment very seriously. I've decided that I'm going to work for a whole year without letting mental illness get in the way, so I'm persevering through periods when I've been feeling very unwell. I decided that I was going to write every day, so now I feel fully committed to doing that.

I want to prove to myself and others that I've overcome the difficulties I've been through during the past few years, and the way I'm proving that is to be reliable, steady, dependable, consistent and stable.

I want to show those who've trusted and believed in me that their faith was not misplaced. Anybody who's taken a risk on me needs to be repaid; the gamble needs to pay off.

Perhaps I was overly reliant on my reputation and past achievements for too long. Perhaps I had rested on my laurels. I feel like it's very important to knuckle down, work hard and to prove my worth. I need to put in an almighty amount of effort to prove beyond reasonable doubt that I'm not a has-been, washed-up, spent and broken man, who's got nothing left to give or contribute.

I feel physically and mentally unwell. The journey up to this point has exhausted me and I'm very weary. I'm struggling to believe I'm able to continue. I don't see the life I'm leading as sustainable.

A great deal of pressure was lifted when I reached my million-word blogging target, but I always wanted to cement the achievement with a 'cool-off' period where I'd write with more quality and less quantity. I don't yet feel as though I can allow myself a day off.

Most of my life runs on auto-pilot. My job is so easy that it takes very little thought or effort. The main challenge is simply the waiting game; the boredom.

If I do nothing, I win.

It's an incomprehensible situation that I feel so much pressure and I'm struggling so much, when I'm so free from responsibility and I'm accumulating money so rapidly, with so little effort. I don't understand why I'm not laid back and cruising along comfortably, quite happy and content that everything is ticking over just fine. I don't understand why I feel burdened.

It's not a comfortable situation for me, doing nothing. I feel like I got to this point because I forced things to happen - I fixed things, I found solutions and I got myself out of horrendous situations. I'm not at all comfortable with being passive - having had my back to the wall for so long, I'm not built for periods of tranquility where the best thing to do is to coast downhill.

I'm unsure of even exactly where I am. I feel like I just dismantled a television set and all the thousands of components are laid out neatly in front of me, but I have no idea why I took it to bits or how to put it back together again. I felt like my life had purpose and meaning when I was dismantling that TV, but now I'm lost and confused.

My rhythm and routine has been somewhat disturbed.

Tags: #writing