My big brother always thought he was cursed. I am starting to think that curse has moved on to me!
He died shortly before my car was T-boned in Ambleside back in 2018, ending my career in Engineering in one swift moment of confusion by an old lady. Today, nearly 6 years on, I am still plagued by permanent sciatica and a lower back that seizes up at night. I have injured my upper back previously, but that was offset to the upper left and never caused me any issue after the torn muscle healed - this is persistent though! I try not to medicate too much because the only thing that cuts through the pain are opioids… and the thing that killed Neil was also… opioids. There was a time I would have guzzled them with pure abandon, but now I am more circumspect and only reach for them when the pain is simply too much to bear and I just really… REALLY… need a night of good sleep.
Its on my mind a fair bit at the moment as the insurance company have been pushing to close the file. The independent Doctor confirmed my feelings about many Doctors by completely failing to listen to or write down a single thing I said to him, but more or less told me how I should be feeling and wrote that down instead. The worst bit is that I still can’t chase my outlets to happy places when the stress of life gets too much - I can’t go mountain biking or tramping off through the wilderness to get some headspace like I used to. I can’t even ride a motorbike anymore. All things that he basically dismissed. But I can’t face fighting it. Because I am exhausted.
Anyway - work is slowly picking up. I need to go through the 23-24 figures soon and determine whether I managed to actually break into profitability for the first time, with 24-25 currently looking like a step up from that - although I need to calculate how much I spent on making the business run first so both have the potential to fall the wrong way yet!
In other news then… and on a more positive note… kind of…. I have been watching many videos showing how amazing the Highlands is for visiting. And this is true. But not as true as they would have you believe! I think once everything settles down again in a week or two I may start creating content that shows the truth about the Highlands. The good, the bad and the downright ugly sides of the tourism trade and those who come here on it!
