It is a dark time for the Rebellion

That's how The Empire Strikes Back, one of my all time favourite movies begins. I'd never really actually thought about it before. The rebel alliance scores a major PR victory with the destruction of the Death Star (TM) in A new Hope, but they have realised that the Empire isn't just one giant space station. It's a whole load of small wheels that go together. It's a vast organisation that is pretty much insurmountable and it won't grind to a halt by bunging a couple of torpedoes down an exhaust shaft!

Again, a quick side note... You will find as this blog progresses that I use a lot of movie references. I spent a lot of my formative years either in the warm cocoon of a slightly musty cinema or in my own bedroom watching films over and over to the point that I can quote with the correct nuance and inflection the majority of a number of films. At the time, I felt that this was an awesome skill to have rather than actually going out and talking to people and interacting on a social level, but I have always been an introvert and that process that started over a quarter of a century ago may have had repercussions to the person that I am today... But anyway, I am digressing a little too much, on with the story

That's pretty much how I felt today.

Not just about the crap with the Royal mail demanding that I produce receipts for constituent elements of a piece of leatherwork that was lost in the post so that they can graciously refund me the cost of the materials only rather than compensating the asking price for the piece in question (don't even get me started on that one). It's not even the bank that have been dragging their heels for the past 6 months only to now offer me a slap in the face as a settlement to the PPI that I was most definitely mis-sold in a number of ways!

It's more to do with the way that I view my life at the moment. I feel around 6 inches tall sometimes despite being pretty much able to fill doorways. looking up at situations that I feel that I can't influence and just being swept along with the flow. I have always been one of this life's "Keep calm and soldier on", "don't whinge" and "don't make waves". In the past, people have taken advantage of my good nature and I have found it difficult to raise my voice in dissent. I have left it to the rabble rousers and as a consequence I have become smaller and smaller. I am ill equipped to fit into the space that I fill. And now I am at the point where I am having to look up at everything like it is the north face of the Eiger.

Is there a point to this? If there is, it's showing me that I am back at the first step on the ladder, I've come flying down the snake but perhaps most importantly, I am still on the game board and I am now ready to throw a six and ascend. I realise that the ladder may be a short one and there may be more snakes in my future, but small steps and small realisations like this by (if I may extend the game metaphor to breaking point here...) finding the corner of the jigsaw and metaphorically working down the sides means that I may be able to start re-building myself from the ground up. I doubt that I will ever stand as tall as Chewie, but taller than an Ewok would be a good start.