On the bus...off the bus!

Yesterday the FTSE 100 Share Index broke through what financial analysts call 'the all-important psychological 5000 barrier'. Some catch phrase!

In past blogs I have compared my own battle with mental health as a little like the FTSE - bouncing along, some good days and some bad, but hopefully gently nudging in the right direction. Of course, knowing that and believing that are two completely different things.

This week I have been up and down quite a lot. And some days, have themselves, developed their own micro-climate, for want of a better phrase, in that each day has had good and bad elements. This is no different to normal life which has the good, the bad and the indifferent. We could launch on a process of infinite regression and say not only each life, but each year, each month, each week, each day and maybe even each hour contains that complete spectrum of good, bad and indifferent. But I no longer find over-analysis either helpful or productive and am working, rather, towards taking an average as I mentioned in my last blog.

Nevertheless I do feel a little like 'on the bus...off the bus' recently. I am improving but the carapace appears wafer thin at times making it brittle and vulnerable. So I am trying to make it simple. I am going to persist with the omnibus analogy and look at it like this - well I am going to try anyway!

There are times I feel I have got off a few stops too early. So I simply have to be patient and wait for the next 'bus. Surely one will come along in a minute or two? Let's hope, unlike when I lived in London many years ago, that I wait for ages then three or four come along at once! Which one do I get on? The problem for me right now, pursuing the analogy further, is that the destination boards are blank and forward progress still feels rather dangerous.

In Alice in Wonderland, if my memory serves me correctly, Alice asks to the Mad Hatter which way she should go to which he replies that it depends where she wants to get to. She claims to not know to which the Mad Hatter responds that it doesn't much matter which way she goes!

My problem right now is the opposite - I do know where I want to get to but I am unsure which 'bus will take me there and which stop I need to get off at!

To return (briefly) to the FTSE 100 analogy we may have passed through the 5000 barrier yesterday but can we yet be certain about the long term destination?