99 Days of Something #5 – Still resting
I have written something today – a running blog post. That’s something. I was toying with the idea of turning on the work computer and getting myself organised a bit, catch up with some stuff and maybe stop feeling like I am just falling further behind with every day. And then I remembered that I don’t do that anymore because that’s a slippery slope. Work can be organised, sorted and prioritised in work time. I did have a little burst earlier of checking recent case law of the Court of Justice of the EU for two different pieces of writing and making a note of the ones I need to look at in more detail.
It’s been a good day of balance – I had coffee in the garden, we went to Bolton Abbey and Kath went for a run and I went for a run/walk. We went to a farm shop, then home and had lunch with Kath’s mum. Then we had blackberry and apply pie we bought from the farm shot and watched TV trying to stay out of the heat. I had a short nap and then got on the Zwift bike and turned myself into a human puddle. We had scrambled eggs with spinach on amazing sourdough and beetroot bread (from the farm shop) for tea and watched the pilot episode of ER. I am about to have a bath and then maybe read.
I took this picture today. The smell of wild garlic was still strong, the sunlight made interesting patterns through the trees, it was hot but the woodland provided enough shade for it to not be too uncomfortable. I don’t remember thinking about much at all on my loop but reflecting on the day now, I feel like my brain is clearer than it has been. These last few days have done me good I think. I am not saying that I remember how to really rest, but I think it has been a good start to re-learning.
99 Days of Something – #4: More About Rest
Ah well, yes – I didn’t get very far with the 99 Days of Something series did I. But I do miss the discipline of writing daily and I do need a kick up the backside to get some writing bits finished and writing helps with balance and rest. So the aim is to write something every day and record it here. Sometimes that might be writing for work, sometimes that might be some creative writing and sometimes it might just be the blog. But write I will. When I did the 100 Days of Wonder series, I structured the post around photos and that seemed to work really well – so maybe I start there to see how it goes.
I took this picture of Storm this morning. I like it for all sorts of reasons – the blue sky, her looking into the distance seemingly ignoring me completely, the tree in the background. I also like it because it was a very brief moment in the middle of chaos – she was being a parkour cat round the garden and paused to catch her breath before bouncing out of the greenhouse guttering onto the glass roof that covers our patio and then running across the other side of the greenhouse and jumping from there to the summer house roof and disappearing across the fence at the back of our garden. And then she appeared again doing some sort of variation of that loop. Now she’s fast asleep.
That, and scrolling through the blog and seeing some of the 100 Days of Wonder posts and realising that I feel more rested after this weekend than I did when I had a whole week off, made me reflect on my last post and on rest. Storm is good at resting. Like most cats really. She goes bonkers, she eats well, she plays, she takes care of herself and then she sleeps. When she was running around the garden and bouncing off buildings she seemed so joyful. She was just having fun. And she was just doing her thing. The other cats stayed out of her way, watching her with a mix of fear, admiration and disdain. She doesn’t care.
So as I sat in the sun, tidying up one of our little alpine tubs and watching a tiny little bee on a heuchera flower, I thought about what was different this weekend. I had assumed I would be more tired. I didn’t sleep well all week. Stress levels were high, emotional energy was drained and I was frustrated about my calf still being niggly. I almost expected to feel worse. But I didn’t. So what’s different. Well I suspect the weather helps. It’s warm and sunny and has been all weekend. Sunlight helps. The second things is that I have actually done some stuff that feels productive in a none work way. I deep cleaned the kitchen on Saturday. While somehow cleaning the kitchen always feels future because it almost immediately needs it again, the deep clean was well overdue and it does look and feel much better now. On Sunday we went out for breakfast and had a walk round Harlow Carr gardens and bought some plants. We also did a fair bit of life admin organising ourselves a bit and that felt good. I did yoga and moved a little testing out the calf and just doing what feels good. I have drunk lots more water. I always have been terrible at drinking enough but over the last few days I have really tried and I do actually feel better. I went to the gym this morning, I pottered in the garden a bit and I have made plans for an outrageous LEGO purchase that will be silly fun. I have paused and noticed things, the variety of bees, the colours outside, the difference in temperature between the front and back garden… I have watched the cats play and lounge. I have done what Storm did in condensed form this morning – I moved, I had yummy food, I have played and been silly, I have looked after myself and I have slept better. This long weekend so far has been much more about balance, about doing and being in ways that support each other. No ‘all or nothing’ in sight. Less scrolling for no reason, more deliberate breathing and noticing.
I had coffee in the shady bit of our garden when I had finished the alpine tubs and realised how much I have got out of the habit of doing nothing at all. Just sitting and sipping my coffee almost felt alien. I, like so many of us, usually have my phone out when I am just sitting. That’s not doing nothing. That doesn’t let the brain drift and do its thing. Sitting watching, sipping, listening, breathing for 10 minutes was so much more restful than any amount of time scrolling could ever be. And I’m not saying there isn’t a place for scrolling, sometimes I find it helpful to stop myself fixating on one thing or to switch tasks but the trick is not to get stuck scrolling. It takes effort.
So what is actually different? Maybe it is really simple, I feel more present, more connected to myself (I don’t quite know what I mean either but that’s the closes I can come with words) and more open to seeing the joy and wonder in the every day and that leads me to a better balance and better prioritisation between all the things that make up this rollercoaster we call life. Let’s see how I manage balance when I also have to work. Achieving it during a long weekend seems a little like cheating but I have to start somewhere!
99 Days of Something – #2
Well, 99 days of writing? Yeah. About that. I haven’t written a thing today. I intended to this morning but then I got sidetracked and caught up in emails and admin stuff. Not opening my email first thing is obviously a lesson I need to learn over and over again. And then I forgot about writing. I nearly failed on day 1 of actually trying to string together consecutive days of writing and day 2 of blogging about it.
I went to yoga this evening and as I settled into the mat and focused on just breathing, just being and trying to let go of any judgment or expectation my brain obviously did its thing in the background. As we finished the practice and the teacher asked us to think about what we could do to bring ourselves into balance this evening, I thought about writing and how writing has always brought balance to me. I started keeping a journal from as soon as I could hold a pen and make some vaguely recognisable marks on paper. I wrote stories, I wrote letters to friends all over the world, I dabbled in awful teenage angsty poetry and crafted stories. I wrote almost as much as I read and I devoured books. I still journal in burst but rarely consistently, I have recently started letting my brain do it’s random thing by playing with fiction writing – it’s not for anyone to ever read, I have no plans to turn the snippets of stories into anything coherent – it is just an outlet for the randomness that builds up in my brain.
Writing then for me has never been about productivity. Writing is balance. Writing brings balance. Writing is both a joy in itself and something that can help pull me out of dark places and towards joy. So often now writing feels pressured, it is tied to deadlines and adheres to the confines of academic expectations and norms. And there is some joy in that sort of writing too. I somehow like the challenge and discipline of writing for academic journals, of having to craft an argument in a particular way using appropriate evidence and following academic conventions. Being able to do that is somehow satisfying. But it can also be constraining and I think I am learning that to balance that sort of writing, I also need other sorts of writing. I need to allow space to just play with words, be more fun, more decadent and more outrageous. Writing is not one thing. Sometimes it is just silly, sometimes it is serious and following rules, sometimes it is deeply personal and just mine and often it just is.
So today’s writing is just this blog post, just some thoughts about balance, nothing meaningful, nothing serious, no rules but also no silliness. Maybe just a reminder to us all to think about what brings us into balance. I hadn’t thought about writing in this way before but I think writing is the thing that helps me balance everything else.
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