Borked

"Wisdom is the reward you get for a lifetime of listening when you'd have preferred to talk." - Doug Larson

Have you ever been in a relationship which lacked in the communication department? One where you were either constantly second guessing each other or at cross purposes. It is not a pleasant position or one which you choose to get into. I am in that kind of relationship with my mental and physical health. My body refuses to tell me straight up what it wants or needs, it tries to take care of itself without my help and regularly fails.

I fell asleep this afternoon for no reason. I don't nap, I hate napping. I'm either asleep or I'm awake. If I sleep I need 4 hours minimum, if I am awoke before then, well lets just say, BEWARE. Why could my body have not just told me I was tired, oh I don't know last night. Or maybe have choose to get some quality sleep during the 8 hours I was in bed last night.

On that same vein why can't it tell me I am thirsty rather than breakdown because I haven't drunk enough water. Why can't it tell me I am full when I have eaten enough or hungry when I haven't, rather that telling me I am full when I am sad and hungry when I am bored.

I guess like with any relationship the real question is, is my body not telling me the right things, or am I not listening to what it is telling me? I guess I will have to just keep trying to find out.

Late Post 6th Jan 2013 - Poor Me

"Each patient carries his own doctor inside him.” ― Norman Cousins

6th Jan 2013! (Late post)

Well that was a terrible night sleep and I still feel awful. Funny how that happens sometimes, I'm certainly not ill, my system is just having a moment. The things about days like these is that your body is trying to tell you something, slow down, sleep more, drink more water, be nicer too me. Working out what it wants however isn't always easy, it's like trying to understand a regional dialect when you only have secondary school knowledge of a foreign language. It is especially difficult when you don't spend a great amount of time listening to your body when it is running well, or paying attention to the signals that you are doing things right. I do listen to my body and I am struggling. 

I think today might be a Sunday for the sofa and sitting down. Tea anyone?

Atop the wooden hill, lies the elusive land of nod.

"To sleep, perchance to dream" – Shakespeare

"Up the wooden hill to Bed-ford-shire", that always confused me as a child. I've been to Bedfordshire, it’s not on top of a hill made from wood, it is too big for starters. Mind you I was quite literally thinking as a child and getting my head round Jean-Luc Picard’s Captain’s log was tough, what on earth was he up to, creating the largest pyre in the known universe?

Anyway I digress. Bed time, sleep, beautiful, wonderful unconsciousness. Time for the mind to do what it does best to sort, to process, to apply balm to the worries of the day. It fascinates me the routines people go through to achieve a state they'll have no recollection about come the morning. It doesn’t surprise me though, I have too many of my own pernickety night time needs to be surprised by anyone else’s. A cool bedroom, a leaning pillow, nothing electrical in the bedroom, two trips to the loo, darkness and quiet. I thought the last two at least would conform to the norm but it seems not.

Some people have to go to bed early to quell a fear of not being able to drift off, despite no supporting evidence that they will struggle. Some can’t sleep with out the television or radio on. Some have to have warm feet or feel protected wrapped to sweltering point in an overly heavy duvet. Others need to cling on to the headboard as though they might fall off in the night.

There is something powerful about the need not to tempt fate when it comes to sleep, not wanting to jinx it. Which suggests that we all place great importance on it, know deep down in a primeval sense that we need sleep. Yet how many of us really take it seriously? How many of us actively ensure we get enough, actively ensure it is good enough, make the sacrifices to ensure we always wake up on the right side of the bed. One wonders how much the lack of a good nights sleep might be at the root of so many of the problems we face every day. Would we all eat better, exercise more, if out brains were rested enough to allow us to focus on these things? Would our relationships with friends, families, partners be better served by being alert and awake after a good nights sleep? Or is all of that a fantasy, is sleep fragile by nature. Are those pre-civilized instincts to remain alert to danger so deeply ingrained that we can’t get rid of them and our strange modern day rituals a way of relieving our natural inbuilt anxieties.

I am sure some boffin out there has studies many of these questions, but some how the power of our need to relinquish to such a unsafe state keeps it's secrets. I know I am certainly no expert, however I will continue my life long study in the hope of figuring my own relationship with sleep out. So up the apples and pears I go.

Holibobs

It is that time of year, well actually that time of year is almost pasted and I am running slightly late. Never-the-less I am off on holiday in less than a week. A proper holiday, for a whole week, in the sun. One where I have very little responsibility other than making sure I remember to eat and that I apply adequate sun cream, to be honest though I'll probably get reminded about the sun cream. I am becoming a God-mother during the holiday, but I think I pretty much just have to turn up to that, the responsibility comes later.

I haven't been on a beach holiday for years, I've not been on a holiday where the onus was to do as little as possible, for years. The last time I went on anything resembling a beach holiday  was when I went to collect my little brother from America after his year Uni placement. It was a wonderful get away and we did visit beaches, both coast of the USA in fact. However I did very much have the responsibility of not only getting him home, but also making sure he was coping ok leaving somewhere he clearly loved so much.

I'm an adventurer at heart. I love exploring, doing, finding out. I tend to go on holidays of discovery, be it discovering the terrain on an activity holiday or my Dad and I discovering that you can spend 3 out of 4 day on a city break totally lost because that alley looked really interesting. Equally however I am also knackered, wore out, totally and utterly exhausted. I love doing, and seeing and being involved, but those who know me or are regular readers will know I also have a habit of biting of more than I can chew and my oh my do I need a break.

The though of actually having said break is so exciting.........and completely terrifying. What am I actually going to do with myself, will I be able to sit down for five minutes, how do you do this relaxing thing? I have been trying to practise, I'm not sure I am very good at it though. So far today has been a practise day and I have done the laundry, washing up and watering. I've had a sit down and a cuppa as well though. Now I'm sitting here writing, does that count?

The question is, what is relaxing, what counts as winding down? If you are fairly sedentary anyway, does relaxing mean more sitting, or less? If like me you are constantly, yet not always effectively, burning nervous energy, is trying really hard to sit still relaxing? Or is it about doing something that allows your mind and your body a bit of freedom to just be, even if you are still bimbiling about?

I guess at the end of the day, as long as I come away from it feeling refreshed, recharged, ready to take on whatever the next few months have in store, that is the most important thing. I am hugely grateful that I have amazing friends, who put up with me despite my inability to sit still and probably have a better idea of what is good for me than I do.

If you have a sec share your thoughts of what it is to unwind and chill out. I am going to go and dig out my swimming cozzie but I promise I am leaving the ironing until tomorrow.

A Sit Down (and a cup of tea)

There are lots of things I could have chosen to write about today. The fact that I went to a Football match, in January no less, especially given I’m more a Polo in June sorta gal. I could talk about the fragility of friendships, the trouble with twitter, or the fact my stupid phone is a piece of sh......................! However whilst all of those are topics are things I may return to, today I want to talk about just having a nice sit down.

A nice sit down with a cup of tea, a proper “ahhhh” moment, clichéd, definitely, but I do tend to find that clichés are clichés for a reason. There is something to be said for a sit down, a proper sit down, a moment of pause, a minute in which to do nothing. Now admittedly I’m the type of person who rarely sits down, and when I do I’m usually doing at least three other things at the same time. I never used to be this way, but apparently with me you don’t get middle ground, only extremes. Having seen both extremes has allowed me to see that it is not just the folks like the ‘new’ me that have the problem. People who you look at and think “well they don’t do a lot, they must have oddles of me time” are probably just as bad as everyone else.

I used to be rather a big lass, and not in a good way. I was generally quite stationary and I rarely did what I was supposed to be doing. Never-the-less, much as the evidence seemed to point to the contrary, I never stopped, I never took time for me. I would regularly “reward” myself, perk myself up from all the non-me stuff in my life, generally with a kitkat, a packet of crips, a cigarette, and on a couple of occasions a 500g block of cheese, neat. I thought of these ‘treats’ as me moments, but they were exactly the opposite, they were moments where I could hid from the things I didn’t want to face, short lived moments that needed regularly repeating to keep me going, and of course by regularly repeating them I also put on about 50 extra pounds.

I believe that having a proper sit down is a real treat that we owe ourselves at some point every day. It is all too easy to think you have taken a moment for yourself, a moment to just enjoy the moment, when in fact all you’ve done is given yourselves a brief reward that won’t sustain you nearly as much as you think. I’m talking a proper sit down,  none of this perching on the edge of the sofa for a moment whilst catching a few minutes of the show that happens to be on, whilst all the while know you should be getting on with the washing up/ ironing/ hovering*. How about when you are fully entrenched on the sofa, but with the TV, laptop and phone all on around you and allowing you to engage in several types of media at once, that is not time for yourself. There is so much going on in our lives all the time and it is easy to think you are resting when really you are just engaging in another distraction from yourself.

It’s taken me a long time and someone repeatedly telling me, to realise how important time for me, is. I would go as far as to say it is up there with food, air and shelter. I guess it was only yesterday that it finally struck me how big of a deal I think this is. I got a phone call from a good friend, someone who is going through a bit of a tough time, who needed a chat. The one thing I found myself wanting to impart more than any of the other bits of advice, or things I though might cheer them up, was take time for you.

It’s funny, having a sit down is something some of us really need to work at and then there are those who do it natural. My other half has always stressed how important it is too him to have time for himself. I could never really understand why it was so important to him. I think I am starting to get it.

So now I’ll leave you guys to it, I’m off to make a cuppa, toast a hot cross bun and just have a nice sit down, maybe you should too.

*delete as appropriate