There's a hole in my boat.

Imagine that your life is like a ship, and the ship is divided into compartments. For the ship to be sea worthy and stay afloat, any damage to the ship needs to be confined to just a few compartments.

The idea is that if you can fill in many of the compartments - if one goes wrong, it doesn't mean your whole life has to. So if something goes wrong and you have an all consuming hobby, like sailing, music or playing golf - you can get away from the areas of stress and be absorbed by another area.

I've just started a course of CBT. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.

For me, I've lost the ability to be able to not take work home with me. Not physically, but mentally - it's always there, nagging away in the back of my head. What have I forgotten, what's going to happen when we run out of time. It wound me up, stressed me out, upset me and stopped my sleeping.

Only looking at my life like this has it really hit home, that by giving my self completely to work, I've lost contact with my friends, I don't see my family as much as I should, my indoor hobbies... well, I don't have any, and my outdoor hobbies - my running, and hiking and general outdoorsyness.... well that's gone too.

Holidays? 3 weeks in Oz back in feb (go see the blips!) leaves me with bugger all for the rest of the year.

Spirituality? Part time, at best!

Looking at mine... I think there's a boat in my hole!

But right there in the middle is "Partner". Sophie. My lifeboat! But its not fair on her to be relied on so much to support me.

When I met her, I ran, I went to the gym, I left work on time, I was laid back, happy, independent, and I used to blip.

So here I am!

Phase one of recovery - I have a problem

Phase two - I went to the gym last night

Phase three - I'm writing a new blip

Phase four? Come back and follow my progress!