Today I was greeted by a poster declaring that ten thousand had been achieved.
Great news, ten thousand, a good number.
Back in 400b.c. The Ten Thousand were a group of mainly Greek mercenary units pulled together by Cyrus the younger to try to grab the throne of the Persian Empire from his brother, Artaxerxes II.
Treachery, in-fighting and land grabs, even back then. Does history teach us nothing??
But what of history, when this week is officially the darkest, most doom-laden week of the year with next Monday being regarded as the darkest day. There’s even a formula to calculate just how miserable we feel.
The formula for this day of misery is 1/8W+(D-d) 3/8xTQ MxNA.
W is weather, D is debt - minus the money (d) due on January's pay day - and T is the time since Christmas. Q is the period since the failure to quit a bad habit, M stands for general motivational levels and NA is the need to take action and do something about it.
Now mine didn’t turn out so badly, but only because my D is low and my (d) is what I can only describe as once in a lifetime. Looking out of the window though the W is foggy, cold and damp, and I can’t really remember Christmas taking place so have no idea what T is, my only small Q (red wine) is probably the only thing keeping me going at the minute, my M is at an all time low and (much as I need and want to) my NA is struggling to kick-start itself into motion.
All in all another random day and on random days I doodle, letting the almost unconscious act of scribbling decode how I’m feeling.
It all comes out one way or another – blue herons, red herrings, vampire hares, tree full, trifle, 10,000, W, D, (d), T, Q, M, NA - odd stuff for an odd day in an odd time. I either strongly agree, agree, neither agree or disagree, disagree, strongly disagree - but my doodles hold the answers.
Ten thousand, such a good number.
By the way it came out at 42.
Once upon a time I attended someone's 10,000 day party which was at just over 27 years 4 months if I recall, so 20,000 must be around the 54 years 8 months mark (if you know anyone approaching that!)
ReplyDeleteThere was also Ian Dury's song "4000 weeks holiday" (which scarily is the average lifespan that Mr. Dury himself sadly never reached).
Worryingly, I notice from the articles that this year's "Blue Monday" is still ahead of us, when I thought it was LAST Monday.
Typical!
M.
Yes, but we have the answer Martin... 42!
ReplyDeleteMartin A W Holmes commented on Facebook: Sadly, for me 42 was many moons ago. Are you telling me that that was as good as it was going to get?
ReplyDeleteFlippity Heck!
...perhaps we should instigate "Carousel"...?
Lifeclock... going... black...
Mike King commented on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Douglas Adams realised when he picked the magical number 42 that in ASCII it translates into * - the wildcard character in most modern operating systems. Also, the designers of the TIFF standard were Adams fans too, 42 appears in the header of every TIFF as a "arbitary number" used to identify the file as a TIFF.
According to the programme I watched this week on BBC2 (I think) at the edges of the universe information is being processed that makes our reality - only it's a hologram. Even the guy who came up with the theory says that it isn't understandable, so maybe Adams was as close with 42 as it gets.
ReplyDelete