Time passes

It's often given as a measure of 'how far I've come' whenever something goes wrong and I manage to get through it. Back at the start of the year, one of the real turning points for me was after so much else had gone wrong, we got snowed in with no power for a few days, and it even surprised myself just how much I rose to the challenge. I always say whenever things are hard to get through that time just goes by regardless – whether you're happy and looking forward to it or dreading every last second, the time will just tick by and the world will keep turning around you, so long as you just keep breathing in and out all things will eventually pass.

It was the release of Civilization V on Friday, one of the games that I mentioned in my pre-order post a while back; it was the one that I had the free map for via Game. The disc came on Thursday, but since this is the digital age of bonus exclusive, digital and encrypted content, the game wouldn't even let me install it until midnight on launch day. Midnight GMT, that is. Why they felt the need to display that when we're not actually in GMT for British Summer Time, I don't know, but either way, it was only an extra hour to wait.

An hour later and we had stage 2 of the problem, with the game refusing to run. Eventually after several reinstalls and driver updates, I gave up at 3am, and got up just 5 hours later when my mind refused to switch off of the problem solving mode it had drifted into in my semi-sleep. Fortunately though I had managed to stumble across the solution, so at long last I've got the background noise back that I've been bemoaning the lack of over the past few weeks. Really, its been a lifesaver.

The problems rapidly shifted to the foreground though, since an outing was needed to get a parcel posted, only already a week late. In a nice bit of synchronicity, I was only actually able to get it posted at last because I could use the padded envelope the game came in, so one thing rolled nicely into another on that count.

Things were... bad, though. Hopefully for the last time, since this week I should be starting some new pills to help eliminate that, but still. The outing itself went perfectly and I got my achievement, will hopefully make a friend's day tomorrow with post and I've made another one of the baby steps towards normality that everyone seems to think is so valuable. What's stuck with me though, instead of the 'good' parts, is the way that I felt before it, the sense of impending doom that took so much to conquer that was attached to something so utterly mundane as driving for 2 minutes to post a letter.

I've laid all the foundations so that hopefully, just by getting by and breathing in and out, the wheels have been set in motion to drag me along forward to the place I want to eventually go. It's all I can do to just keep at it, knowing that the time will be there regardless of whether I am. Sometimes, when it comes to posting parcels or solving computer errors, things work out. And sometimes, for reasons that we can't influence as time marches on regardless, they don't.