I’m currently sitting in the garden watching my mother putting the floor down in our new shed that’s just been erected. I have offered to help but she’d rather do it herself and I can understand why – as a devout homosexual I’m not really cut out for manual labour. I should probably be doing some work on my essays but the subject of identity politics is no more enticing now than it was yesterday, plus I’m sure you’ll all agree that writing for this blog is much more important than working for my degree. Hayley is cutting some pieces of wood down to size with the power saw and the noise is quite annoying. It’s a good job I don’t buy into toxic masculinity otherwise I’d be feeling rather emasculated right now. 

I did one of Sam’s live workouts for the first time yesterday and I’m certainly paying the price today as I can barely feel my legs and it hurts to walk. I enjoy taking the piss out of him as much as the next person, yet you can’t help but admire his bid to share his passion for fitness with us and keep us occupied & healthy during lockdown (believe it or not I’m not being sarcastic). I’ll be extremely pleased if I manage to get in half as good a shape as him by the time this is all over. I also did the 5K challenge for the NHS last night. I walked it so I could take the dog out at the same time, as well as saving passers by the embarrassment of having to watch me attempting to jog. Two birds with one stone and all that. 

As you can probably imagine, as a man with such a wealth of experience, I am often asked for advice by my lovely friends. One such friend asked me this morning how I’ve been managing to keep myself occupied as they keep finding themselves over analysing situations due to sheer lack of distraction. I’m well known for overthinking things so I’d like to think I’m reasonably well placed to offer advice on this. I advised that it’s important to keep the mind occupied with positive things rather than negatives; reading a book, writing something, exercising, playing video games, talking to friends etc. It’s very easy to spiral into a seemingly never ending abyss of negativity & melancholy, as I’ve done countless times myself, so you must keep yourself focused on the good things in your life. Failing this, try talking to someone you trust about the situation you seem to be over analysing as, more often than not, they’ll be able to reassure you that everything is fine and you have nothing to worry about. 

I’m off for a bike ride. Follow @ssm.fit on Instagram. Stay safe.