Back To Shore

I’m sure I mentioned, that the biggest change the pandemic has caused in my life is, that I’m even more “high strung” than I used to be. I was usually “high strung” in the way, that I worried a lot about how other people see me. How they react. Worried that I say / do something stupid. All those kind of things. At times that was borderline stressful, depending on how well I felt in general.

The first few weeks of lockdown I was very stressed, when I was out and about in shops and all. Worried about people with or without masks getting too close, worried about touching surfaces and all that. I was in medium to high – level alert mode ALL the time when I wasn’t at home. This morning I started writing a version of this post and explained how this has changed, because on the few more occasions I run into other people by now, I don’t worry all that very much anymore. Everyone is wearing masks (more or less correctly) and keeping a moderate to safe distance. I only spent time in this medium distance to masked people for less than 5 minutes in a check out queue or similar moments. There is no real reason to worry. But there still is an underlying low level alert mode going on, which often is unnecessary, because… see above. And I thought I had that in check. The whole post I wrote this morning was about that.

This afternoon I met a friend for a walk / hike for the first time in… ever and we had a lovely time catching up in person. We ended our fun afternoon out with sitting down in the outdoor part of a cafe / restaurant. We waited till the waiter had wiped down our table, all the staff were wearing masks correctly. We were brought track & trace forms to fill out. All in line with the regulations. Could the table have been spaced more apart ? Probably, but it was outdoors, so I wasn’t worried. Or I thought I wasn’t. I didn’t feel worried. My nervous system seem to disagree though.

We hiked from about 2 – 4. When you’re active there is no stress level recorded. We sat down at the cafe from 4.30 till 5.45. My baseline in the Garmin stress level is about 30-35 these days (which I consider high compared to regular days last year). This was almost off the chart! It has reached those levels the first week I was back at the office and at other occassions these past few months. But I really thought I had reached, you know… low level alert mode. I guess, not. I’m longing back to those days when that amount of stress was caused by things like “travel”. To a work / Frank Turner event in March 2019 for instance. Because that all was mostly “happy stress”. This… I hate this!

On a happier note: I plan another day trip to the sea tomorrow. The weather seems perfect for it. Dry, sunny with a few clouds, 17 °C. There won’t be hoards of family on a bathing vacation and I hope I’ll find a space to just be and breathe for a while. Bring my stress levels back down 🙂

Sleep | I don’t sleep as much or as well as I would have loved to now that I’m on vacation. I’m glad that I fall asleep quickly these days and no, I don’t want to investigate how much of that has to do with Richard Armitage reading Regency Romance (3 diverent ones on rotation) lulling me to sleep or if I’m just ready to konk out minutes after I lie down. I rarely recall any dreams, at least not longer than for the first few dozing moments of waking up. The one I had yesterday morning was quite vivid though and stayed with me. Because it was equally pausible – yes, I’m a forgetful klutz – and highly improbable. Because I dreamt I was travelling somewhere. Travelling. Remember that? I was on my way lots of luggage; big suitcases and several smaller bags and by the time I got off the bus at my final destination I had lost every single piece of luggage. In the end I realized I hadn’t even packed my wallet. Analyize this, Dr. Freud.

Talking about sleep: I was tempted to lie down for a nap this evening, before Felix’ Friday (All Request 4. Yay!) but I was afraid it would absolutely screw up my sleep pattern. So I’ll soldier through and try to go to bed early-ish today.

Daily Digest

Read: Finished “The Heir Affair” (It was nice to meet familiar people from part 1, but the plot was utterly ludicrous, so… meh!) | Some magazines before I throw them out. Read, Edited and Wrote: Our Local Greens platform for the next elections in September. Ugh. So much still do to, so little time. Watched: Same old vintage Gilmore Girls during meal time.  Watched & Listened: “All Requests 4” (Felix Hagan on Facebook) Listened: Besides that, mostly the Peaceful Piano collection on Spotify.

A thistle in my Mum’s front yard. I miss Scotland.

Title lyric from “I Am Disappeared”, Frank Turner, 2011

Novelty | I finally found a new theme I like well enough to actually pay for the PRO version, if only to remove the opacity from the header picture. I will tweak other bits as well, but not right now as I need to look into all the options first. And I really want to write this post first. I started writing a post yesterday and the day before and never followed through.

In Circles | Almost 11 years ago on the old blog (whatever form or title it had back then) I wrote a post titled “Life’s Like A Jump Rope”. It was basically a long post about the ups and downs of everyday life. I picked that lyric as a title, because I was deep in a Blue October phase back then. Like DEEP! I’m too lazy to go back and quote some of what I wrote back then. With all the “Frank Turner lyrics speak to me” fangirling I’ve have been doing over the last seven years, I somehow totally blanked out that years before Frank, there had been this other band – Blue October – who had some lyrics I felt similar about. For the first time ever actually! It blew my mind back then. It still does now in a way. I’ve changed and moved on and moved past those troubled lyrics from back then. More or less anyway.

I hadn’t thought about this band for years until … Frank Turner and Jaret Reddick mentioned them in this week’s edition of “Back To The Metal” their weekly Instagram chat. Just briefly and in passing, but Frank stated, that their had been plans to do a few shows together with “Blue October”. And for obvious reasons I freaked out a tiny bit, in a good way. The two only acts who ever made / still make me feel understood and “seen” in all my emotional mess on a lineup together? Wow! I know even if there weren’t a pandemic which cancels all touring plans, this probably would have happened far away from me in Texas, USA, but still… Wow!

Yesterday I finally bought all the Blue October albums I missed since I somehow forgot about them and I like a lot of the newer material too. Definitely on my “to watch” list for… whenever real gigs will be happen again.

Overdue | I’ve been a member of our city council and a few council committes for many many years now. Council and committee meetings come with a lot of paperwork. Reports, proposals, bills, the budget and everything else that needs to be discussed and decided on. A few years ago there was an option to go digital, but I didn’t back then for a variety or reasons. I will definitely go digital after the next elections in September. Anyway, about two years ago I started letting slide sorting all this paper into the various folders in my shelf. Because those folders and trays in my shelf were full already. And once you stop sorting and postpone it… it get’s harder and harder. I knew most of the stacks of paper could be thrown out after all this time (as we get everything in digital form after the year’s over anyway). It still needed to be looked at before shucked out and there were so many stacks on my livingroom floor and kitchen table by now. It crossed the border to messy-land some time ago. So this afternoon I finally sat down and looked at everything and shucked. That’s the remainder of this year’s documents I need to keep for a while longer.

There was four times this on the kitchen table and two big stacks (like 10 times this) in my livingroom. Not anymore. Finally! Did I mention yet that I have a procrastination problem? I do. Obviously. There are still various folders, trays and stack on my shelf to sort and shuck – most even older than the stuff I got rid of today. But I’ll keep that for another weekend or vacation time, I guess.

I rewarded myself with icecream after I took the second big box of paper to the recycling. I defintely think I’ve earned it.

“9 o’clock shivers” | That’s what Frank Turner calls the feeling he gets, when’s at home after a tour and the usual time to go on stage comes around in the evening. For the last 14 weeks Frank played 12 live stream shows to support independent venues and two for his crew and and himself. He had his reasons to stop that for now or for ever, though I assume there will be more live streams shows in the future. There definitely will be “Show 2500” in a few weeks. Socially distanced on a stage with the Sleeping Souls, which is soooooo cool! I miss the guys and it’s going to be fun to see them all together again, even though it’s only on a screen. Anyway, it’s Thursday evening, a few minutes before the usual showtime and and I feel… weird, that for the first time in over three months, I won’t see Frank live on my TV. I won’t be chatting with gig buddies, familiar names and friends at the chat.

I’ve got time to finish this blog post though 🙂

(Blog title are lyrics from “Like A Jump Rope”, Blue October, 2009)