Limping into the New Year

So, we limp into 2023.  At least, that's how I feel: as if I'm limping into a new year, batteries half charged and tyres flat.  Despite having shaken that pre-Christmas cold, I haven't felt entirely right over the entire festive period and spent yesterday feeling decidedly unwell.  It doesn't help that, as usual, I've lost track of what day of the week it is, leaving me feeling disorientated on top of everything else.  Today was Monday, though.  I've established that.  But it was still a bank holiday, even though the TV channels seemed reluctant to acknowledge this fact in their schedules.  The BBC, in particular, seems in an unseemly hurry to get back to its regular schedule and banish all thoughts of Christmas.  It's as if they are trying to 'acclimatise' people to the idea that many of them will be going back to work tomorrow, so don't want to over-excite them with nonsense like entertainment and seasonal novelty.  I mean, it isn't as if Christmas doesn't actually end until the 5th of January, (or the 6th, depending upon how you count the twelve days of Christmas), is it?  I bang on about this every year, I know, but I'm determined to keep up my campaign to reinstate the full twelve days of Christmas and have them observed.  Getting back to the present, I'm hoping that engaging in a bit more activity now that the festive season is drawing to a close might improve the way I feel - I've spent far too much time on the sofa eating sausage rolls and mince pies while watching TV.

Part of that activity might involve finally returning to the work place.  It's something I'd like to try and do this year, not because I need the money, but simply to bring some routine into my life and some engagement with new activities.  Obviously, I only intend going back to work part-time, whatever I end up doing.  While I've long been looking at trying to finally use my teaching qualifications properly, with all the hoops an agency I've been dealing with want me to jump through just to get registered to maybe do some part-time cover supervision, I'm not really sure that I want to pursue this.  It is just too stressful without ever having set foot in a classroom - and stress is something I try to avoid these days, work-related stress having nearly killed me once already.  I'm not sure what the alternatives are, although I have looked at a few opportunities in the charity sector - I might just end up volunteering for a local charity as a start.  Elsewhere, I really do have finally to finish clearing out my spare room and moving a whole load of stuff to the dump so that I can get on with extending the model railway.  I have various rolling stock repair and restoration projects going on, not to mention several locomotives at various stages of construction, but it would be nice to get back to the layout itself.  Then there's here, this blog: I really must get back to some pop culture stuff.  I have a notorious Mondo movie to rewatch, then hopefully I can write something about that to kick start a new year in schlock here.  For now, though, it's back to the sofa and those sausage rolls and the sofa as I see out the last days of this Christmas season.