Fitter Happier More Productive Checklist

Have taken a quick self assessment of my life against the Radiohead Fitter Happier More Productive Index, and here are the results.  The Lyrics are in bold with my report next in italics.  Makes for some sobering reading.  PLay the music and read my self assessment.  Have a go for yourself with your own song.


more productive (I have always worked two jobs and this hasn't changed since I stopped drinking.  If anything, I am of course more productive because I am not hungover and sullen all the time.  So yes, I am certainly more productive.)
comfortable
not drinking too much (Of course, not drinking at all makes a difference...)
regular exercise at the gym (3 days a week) (Well I walk/run for at least 30mins every single day)
getting on better with your associate employee contemporaries
at ease (My pervading sense of self loathing and anxiety has subsided, So I am more at ease)
eating well (no more microwave dinners and saturated fats)
a patient better driver
a safer car (baby smiling in back seat)
sleeping well (no bad dreams)
no paranoia (Check, yes, yes and yes, all's well in the domestic department, am being very conservative and calm and considered around the house - my wife doesn't know what I have become - she says she doesn't know the man I am today compared with the man she married.  Not sure if this is an entirely bad thing...)
careful to all animals (never washing spiders down the plughole)
keep in contact with old friends (enjoy a drink now and then) (Nope, no drinking, and while we're here haven't been in contact with old friends because I don't like talking about how I have stopped drinking as the only conversation - it's boring and possibly highlights what a drunken dickhead I may have been at times)
will frequently check credit at (moral) bank (hole in wall)
favours for favours (Is this networking - where we pretend to be friends and interested in someone's kids for the sake of an order?  I can feel the vomit gurgling in my throat...)
fond but not in love (Funny, this is something quite distinct from stopping drinking - more the comfortable familiarity of time that has leaned our relationship an steady acceptance, but in love, still. Aren't we? I think..)
charity standing orders
on sundays ring road supermarket (Walking around the mega-hardware store with my daughters at the traditional peak drinking times of Friday afternoons or Sunday afternoons - and thinking to myself - do these guys get it?  It beer o'clock!!  But they don't care and are buying gadgets and screws and stuff like alcohol was never invented.)
(no killing moths or putting boiling water on the ants)
car wash (also on sundays)
no longer afraid of the dark
or midday shadows
nothing so ridiculously teenage and desperate (But trying to keep some youthful spontaneity)
nothing so childish
at a better pace
slower and more calculated (I was always so horrified of becoming a staid, reliable middle aged man with mortgage and two perfectly groomed children - so I thought drinking was somehow caught up with this idea of the flawed creative soul.  It wasn't - I was kidding myself and terrified of taking the next step.  So I am taking the next step, sober and aware and basically a bit out of my comfort zone but it's not that bad once you have a good night's sleep and work out your plan of attack)
no chance of escape
now self-employed
concerned (but powerless) (I have resigned myself to this, and am at peace with being another unit in suburbia.  I can make my difference in other ways)
an empowered and informed member of society (pragmatism not idealism)
will not cry in public
less chance of illness
tires that grip in the wet (shot of baby strapped in back seat)
a good memory
still cries at a good film
still kisses with saliva
no longer empty and frantic (More calm and at peace and content knowing that I am a brittle human with deep scars and flaws and that that is just who I am - no changing that anymore, I am sort of at peace with it.  And it's not that bad to me anymore anyway.)
like a cat
tied to a stick
that's driven into
frozen winter shit (the ability to laugh at weakness) (But not scared, in awe at the epic scale of life and how imperfect it is, but at peace and accepting of it.)
calm
fitter, healthier and more productive
a pig
in a cage
on antibiotics