Hi,
With it being half-term, the Ever Lovely Mrs J, myself, and Child 2.0 have a time away from the usual. For C2, it was a much needed break from school and a chance to unwind. Likewise, I had a few days off and I was somewhat surprised at how many days I’ve had an afternoon nap on. I guess I needed to top my proverbial batteries back.
I’m pretty sure I read something about the Mediterranean approach to sleeping in the day, being very beneficial. I do wonder what would a working day be like, if, hypothetically, a person had full say on how and when they worked. I’m not complaining, just speculating on how that might play out and would it improve things?
Heart & Head
Sounds like a pub for anatomists 🙂 The good news is the time off, long walks, and afternoon kips have turned down the tension I was feeling. Yes, there’s been a few bumps in the road – like trying to get home on very low fuel – that poked the Anxiety Goblin. But in honesty, it feels like I’ve put down some heavy weights and I’m not struggling along so much.
Whatever has helped me – and I’d guess at it being a number of things adding up (conversations with friends, feeling like I was helping others, siestas, long walks, therapy, etc) – I’m, well, just take grateful if the respite. I’m not going to worry how things might be, bit just enjoy the moments as they come.
Wishes
This month I heard from two good friends about their struggles around being trans. I will not share their names here. As much as being who we are can lead to times of trans joy, when a person’s needs are not being met, life can be harder than it should be. Calling back to earlier: another set of weights to haul around.
I may well cop for some mild tutting of disapproval at next month’s meeting of rural atheist, wokist, tofu nomming, leccy car driving, bigot bothering, right on elites – the membership card and website address are both mahoosively long 😋 – but take a moment to wish them some luck. I feel we could all do with a bit of kindness and knowing we are not alone ❤️
Blogiversary
in honesty – or perhaps, “not gonna lie” as the cool kids are saying 😉 – when I realised that was Friday, I find myself thinking I didn’t have much to write about. Okay, I could say something about Liz Truss leaving as PM and the chaos of nonsense in the UK… but meh 😋 Good riddance to had rubbish, as the old saying goes.
By lucky happenstance, I noticed that waaay back in 2005, I started blogging. Okay, on a different platform (Google), but it’s pretty much been a post per week, every week, for the last umpteen years. Quantity may not be quality, but there’s certainly a level of persistence! 🙂
There’s no secret sauce or magic involved in reaching that number: it’s just one post after the next. Why do I mention this? Because – and this is not a humble brag or compliment quest 😋 – but I very much believe that if I can, you can. ❤️
Getting out to a group, meeting people, daytime outings, blogging, trying to help other T folk: all of this is in your power. Yes, some of us have certain privileges and barriers that others don’t and it’s not that old claptrap about you’re not working hard enough. F*** that noise ✊ Instead, I think it’s about having a dream, hope, wish, whatever! – and doing what you can – at a pace that works for you, in a way that’s safe for you – to help you reach that goal.
It may be cliché, but it absolutely about the little things adding up. 🌟 You don’t need a grand plan or make a big leap. Just, make a small change, something that works for you, and see where it takes you.
L x
Weekly blogging is quite the achievement. It can be very easy to miss one, not worry, and then before you know it your last blogpost was 2012…
It can be easy to miss one, yes. The blank page – white or dark mode 🙂 – can sit there, empty, and there’s been a fair few times where I’ve prattled away, deleted, repeated, deleted, etc.
I still think the best advice I read about writing – which I guess flows into blogging – is “write something a younger you would’ve liked to read.”
Maybe there’s an element of that in why I try to write as if it’ll all work out in the end. That and the ‘yes you can’ vibe as well. Not that the latter two are faked in any way. I guess they are vibes (?) I follow. That and a seat-of-the-pants / just-do-it style.
Congratulations on the blogversary, or blogiversary as you call it (first to be recognised by the OED wins 😉 ) That’s a grand number of years to be a-blogging, dating back to legendary times when elves magicked the computers into existence and the World Wide Web was spun by mystical spiders. YATGB is a riveting read!
Now, you want to know about the Mediterranean approach to sleeping in the day. Here in this part of the Med, businesses start to wind down for lunch around 12:30 and don’t come back from lunch till about 3:30. From a modern business point of view, this is nuts and Italians complain that their economy is not as robust as that of other developed nations. But there is a lot to be said for a return home, time to cook and eat a big, tasty meal with family and the chance to sleep off that glass or two of wine before getting back on the Vespa to return to work. It certainly takes a big chunk out of the day and leaves people working till 7pm or later and creates 4 rush-hours a day. But in compensation, every working day you get a chance to switch right off midway through the day and reset. And eat unhurriedly. There’s an appeal to that, though not to the advocates of efficiency.
I’m glad to hear you are feeling less stressed, anxious and off-colour. Wishing you a lovely relaxed weekend.
Sue xx
“…first to be recognised by the OED wins…”
😁 Oh, it’s on melon farmer! 😉 Blogiversary, blogaversary, blogversary? 🎵Potatoe, potato. Tomatoe, tomato – let’s call the whole thing off! 🎵😋
Oh, it’s all gone a bit Ethel Murmen 🙂
Gee, 2005. The world, the Internet, and the technology has all changed so much hasn’t it. The first post was very written in a computer and I can remember (imagine?) the room as it was all those years ago. Wee Man was just a toddler… and now he’s an adult at university. I was 30 something back then, now I’m 50 something.
Thanks for the notes about the Med and how it plays out. On a related note, we visited France a few years back and were ‘politely encouraged’ to leave a shop as it was lunchtime and they were closing. TBH, I think actually having time for a meal at lunch is a good thing. I dare say a lot better for you than snaffling a shifty sandwich at your desk… or going without due to travel time for meetings. That’s something I do not want to go back to around working on site.
In terms of efficiency, I know I have brain fail about 11am if I miss breakfast and I’ve also ‘hit the wall’ creatively if I miss lunch. So, I might not be working if I’m eating, but if you want any work out of me, I need a break and a chance to recharge. FWIW, I’ve said to others that it’s okay to grab a cup of tea or a snack, and come back in a bit. The problem usually gets resolved more quickly when we work like that.
But, that’s just the sort of liberal, wokist guff that’s talking this country down, right? 😋 Feck off is it, Liz 😁
Congratulations on the ‘Blogiversary’ Lynn, good going that. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that you keep blogging for many more years too.
I must admit I often struggle to get what I want to blog about out of my head and into a post and therefore much of the stuff I want to write about is lost to everyday distractions. I suppose I’m guilty of spending too much time thinking about how to write rather than getting it into a post and hitting the post button.
Good to read that you’ve been recharging those ‘proverbial batteries’ and that some quality time spent walking and relaxing and kipping as turned down the tension for you.
Have a good week.
Thank you, Lotte. As with anything, there’s been occasional dry spells and thoughts of “why am I doing this?” which I guess is fairly typical. What keeps me ticking over after topics I want to write about or share to hear from others.
As to thinking over writing, keeping an ideas bank seems helpful. Helpful in that it gets thoughts out of your head, gives a space to explore then later, and means you have things to draw on when ideas aren’t forthcoming.
I wonder if I can get my GP to sign off on “Mr Jones would benefit from a paid 45 minute kip each day. It would improve his mental health, boost productivity, and while asleep; he’d be unable to annoy others.” 😁
I was reading something the other day about the essential difference between being merely proficient and having real expertise and success in a field was not a matter of innate talent (though that helps) but the hours of graft and practice you put in, and the magic figure of 10,000 hours was raised again. I don’t know how much seventeen years of weekly (and sometime more) posts amounts to in terms of drafting and writing. If you write as slowly as I do, you may already be there.
(There’s a story about a writer who after a solid day’s work announced “There, I’ve finished it.” “What, already? The book, or the new chapter?” ” No, the sentence. But it’s a good sentence.”
It’s almost certainly apocryphal, but I can’t remember the writer it was referring to.)
Perhaps taking an afternoon nap is nature’s way of telling you to – take an afternoon nap. Nature tends not to overcomplicate things the way amateur psychologists like to. There may be other explanations, general tiredness, not enough sleep, even coming down from a period of stress, and, currently, covid-related.
I find myself zoning out more often these days (add ‘old age’) often when reading or watching something. Which may be a sign it’s not grabbing my attention, or maybe because my body takes this evidence of relaxation as a sign to fully relax. (It’s even worse in a nice hot bath, and I’ve lost count of how many books have had an unexpected immersion as I fall asleep reading and they slip from my fingers. Luckily most of them are 50p charity shops books and I’m not reading from a Kindle.)
Enjoy your time off, Lynn, and recharge.
I bought a cucumber in this week’s shop, to see if goes bitter and unpalatable and has to be thrown out before the next PM does.
The writer joke feels like something Neil Gaimen or Terry Pratchett might say. Either, both, or maybe Eric Morecambe? 😉 I can see him now, turned sightly from the typewriter on the kitchen table, while Ernie stands next to him with a half mug of tea.
A friend said to me about skills in others, that a talent can help you find certain things easier, and as such, you put the hours in as it’s enjoyable/not a faff. I wonder how many of those 10,000 hours need to be learning moments or is it down to old school graft? I’ve seen adverts for ‘boot camps’ on certain IT skills, and I’ve wondered what folk get out of them.
As to me hitting that number, there’s about 940ish posts – ignoring the dozen plus abandoned drafts 🙂 – so some way to go… as you can tell by the howlers, iffy grammar, and other schoolboy errors. 🙂 But, jokes aside, if it’s a wider question about writing informally, there’s work, short stories, and other things that may top that number up. The catch is probably one of editing or quality control, in that both would give feedback on improving. Buuut, that’s not what this blog is about.
Regarding tiredness, sometimes, it feels right to just lean into it and not wonder. Just enjoy the forty winks and walking up 35 minutes later feeling refreshed. Perhaps my easy lean to tiredness explains showers rather than baths – the latter are far too comfortable! 🛁
Hopefully the new vegetable will last a little longer than the cucumber 😋 I, for one, welcome our salad overlords 🙂