Hippo Tours

So perhaps the title is just a little misleading? Many, very sincere apologies if you are expecting to read a piece about hippo spotting in Africa, but please, bear with, because it will hopefully all become clear as we go along (don't hold me to that though).

If you read my last post Moving Forward, you'll know that although it's taken me a while, I have finally given in and accepted that I really need help to fix myself this time. Depression is an absolute beast to live with, you never know when it might creep up on you and it really did creep up this time, and it's made a bloody huge mess.

Looking back over the past few months, I can actually see it creeping in. Little things were constantly playing on my mind. Things which should not have been an issue, but were. The absence of friends bothered me for a long time. It shouldn't have. I should just have let go then. Inconsistency in my working life. It's part of my job, normally it wouldn't worry me because I plan for it, but that was creeping in and becoming an issue too. It really is a sneaky little sod the way it creeps up so quietly before going in for the final kill.

Today I went to see my GP. I've seen her recently and we had a chat about how I was feeling. Today, we had a more serious chat and I admitted to her that I am really struggling. It's difficult trying to put yourself back together with just a handful of people to support you. Sometimes, you need a bit more help from the right people.

Working from home as I do is isolating anyway, but right now, it feels like a prison. I struggle to go out on my own. It just causes anxiety. That drives me absolutely nuts because I know what it is and I know I should be able to control it, but I can't, which probably makes it worse, to be fair. There is no probably about it, it does make it worse. Then when I am at home, I think too much about anything and everything. I can't switch my mind off and I have few distractions.

So, I have made a huge effort to keep myself distracted and to use my time for self development. I figure that by doing as many online courses as I possibly can, I'm keeping my mind occupied and learning new skills which I can use in my blogging, and hopefully in future work. It has helped, it keeps me more or less distracted and I am learning a lot. I should really give myself a pat on the back for that. I won't of course, but I should.

Thankfully, for those times when my mind is going ten to the dozen,  Martyn is always on the other end of the phone and it was during one of my 'help me' conversations that Hippo Tours came about.

Martyn, or SAF (Super Annoying Friend) as I like to call him, is one of the few people who actually 'gets' me. He knows when to let me sob my heart out, rant, or just be plain stupid. He will never, ever offer an ounce of sympathy, you don't get a 'there, there, it will all be alright.' What you get is the brutal, honest truth and being called a d*#k, and quite frankly, that works for me. He also knows exactly when to use humour with me.

Hence, this week when I suggested I took up something safe such as shark diving, lion taming or hippo wrangling (I can't recall why I suggested it), I forgot all about being sad for a few minutes and instead was laughing and formulating a crazy plan with Mr. K to launch Hippo Tours, the only tour in the world where you get to ride your very own hippo.

It's a crazy stupid fantasy, borne out of two frankly, rather disturbed minds, but whilst I am waiting for my counselling to be scheduled and to just start feeling vaguely normal again, I'm going to cling to Hippo Tours because it genuinely makes me smile to think of hippos waddling around with saddles on their backs. Who knows, it might turn in to a thing all of it's own. Now I wonder if there's an online course on hippo psychology that I can complete.