Dogs can't look up.

As with every single one of the 7 billion other souls housed within a mass of fleshy and bony protrusions that makes up the human race, 'me' is a few things. I have my own odd, barely palatable body, but I'm not just a physical entity. Those who know me well know that I have a personality that is the very antithesis of simple. But while I am clearly possessed of the kind of charismatic personality that fills and dominates a room, such that anybody who finds themselves in a room with me cannot help themselves but to incredulously remark: 'Golly', I am not just my psyche.

I am not just someone blessed with the sartorial elegance of a beard, or someone who only instinctively closes my right eye when having a shower. I do not only think that people who say they don't like fish are wrong (though they are). I am not solely someone who giggles at hamsters and I am not, contrary to popular opinion, someone whose only pleasure in life is cloud spotting while having a nice cup of tea & a sit down (though clearly the human race has discovered few more superlative pursuits.) I am not solely heterozygous for a mis-sense mutation of codon 150 of the glucokinase gene, and nor am I nothing but someone who is completely incapable of saying anything in Turkish other than 'Hey baby, what's shaking?'

So I am not just one facet of existence. Fittingly, there's a veritable smorgasbord of things that are, on one level or another, good for me, and a whole plethora of things that I can do that will be for the benefit of myself, that will energise me, nurture my soul and generally make me feel alive. If you're human though, you'll know that doing those things gets scuppered all too easily. My buggered memory is one of the things that most conspires to vex my ability to choose that which is good for me (and therefore for everybody else too). Partly this is a simple case of remembering what those things might be. I had fun the other day when I remembered that I rather enjoy getting the magazine from the weekend newspaper and graffiting it. I used to do it fairly regularly but got out of the habit, and subsequently forgot all about it. So it was a happy moment when, not sure what to do with myself one evening and really not wanting to spend an evening passively consuming in front of the gogglebox, I remembered this simple pleasure. I went to bed much more amused than I would have done otherwise.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if there were probably fairly easy ways to overcome this particular shortcoming of remembrance. Like, I dunno, keeping a list or something. But my memory also trips up my best intentions to choose life in a way that's not so easy to remedy. For I often forget the feelings of life and energy that can come from doing those things. Actually, that's not quite true. I may well remember, but what stops me choosing is that I don't trust enough in the moment that they will be good for me, and the still, small voice of my memory gets easily drowned out. So if I'm feeling shattered, for example, I'll naturally think that I don't have the energy to do anything other than watch telly. My memory might pipe up and point out that just watching any old telly is rarely good for me, and maybe I'd enjoy getting some fresh air by going outside for a minute to look at the clouds, or making myself chuckle by graffiting that big picture of Justin Timberlake on the front of the magazine. But that little voice gets shouted down with the claim that they will involve energy, and clearly my memory needed reminding that the lack of energy to do things is a fairly central part of being knackered.

One of those voices that often drowns out my memory belongs to my so-called loyal soldier - the bit of me that wants to protect and keep me safe. But it does it by keeping me small, stopping me from doing anything that might rock the boat by being too bold or expressive or exuberant or dangerous. So if I'm feeling somewhat lacking of energy, it'll say that shouldn't attempt to do anything as that'll only make me even more tired, and that could lead to a relapse. Or at work I might be bored and frustrated because I've not got enough to do, or anything to do at all that's even remotely interesting or fulfilling. I might start to wonder about asking my manager for some extra responsibilities because I've got a vague feeling that when I've done that in the past it's led to some good stuff that I've actually quite liked. But before I've even finished speculating, those thoughts get swiftly booted out of my head by a voice that says, don't be daft, doing that could mean having to do something where I haven't the foggiest what I'm meant to do and I'll no doubt end up failing and falling on my bottom. And we all know what I'll look like if I fall on my bottom don't we? That's right: an Arse. Nope, sonny Jim, you need to stay doing this mindless, repetitive task, confident in the knowledge that this is playing a vital role in ensuring my employer earns a profit of billions while contributing to the continued existence of an economic system that I have one or two disagreements with. Obviously If I were to fail at an extra task then that would bring the whole multinational business down, and I'm no expert but I'm pretty certain that will mean getting the sack. And then I wouldn't just look like an Arse. Even worse, I would look like an unemployed Arse. Not even good for wiping.

And then there's the list of values and principles that it insists I live: waste is Bad; spending money is Bad; public displays of emotion are Bad; now that I think of it, private displays of emotion are pretty Bad; doing anything that might cause someone to notice me is Bad; causing a bit of a kerfuffle is Bad; failing is Bad, and therefore risking doing something I might fail at is Bad; I may look really rather good in a skirt (and many people can testify to that), if I was to go out in public in a fetching 40s-style pencil skirt, that would be Bad... Sometimes these things can be contradictory, like trying to claim I have no energy to do anything but watch telly, but then insisting I get up to turn the TV off rather putting it on standby, for that would contravene Edict No.1.

Now I know I'm not going to be able to suppress or kill off this bit of me, and nor would I necessarily want to. I do agree with many of its laws - the planet might not be in such a bad way if we didn't waste its resources so much. And it is, after all, only trying to do what it thinks is good me for me, and I can't knock that. It just does it about as well as my body walks, which is to say about as well as Nick Clegg attempting to not look bored and/or constipated during Prime Minister's Questions. I suppose I could try and harness it's bossing powers so that it reminds me that watching telly all evening (even if I'm shattered) instead of getting some fresh air, or settling for the status quo instead trying something new or daring, will generally knacker my body and soul. I suppose that would make it sort of like The Terminator's transition in the sequal, albeit one that didn't destroy quite so much resources. And wore a skirt.