KEY POINTS:
Maybe it has been all the storms that have been bearing down upon us, but I've been feeling a tad stressed lately. A bit uptight, as it were; with a fair helping of gloom thrown in for good measure. A veritable mixed bag of mixed emotions, hardly any
of them good ones, all lumped in together. Not my usual easygoing self, in other words. And not even the entertainment that has been the Winston Peters saga/travelling freak-show has been able to snap me out of this frame of mind.
(Although, as an aside, Winston has given me a great suggestion to pass on to John Campbell. The next time he goes toe-to-toe with Winston in one of those TV interviews where John is in the studio in Auckland and Winston is via satellite from somewhere else, and Winston sets off on one of his round-the-houses, avoiding-the-question answers, John can hold up signs saying things like IT WAS A YES OR NO QUESTION or STICK TO THE TOPIC, WINSTON just to see how much it hacks Winston off.)
Now right there, putting an aside as the second paragraph, was a classic symptom of what I'm talking about. A complete inability to focus on the here and now. My mind wandering off to all manner of inconsequential meanderings, while the essential nub of the issue remains firmly ungrasped.
Maybe it's a mid-winter funk, I don't know. Lying awake at night, tossing and turning over the rights and wrongs of the Sonny Bill Williams situation certainly isn't helping, but I feel the ennui runs much deeper than that. There is an emptiness in and around me that cannot be put down simply to one defecting rugby league star.
For a while there I thought John Key was the problem. Then I realised that just because the word "emptiness" made me think of Key, that Key, himself, was not the issue. In a way, Key might be the personification of the issue, but that does not make him the actual issue - in much the same way that he is not actually a Prime Minister, yet.
Maybe I need to get out, get some exercise. I could ride my bike. Except it's wet and cold and windy and I'm scared a tree will fall on me like it almost fell on that car in Nelson. (As another aside, if a tree almost falls on a car in Nelson and there's no one there to capture the moment on their cellphones and post it on YouTube, did the tree actually fall?)
It could be that I have no energy left because all the energy in the country left with the Olympic team so they would have heaps of energy over in China as they battle their way to respectable top-16 finishes; while we, back here, only have the energy to blob in front of the TV and feebly cheer them on.
Is it just me or has this weather bomb of mid-winter morosity hit the whole country? Are our collective national spirits taking a hammering and falling as fast as petrol prices rise? Is it because cheese is just so darn expensive? What can we do to lift this malaise?
That it is an election year is undoubtedly not helping, but we cannot lay all the blame at the feet of the politicians. Actually we can, but I feel that would only cheer us up for a few seconds before Michael Cullen would ruin the fun by telling us we're not fiscally responsible or that if we want tax cuts we have to be miserable for longer. And then we'd all slump back in our torpor and someone somewhere would back-track on the tax cuts idea and the Cycle of Unhappiness would continue unabated.
Actually, come to think of it, it probably is just me.
Me who needs to pull himself up by his bootstraps (not that I have any boots with straps, so maybe my cycle-helmet straps then). Whatever, I will find whatever straps are appropriate and I will use them to pull myself out of the gloom and the anxiety. The winter of my soul shall pass into the spring of New Hope.
Okay, yes, that does sound like the title of a hitherto unreleased Star Wars film but it's the best I've got right now, as I start my climb back towards normality - whatever that is in a world where Winston is still Foreign Affairs Minister and millionaires hand out $25,000 cheques after a few drinks on a Friday night.
Yes, I shall do as Winston and I shall beat off the slings and arrows of those who oppress me and ask annoying questions I don't know how to answer without incriminating myself. And, if the worst comes to the worst, I shall write a word in big letters and hold it up for all to see.
And that word shall be: YES.
