As much as I like to pretend I am perfection personified, the truth is I am a deeply flawed individual.

My life is literally littered with bad decisions and unfortunate choices, the results of which continue to dog my days on a daily basis.

It’s fine to reflect upon ones mistakes, as long as one is not mistaken into thinking that something can be done to rectify them. The choices you make can’t usually be undone and the consequences will be with you until the day you die and may even continue to effect others after you’re gone.

I’ve got no particular decisions in mind, this has more to do with a general overview than anything specific.

I don’t want you to think every choice I’ve made in my life has been wrong, I’ve made some good choices too, but lately I’ve been thinking about some of those moments in my life, where I zigged when perhaps I should have zagged.

It’s easy to second guess your own decisions after the fact, when the fullness of time and experience yield the missing pieces of the puzzle that weren’t available at the time of taking the decision. It’s also an exercise in futility.

Much of life is futile and pointless, so its not really enough of a reason not to think about these things.

There’s a theory that states every time a decision is made, the universe is split and alternative realities follow both paths and that all of existence consists of a “multi-verse” of infinite existence. Everything that can happen, does happen, just not in your reality.

Somewhere in the multi-verse, there’s a version of me that successful, happy and fully fulfilled. No doubt taller, too.

How’d I get stuck in this reality? If there really is a multi-verse, then in at least one of them (and possibly many more), I’m king of the planet and in charge of you all. Don’t worry, if there are infinite possibilities, then you get to be king or queen of the world yourself, and I get to be your slave.

Not all of the realities in the multi-verse would be sunny, as I expect there are plenty that don’t turn out as well. Think about it, how many realities exist without me? Perhaps in some, I was still born and never even got to take my first breath.

I know that even when my decisions have been wrong, they’ve been right for me at the time. I have to believe that, because I can’t travel back in time and change them. At least not yet, anyway, but give me another six months and my time machine will be up and running and I’ll be charging loads of dosh for rides to the past and future. Think you can afford it?

My many personality flaws, at least as I see them, colour my every move. I’m certainly my own worst enemy and I’m more responsible for holding myself back than anyone else.

I used to genuinely believe that anything is possible, but as I get older, I’m less convinced. As you get older, the corridor of options narrows and while you may still create the illusion of choice, your choices become more and more limited with each passing day.

I can’t remember where I heard this one, but it made a lot of sense: “You spend the first half of your life acquiring things and the second half having them all taken away from you.”

I’m undeniably in the 2nd half of my life. It’s not too much of a stretch to see where things are going for me. Its all downhill from here.

Can you tell that my birthday is approaching? It’s about 2 months away. Hey ho.

If I had the chance to do it all again, would I do things differently? Of course I would, what honest person wouldn’t?

That doesn’t mean I would do everything differently, but there are a few wrongs I would certainly put right.

It doesn’t matter because no one gets a second chance, except in the multi-verse reality where reincarnation happens and it was just my luck not to end up in that one either.

Socrates said “the unexamined life is not worth living”. If that is really true, then I have the most worthy life known to man.

Either that or my narcissistic tendencies are starting to overwhelm being an obsessive-compulsive sociopath with manic-depressive tendencies.

You have a nice day, too.

This is turning into the diary of the infirm.

Sorry, I know this used to be the capital of online fun. Maybe I should bring back the virtual blackjack tables? At least the house would always win.

I’m still feeling crap. The medication I’m taking is providing me with a host of side effects, all of them seriously dull and no fun.

I saw my GP again last week, he changed the brand of the meds I’m taking, which has subtracted a lot of the nausea, but not all of it and I still have the other side effects. Like breathlessness, heart palpitations, dizziness, headaches, tiredness, confusion and forgetfulness…need I go on?

My GP ordered more tests, which he says is to rule out some other things, rather than confirm anything he suspects. I think that’s supposed to be comforting.

My back seems to be holding its own. I still have pain, but I can cope with it. I’m still seeing the chiropractor, twice a week down from three visits and its always better after an adjustment. It tends to slide back a bit in between though, which I think is down to the fact that my thyroid levels aren’t right yet. The inflammation is being held at bay, but it’s not disappearing completely because whatever originally caused it, is still causing it.

My thyroid levels won’t be right for a while, as my GP says the dose I am on now, that is giving me all these fun side effects, will most likely needed to be increased after my next blood test. Doubled, actually. I can’t wait.

I haven’t felt like posting much lately, which is annoying because there’s loads I’d like to write about, I just don’t have the attention span to focus very long.

For all the jokes and references I’ve made about being middle aged, I’ve never really felt it in my bones. These days, not only do I feel it, I think I look the part too. It’s all dreadfully tedious and I’m bored of it all already.

I liked it better when I thought I was healthy. Clearly, I wasn’t really healthy, but I thought I was and isn’t that what really matter?

My doctor says that once my medication is sorted out, I’ll feel better than ever. Right now, I find that really hard to believe. When you feel shitty every day, its hard to be even a little bit positive about anything.

The following is a hippy health update:

I haven’t mentioned how I’ve been feeling for a bit, because I’ve pretty much been feeling the same. There’re two pieces of good news, though…I’ve got a definitive diagnosis. I have something called Hashimoto’s Disease.

Hashimoto’s Disease is an auto-immune disorder, probably genetic in origin and it causes my bodies T-cells to attack my Thyroid Gland, resulting in Hypothyroidism, which is an under-active Thyroid and causes all sorts of metabolism problems.

And Dr. Hashimoto is the guy that discovered it and it is the first recognised auto-immune disorder.

This diagnosis ties together all sorts of symptoms I’ve had over the last 6 months to a year that I hadn’t really put together or even thought were symptoms of anything. I just thought I was getting old!

Mainly, it explains the acute inflammation in my back, which continues to cause me pain, though not nearly as bad as it was when it started. I never thought my back problems would be caused by something bigger and scarier!

My other symptoms included loss of energy, appetite and concentration, poor sleep, a lump in my throat and flutters in my chest. I’ve had all of those things to one degree or another and I simply attributed them to middle age and my erratic work and sleep patterns. Silly me. I didn’t put any of this together.

When the back trouble started, I began treatment with a chiropractor, who I credit with helping a lot, but I still couldn’t completely shake the pain. After three weeks I saw my GP, because I thought I might have Shingles - I had a minor rash on my side. It turned out I didn’t have Shingles, but my GP ordered an x-ray (which was negative) and a battery of blood tests, which included a test for Thyroid function.

The test came back and confirmed my diagnosis. My GP also prodded my throat and said he could feel my swollen Thyroid Gland. I had noticed a slight sensation when swallowing for a while, but didn’t think anything of it. It wasn’t painful, or even uncomfortable, it was just different.

I’ve learned a valuable lesson and that’s to listen more closely to what my body is telling me and to do something about it!

Thankfully, Hashimoto’s Disease is very treatable and I will be on a medication called Levathyroxine for the rest of my life. It replaces the Thyroid Hormone my body no longer produces and once they get my dosage to the correct level, my body will go back to normal, whatever normal is…

I’m having side effects from this medication, nausea, sweats, and palpitations mainly, but these should pass soon. I hope.

Left untreated, it could eventually cause heart failure and death, so its a very good thing my doctor caught this. I’m lucky I have a good GP too.

Oh and the other good news is thanks to Hashimoto’s Disease and my cool new daily medication, I now get free NHS prescriptions for life. Now all I need them to do is approve cannabis prescriptions on the NHS and this disease stops being a curse and it becomes a real blessing!

Anyway kids, your Uncle Hippy is on the mend and it won’t be long before I’m back to my old self and trying to touch you all up again!

Greetings and salutations. Hello. Welcome. Yes, I am still alive.

Well, I’m as alive as I can be, following my recent health troubles.

For the last 15 days I’ve been suffering with serious back trouble. I could barely walk for the first week or so, every step was pure agony. Sitting was agony too and laying down was impossible. I was well and truly fucked.

I’ve been seeing a chiropractor and I think he’s helped a lot. I’ve had countless adjustments, starting with a home visit because I couldn’t get to his office. I’m walking well now and have much less pain, I’m hoping to return to work later in the week.

This episode really freaked me out, I was practically crippled. I couldn’t even make it to the loo without assistance from Mrs. H, I couldn’t get dressed, prepare a meal, do any household chores. I couldn’t even sit at my desk and use my iMac, I couldn’t use my laptop for the first week or so. If it wasn’t for my iPhone, I would have been completely cut off from the world.

There’s a sense of panic and desperation that one is overcome with in these situations and I was no exception. As I sat upright on my sofa, for the fifth or sixth night, desperately trying to snatch an hour or two of light, unsatisfying sleep, dark and dangerous thoughts would bubble to the surface of my brain.

What if this is permanent?

What if this is the beginning of my slow, gradual health decline leading to my premature death.

What if I don’t get better?

What if the excruciating pain never ends?

What if….

I found myself having mini-panic attacks, hyperventilating slightly and relief not coming through the codeine or spliffs.

Though my back may be improving, I find myself filled with a lingering, nagging depression over my future.

Is this the beginning of the end?

They say that every second after your born, you are one second closer to death, so in the more general sense, the end has no beginning; or rather the beginning of the end, begins at the very beginning.

But that’s not what I mean. I just have this horrible, deep feeling that my best years are well and truly behind me. It’s probably true, as its undoubtedly true that I’ve lived more than half my life already as the chances of me even coming close to 90 are slim to none.

I’m feeling my mortality and I don’t like it. I feel like I’ve aged in the last fortnight, like my years have finally caught up with me. I don’t feel youthful, as I always have, instead I’ve felt like a decrepit old man.

The thought of a slow, painful slide towards death fills me with dread. I don’t want to suffer through a litany of minor and major health problems until one of them finally snuffs me out. That just sounds horrible!

I suppose death is very much on my mind because of the death of my cat a few weeks ago, which I witnessed firsthand in all its miserable, torturous glory. While her death was mercifully quick, she didn’t go gently into that goodnight.

Watching her contort and struggle against the hand of the grim reaper has had a profound effect on me, though I am still trying to decipher what exactly what effect it has had. I’d never actually been with any living creature, human or animal, at the point of death until her passing three weeks ago.

My younger brother, who is far more spiritual than I could ever hope to be, says I absorbed something from this experience, which manifested itself with my back trouble, or perhaps was this was the trigger for it. I can’t say I am convinced.

When the chiropractor was taking my background and history, one of his first questions was if I suffered any traumas recently; my cat died about a week before the real pain started, though I had soreness in my back a few days before it really hit me.

The chiropractor said that my back trouble was building up over time, that the inflammation had worsened to the point of spasms in my back muscles, causing acute pain.

Is this a coincidence of timing or definitive cause and effect? I couldn’t really say. You could convincingly put across either side of this argument and I just don’t know.

All of this has left me hating aging and mortality even more than before and I didn’t think that was possible. What’s a self-confessed sociopath and amateur narcissist to do?

Keep hoping that someone works out a way to download my brain into a computer after the death of my body, so I can continue to exist, in digital form. How else can I hope to keep posting drivel here throughout eternity?