Fourth time I use these lyrics for a title… not sure if I want to keep counting.
I’ve reached the point where I react passive – aggressively, but also quite emotional (not for anyone to see as I’ve turned off the camera), when someone questions / criticize my WiFi’s bandwidth. “You work from home, how does that work with such a crappy internet?” FUCK YOU! This video conference tool is the only one where I’ve got problems. And even knowing and stating this, I’m still so very close to tears of frustration. Fragile like a snowflake.
Today’s fragments of travel memories? This morning half asleep… a castle and a garden and I thought it was in Scotland, but when I was going through my photo folders I realized it wasn’t.
“Oh so long….”, are the next words in that song and I feel that’s a good description of where my mind is at the moment. We’re coming close to the one-year-anniversary of when I personally started to realize that this COVID pandemic might be serious. I might write about it next week. Or not. The date might make me even more emotional and sad than I already am these days. Because even though the days get longer and there is more sunlight and all, everything pandemic-related is dragging me down into gloomy spaces. I’m doing my best to crawl out of those and often manage to, but all in all it’s exhausting. Our government over here seems to drop ball after ball when it comes to handling the situation and it’s frustrating. I don’t really feel like making any kind of travel – even inside Germany – or activity plans for the foreseeable future, because I’ve lost all my trust in the idea that it will get better soon. I’m not fun to be around at the moment, I think.
Let’s do some kind of recap of this week in alphabetical order:
Books: I’ve finally started and finished “The Essex Serpent” which came with such stellar reviews, a bestseller and all that. Unfortunately nothing in the whole narrative managed to get me hooked. I liked some of it (characters, plots) alright, but it never reached more than a “mildly interested” stage. I also realized I’m not a fan of switching POVs every few paragraphs. This only happened in a few chapters, but it bugged me for some reason. After this I’m back to some easy light Regency Romance from Julia Quinn (who wrote the Bridgerton saga).
Dreams: I often don’t remember my dreams, but one from this morning stuck with me for a bit. Probably because it was so depressing. Together with friends I was on my way to a Frank Turner gig in the highschool gymnasium of my home town. And before we got there I was getting lost in a large timber framed house where all of a sudden Frank was supposed to play a house show. I never found that room though. So there was no Frank gig of any kind for me until I woke up. Bummer!
Fragments: In the half wake moments before I fall asleep or before I wake up and often also fully awake throughout the day, I remember fragments of trips to other places. Often not even with a clear memory or no clear reason why this memory pops up. But it’s one of the many things that puts me in a gloomy state of mind.
V&A, Dundee, 2019
Guitar: I feel like I’m making a bit of very slow progress. Not as much as I’d like. Still it’s progress…. I’m still determined to stick with it for a while longer.
Local Politics: Serious lack of motivation for that at the moment. I’ve got two committee meetings next week and already dreading it. It’s just all a bit much at the moment.
Meditation: I’m back at trying to keep at least this part of my “more healthy lifestyle” intention on track with a daily Calm meditation every morning. And sometimes a quick one when I feel like I need to calm myself down during the day.
Podcast: Frank Turner has been doing quite a few of those recently and that’s always a nice thing to listen to when I don’t want to dawdle on my phone or am too tired to read and need something to distract my thoughts from too much worrying. Check his Twitter for the links, if your interested.
Self-Doubt: …is a bitch. On Thursday I had to give a presentation about our teams work and I felt quite accomplished while doing it and for a while after. It took 90 minutes for self-doubt to rear it’s ugly head and start with the thoughts of where I might have said something wrong or could have done something better and…. Ugh. I really don’t like my mind sometimes. Reminder (curtesy of Frank Turner) “you’re not as messed up as you think you are…”
TV: I still can’t bring myself to watch any new (to me) series or movie. My mind can’t take it, obviously. Or maybe it could if I tried a bit more. But at the moment I’m still deep into another comforting rewatch of The West Wing.
Walks: With all the mental exhaustion (pandemic, work) I can’t really bring myself to do any kind of real workout. But I did go out for a walk around the blog in the morning three times this week, which counts for something, right? I need to do that early in the morning, because I won’t be motivated in he evenings. I plan to keep doing this for as long as I’ll be mostly working from home.
Work: Still so much to do. I still often feel overwhelmed and like I drop too many balls. I wish I had more support from my supervisor but he’s even more busy than me, so that’s not going to happen. I guess I just have to deal with it.
This almost became one of the few posts so far without a lyrical title. I even typed that I couldn’t be bothered to look up a song or bit of a song to match my current mood. But then it struck me. Duh! I do know a Frank Turner song for most of my moods after all.
It’s one of those times, where I feel and think I should / need to make some changes. Not necessarily here on the blog, but in my life in general. Less time on my phone / on social media. More sleep. Being more active. More or less a lot of… “more” and “less”. Less bad habits, more good habits. But also more forgiveness (for myself). More kindness (also to myself). Such a self-centred post, but hey, my blog, my self.
The alternative title for this post was “Mindful March”, because I do love alliterations. In lyrics and otherwise.
This morning I went for a walk before I had my coffee and before I checked my phone. Well, not quite, I had a quick glance on my phone to see, if there was anything really important / pressing. But then I turned the Forest app on and went outside in the dark, around 6.15 AM. Why so early? Because after a whole day of work (from home) and visiting with my mum and running errands I’m often too exhausted to do any kind of exercise in the evening. So I thought I try to get out and get some fresh air and some exercise in the morning. I listened to a 10% Happier podcast and sort of enjoyed myself. Go figure. I might do it again tomorrow.
I still spent too much time on my phone afterwards. Discussing museum events and other things 😉 on WhatsApp. Checking Facebook for reaction on my post in a fandom group. All that nonsense. I definitely want to do better in that regard tomorrow.
At least I stopped myself from buying any kind of junkfood today and also ate mostly healthy or at least what I consider healthy :-). Go Me.
For most of the time while I was typing this post, I was also listening in on our local Greens Meeting. Multitasking galore. But I feel like I’m backing the best use of my time this way to be honest. And I want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, so I need to hurry this up.
Going to bed to a reasonable hour is another of those little changes. Let’s see how long I can keep this up. And when I will actually go to bed tonight. I spent WAY too much time – unsuccessfully – to find a photo of Frank doing the Little Changes routine on stage. So here is a random one from the ones I’ve uploaded to my blog so far…
Frank Turner on stage, Dortmund, 11 February 2020
By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information
The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.
