The best workout I’ve been getting lately is the hedonic treadmill. I’m wearing myself out, getting shit done because it still feels like I’m walking through treacle. Isn’t this stuff supposed to flow if I’m doing what I love? Paperback, after all that…done…Next! Keep moving the goal-posts, no rest for the wicked and certainly no celebrating or laurel-sitting.
Keep going, and one day, I might be enough…
Did I say that out loud?
Had a bit of a pep-talk with hubby last night and I realised I need to get back to gratitude. October 1 and #Last90Days can’t come soon enough! I need to get back to being grateful not just for the amazing privileged position I have been born into – a safe home, my health, intelligence, education, etc etc – but also for the ability to spend at least some of my time writing and learning how to publish and market my work. I’ve been a whiny little bitch and I’ve been way too hard on myself. What a fun combination! So on Tuesday #last90Days starts. I did it last year and it was a mixed result because I was suffering daily pain in my hip and abdomen due to adhesions and scar tissue. I was happy at the end of the challenge that I was still breathing and the pain was virtually non-existent (Bowen Therapy, dietary change, Panchakarma detox, exercises, tissue salts…)
The basis of #last90days is Five to Thrive…don’t you just love a catchphrase? you do the 5 things and you thrive. I’ve already quit coffee and gone back to a strict gluten free so there’s no way on this planet that I am quitting anything else! For October, I will be attempting to get up at 6 on the dot each morning because I sometimes lie in and snooze my alarm a couple of times, but some November, I will be up at 5.30 and at the beach by 6! The gratitude practice is done each evening and I find the practice is only half the fun. The real power is in finding yourself each day actively seeking out things to be grateful for.
Part of my existing practice is journaling daily but as a consequence of going on vacay, I’d dropped my Morning Pages habit for a few days…this always has dire consequences for the goings on inside my head. The last two days I’ve smashed out my pages and I feel more in control of the merry band of idiots in my brain. I think this is why I write so prolifically; there’s always a story rattling around in there, and writing fiction has shifted the genre from ‘what other people think of me’ to ‘I need to find out exactly what a Paleo-Anthropologist does…’ Far healthier, I think.
Speaking of getting healthy, I read Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman, while I was on hols and afterwards read the Goodreads reviews, as you do. I was amazed at the number of people who were arguing back and forth about Eleanor’s diagnosis. Is she ‘Aspie’ or Autistic? I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think she’s either, she just had some unusual (to say the least) childhood experiences coupled with an above average intelligence and it kept her separate from her peers and colleagues. I can relate, although my childhood experiences were nothing like Eleanor’s! If we don’t have healthy habits, influences and agency, well, we’re going to isolate ourselves because society can be cruel. I’ve been the weirdo in more than one social setting and you don’t have to have a ‘diagnosis’ for that! Don’t get me wrong, I’m more than happy being the weirdo now, but at school it was upsetting. I’ve learned to love who I am (mostly), I’m healing the parts of me that were broken, (still finding new stuff) and now have the most wonderful friends and great relationships with my family (although it doesn’t always look like I thought it would look.)
It’s so hard to heal without a practice, spiritual or otherwise because so often we just can’t see the root of the pain. You have to see the dirt if you want to clean the house for sure, and without experiencing real love we just don’t know what real love looks like. And when it comes to love, you have to start with yourself.
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