100 Days of Wonder – #94
Depression is a funny thing. I haven’t really felt it for a while. If anything I have struggled more with anxiety than with depression but I always know that it can come back. It barged in yesterday with its stories and exhaustion and it is lingering like an unwelcome house guest, giving no indication when it might leave. In some ways it’s ok. I know what this is. I am better at dealing with it than I used to be. It doesn’t mean I am unhappy. It means I have a brain full of stories about how I am not very good at anything, too fat to run, failing on all fronts and generally not worth bothering with. It also means I am a sort of tired that sits in your bones. I don’t want to do anything. I can’t actually rest either though because resting is just proof of my laziness. Why now? I don’t know. No obvious trigger and I am hoping that the black puppy won’t stay long. That it will come, tell its stories, realise I am not really listening and move on.
In the meantime I am slowly beginning to take down Christmas and make new memories ready for next year as I place things back in the Christmas box. I am also taking myself to places in my mind where the depression rarely follows: Disney World. Several times today I have imagined the walk from the Contemporary Resort to the Magic Kingdom. Every time the mix of memory and anticipation, because in a week’s time I will actually walk it, has brought me joy. The black puppy just sits waiting for an opportunity to remind me not to be in any photos because I’ll just look horrible and fat. It’s waiting to inform me that I won’t make it round the Dopey Challenge because I am useless and that I am probably best just staying in Florida because the work that awaits when I get back will be too hard anyway… So let’s just let it sit there, spinning it’s stories. We can tell a different one with every step we walk along this path:
100 Days of Wonder – #93
Remember I told you that the first time I went to Disney World I really just went for the winter sun and warm? It’s also an excuse I have used when people who do not ‘get’ Disney question my destination choices. Well on a couple of occasions now, the warm has really not held true – but it has really only ever been cold for a day or two. I have been stalking the Orlando weather forecast for weeks. I know it has been way too far out to learn anything useful. And as always I have done round one of packing convinced that it is going to be warm at least almost all of the time. I think I am going to have to re-pack! I know, I know, we’re still over a week out from arrival but various forecasts show a huge dip in temperature for marathon weekend. It looks like it will barely get into double figures (Degrees C obviously). I think I will need to take out a pair of shorts and put in some grown-up pants and replace a flimsy thin shirt or two with a hoodie. I think I also need to re-think what I will wear for the races.
Anyway, I am trying not to be disappointed. I want warm and sun and sitting around people watching – more being than doing – I wanted a couple of hours by the pool… I didn’t want jackets and wrapping up and feeling cold. But I have zero control over what the weather does so it’ll all be fine. It will be better than fine. For some reason I am pretty good at just accepting things as they are at Disney. Better than I am usually. I am better at just rolling with it. Long queue – let’s come back another time or not bother. Ride out of action – no issue. Missed a character meet, no biggie. Raining, great- fewer people. Cold, excuse to buy a new hoodie. Queue moving more slowly than we thought, fine. Huge crowd for parade, that’s ok, we’ll hang out at the back. People talking absolute nonsense around me, that will make us giggle later. Packed transport and lack of personal space, it just is. I wonder what it is? I don’t have the same level of ‘let it go ness’ at any other time. I often talk about controlling the controllable and I try but Disney parks seem the only place where I can actually manage it consistently. And even then the danger is being hungry and not realising and getting very hangry remains real – that’s the only time we have ever really argued or been grumpy at each other and it has always been easily resolved by having a snack!
So I can’t control the weather but I can control what I wear and therefore how I feel in the colder weather and we can swap ice cream for hot coffee, pretzels and popcorn so we’re fine and anyway, the forecast might still be wrong!
100 Days of Wonder – #92
I’ve been thinking about two things today. The first is the idea of less doing and more being and the other is constant change. They’re not necessarily related but at the moment in my head they are because, with just over a week to go I am in Disney mode. It’s probably unbearable for anyone else but my Disney mode as been activated (wait, what? It’s always active, it’s just got a boost). So at Disney the temptation is definitely to be doing. I have commented in previous posts about planning and ticking things off a list and rushing from ride to ride or attraction and how I don’t really get it. But not rushing things and not having a list to tick off, doesn’t mean we are not ‘doing’ heavy. And sometimes being doing focused means that you forget to be right there in the moment. Often if you are doing, you’re not really being. Doing means you start and finish something. Doing has outcomes. That’s why I bake or cook when anxiety is high, that’s why doing admin work and being busy is great when you’re stressed because it feels like you are taking action and sorting things out. And sometimes, doing is of course exactly what is required. But often what we actually need is less doing and being busy and more being, more acknowledging the moment we are in right now, more breathing, more presence.
At Disney there is always something new (looking forward to seeing the Moana inspired Journey of Water this time), and that increases the temptation to do. Every trip there has been something new to see or do, a new ride, or even a whole new area such as Toy Story Land or Galaxy’s Edge. That temptation to ‘do’ those things so easily slips into pressure and a feeling of disappointment if we don’t manage it. And I just never want Disney to be about that. It’s not about doing for me, it’s about being there. Of course I like to do things but I want to do them fully present. I want to consciously be while I am doing the things. Most of the new attractions we didn’t do the first visit after they opened. The queues were too long, the areas around them too busy. It took years for us to ride the 7 Dwarf Mine Train and we didn’t go on Flight of Passage in 2017 because, frankly I won’t stand in a queue for 4 hours for anything. We walked through Galaxy’s Edge in 2023 but we didn’t go on the rides. We’re quite good at focusing more on being and just enjoying being together, soaking it all in and letting the stories play out in our heads.
I chose the picture of the Tree of Life from January 2023 because it is both about doing new things and the constant changes at Disney and about being rather than doing. I think it was our first full day and we were both pretty tired. We couldn’t decide whether to stay for the Tree of Life Awakening light show. We’d never seen it although I think it has been running since 2016 so there would have been at least 2 trips where we could have seen it. So it was something new, something cool to see and do. But it also felt like we were staying just for the sake if it when we actually wanted to go back to the resort and go to bed. In the end we had about 45 minutes before the show and it somehow seemed silly to leave so we found a spot, sat ourselves down and just people watched for a bit. Leaning against a tree I think, or maybe a low wall, we both nodded off for a bit. We were leaning on each other and just enjoying being together without really doing anything. We nearly forgot we were waiting for the show and we definitely forgot we were surrounded by 1000s of other people. The show itself was wonderful. We stood up when it began and watched in wonder, in our own little bubble, just us, alone in a sea of people. Then we went ‘home’ and fell into bed happy. Moments like that are where the magic is!
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