Back To Shore

Lyrics: “Little Life” – Frank Turner, 2022

At the time I’m starting to type this I’ve been by the sea for about 30 hours in total. “By the sea” as in arrived at the apartment complex I’m staying in for the next few days. Not 30 actual hours on the beach. That have been only 3-4 hours yesterday and about 2 hours today. I’m still feeling rather relaxed and less anxious already.

Sort of randomly picked photo from today, to lighten the mood before the next – slightly heavier – paragraphs.

What do I have to be anxious about here, you might wonder? Or if not properly anxious, still pondering on? The annoying cold I mentioned in my last post? Turned out to be COVID after all. I took a third test on Thursday even though I wasn’t feeling any worse and to be honest I did not expect the 2nd line to appear. It was more a “double check and re-assure myself that everything is fine” test. The next one on Friday stayed positive. My symptoms were still mild and by now (Saturday) are mostly gone. On Thursday I was still fretting a bit if it would be a good idea to go on vacation while COVID positive. I wasn’t really worried I might get worse far away from home. I was a bit worried though about exposing others to it. But that’s what masks and keeping a distance are for, right? I don’t have to reiterate the lack of any kind of restrictions for mild COVID cases. So I donned a mask during all my groceries shopping for this trip. Whenever I was in closer contact indoors with other people. Even outdoors on the upper deck of the ferry. Whenever I step into the elevator here. I sent a mail to the hair saloon, where I had my hair cut on Wednesday to let them now that I might have been infectious. I still have no idea where I caught it. It might have been my coworker who was out with it from last weekend, but I hadn’t seem them since Wednesday and I thought the incubation period didn’t match up. But maybe it did.

No point now in fretting about where I caught it. Neither is there a point in worrying what this third infection for me by now might mean down the road. My anxious mind checked in with itself and noticed that I’m not spiralling down a well of worries about what it might mean for my long-time health. Or even just short-term, because the risk of something like Long COVID gets bigger with each time you catch it, doesn’t it?

Right now I’m mostly worried about not being worried enough.

I never said my mind makes a lot of sense. On the contrary. But I did indeed spent some time trying to figure out why I’m not as worried as I expected myself to be. During the height of the pandemic in 2020-2022 I was soooo anxious about it all due to my underlying health issues. Even when I got it the first time in October 2022, I was quite cautious and worried after and had a proper cardio check-up at my GP after six months to make sure there wasn’t any undetected issues. At the 2nd time I was off work sick for a few days, but mostly as a precaution and because I had a nasty cough. I wasn’t too worried over long lasting effects then. This time I’ve gone on vacation.

My perspective on it all has changed so much and for some reason I would have expected to either be more aware of those changes or to have a harder time getting my mind around those changes. On the other hand I should be grateful that I’m not an anxious mess about it.

There is more than enough other stuff to worry about, right? I’m kidding. Mostly. I’ve recently saw a recommendation for “Don’t Feed the Monkey-Mind”, bought it, brought it with me on this trip to read / work through it.

This is on the first few pages and I already felt so seen. Noticing and working on it is a first step, right?

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I haven’t done all that much yet in the aforementioned 30 hours. I’m sensible enough to pace myself and not try to do every relaxing thing I want to do in the first 48 hours. But I’ve listened to podcasts. I read. I slept (not well enough, but that’s the first-night-in-an-unfamiliar-bed effect). I read some more. I started over with an online photography class. I edited some photos. I had a walk. I took photos of the waves. I listened to some music. I managed to stay offline to some extent. I hope I can keep that up. Off to bed now and probably not back to write another post for a few days. There isn’t going to be all that much to tell…

Today is the first day of my two weeks off from work and of course the cold that I felt various symptoms of in the last few days breaks out full force. Ok, I might exaggerate a bit, after all it’s just a bit of everything: running nose, a bit of a cough, but all in all annoying! I want to enjoy my time off and not need to deal with those (minor) issues. When the symptoms didn’t disappear on the 2nd day, I did take a COVID test (or two) which came back negative. A coworker is out with COVID at the moment, because that fuck isn’t over, even though it’s hardly talked about anymore.

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Over the past few days / weeks maybe even I realized I’m in dire need of time off.

Time off from work, which is a bit stressful at the moment, especially for someone like me who tends to stress out a lot about stuff.

Time off from my digital world to some extent.

Time off from the news. I think and stress and worry and argue (with whom?) in my head way too much about some stuff. I have so many half-finished, ambiguous thoughts and ideas in my head. Terror attacks happening here in Germany not too far from where I live. Politicians and parties reacting to that in their usual “let’s see how can be more populistic” kind of way. Right-wing / populistic parties on the rise. About the war going on in Gaza. About all those other places in the world where horrible things happen right now and the western world isn’t really watching. The war, famine and flood in Sudan for (just one) instance. And yes, I’m aware of my privilege that I can just turn off the news for a few days.

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Taking time to properly read some good books and not just tear through some superficial (turned out to be sort of crappy) contemporary romances I picked from my to-read-list for some distraction form all those stressing-me-out thoughts mentioned above.

Taking time to be with myself for a bit. Introspection. Journalling maybe. Starting to read some of the self-care-books on my shelf. Taking time to listen in at some online “selfcare classes” offered through my place of work in a “Personal Growth Week” next week. Even though I’m off work, I can easily access those classes, and I plan to do.

Taking time for some crafts. Doodling. Photography and photo-editing.

Taking time to listen to music and podcasts and maybe audiobooks.

Where am I planning to do all that? Here….

Leaving on Friday morning for a whole week. I’ll be staying in apartment complex less than 5 minutes from the beach. There is a village / small town near-ish by and of course some restaurants and such all around. It is a tourist destination after all. I don’t plan to make much use of any of that though. I feel like hibernating, not necessarily in my apartment, but on my blanket on the beach.

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This morning, I made a basic (aka boring) meal plan and from that compiled a long list of groceries I plan to bring. I know I could buy some of them there in the supermarket when I arrive, but I’m a bit sceptic (aka worried) about prices and availability. A meal plan also for the reason, that about 10 days ago I gave “intermittent fasting” another try. I did a version of the 14:10 variant for a while last year, where you either miss breakfast and/or don’t too late, so that you fast for 14 hours and only eat within the timespan of the other 10 hours. I lost a bit of weight back then, which was nice but not the motivation as such. At some point the evening snacking habit came back and I gave up on that strict schedule.

A friend recently mentioned doing the 5:2 variant at the moment and I looked into that and a bit on a whim started Saturday two weeks ago. You basically eat normally on 5 days a week at whatever time suits you and on two day you fast as in only consume about 500 calories. Which sounds like not much and it is indeed not much. You need lots of liquid on those days. And / or burn some more calories, which I did on my 3rd fasting day (last Saturday), so I could eat a bit more.

Still not much. Is that cheating? I don’t know. I don’t care, it works for me. I’ve lost about 4-5 pounds since I started about 10 days ago. Admittedly, I also paid more attention to what I eat on the regular days and not overindulge on those either, so that might have contributed to the quick weight loss as well.

I thought about taking a break from that for my vacation by the sea, but then thought better of it and am planning to continue and make the switch from Saturday/Tuesday as fasting days to Monday/Thursday, because that are days I’m usually working from home, which feels like good days because work distracts me during the day. Fasting at the office feels like too much trouble at the moment. Saturday isn’t a good day for it either, but I started on a Saturday and my office / work-from-home days were irregular since then as well, so I need some time off to switch to a 5:2 schedule easier to handle in the long run.

Another super laid back weekend to recharge from another super busy week. Or if not actually that busy but sort of stressful for me personally; work-related and such with so many balls to juggle and the constant fear of dropping some or all of them. As I’m prone to do, I also worried too much over nothing, which of course stressed me out as well.

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In a previous life – so it seems – I used to unwind with watching TV shows on a streaming service or DVD. A variety of TV shows and many many episodes. These days I can’t really be bothered to start anything new. Nothing seems to catch my interest and to be fair, if I have to choose between reading a fictional story or watching a fictional story, the book always wins. Sometimes that makes me feel like a bit of an outsider because a lot of people seem to pick the TV over the book and they have things to talk about and I can’t join in because I’m not up to date with any of the new / hip shows.

The impulse to want to belong and the impulse to feel weird (wrong, outcast) if I don’t, is still going strong here. But I notice it much earlier and I’m mostly able to handle it and not beat myself up too much about it. So, Go Me!

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But I still often I like to have some moving images on a screen in the background when I’m doing other things like having lunch / dinner (I know: not the most healthy habit) or when I scroll through social media or the news or do random personal admin stuff. Again I know, not the most productive, because multi-tasking is a myth. This desire for a background noise led to me having re-“watched” the complete boxset (DVD, remember those?) of “The West Wing” these past few months. Since that ended I did try some other shows, but nothing felt really interesting to me and I seriously considered to just start over with “The West Wing”. At that point I remembered there used to be a accompanying podcast: “The West Wing Weekly” which ran from 2016 to 2019. I think Netflix started airing the show a bit previously? I hadn’t listened to any of it before and thought that might be a better use of my time, even though I realized multi-tasking while listening works even less.

But I definitely enjoy the “Behind the Scenes” insight from Joshua Malina (Will Bailey) and his chatting with his old friend and co-host Hrishikesh Hirway and of course the occasional guest on the podcast; fellow actors, writers, costume designers and such. I’m only at episode 1.08 so I’ve still got a long way to go. It’s been so interesting to hear how the real political Washington DC reacted to the show back then (25 years ago!). They loved it – at least the Democratic Clinton government did – and the cast and crew quickly got all kind of access and invitations. Joshua quoted John Spencer (Leo McGarry), who often used to say “You wouldn’t get that on a cop show” and he was right. Bless his soul.

But the West Wing cast and crew also early on got in touch with a lot of other public service organisations. And to bring this all full circle (sort of): in one of the episodes so far they mentioned Melissa Fitzgerald (C.J.’s assistant Carol), who after the show had ended moved to D.C. to start working for a Veteran Non-Profit Organisation. I had heard that before, but then I googled her again and imagine my delight when I read in the organisation’s news section that a “Behind the Scenes” book about the TV show and all the good public causes the actors and crew support since had been released. Just days ago! 

That will keep me occupied for a while, I guess…

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Some of the podcast episodes made me think a lot about how the people who work in politics are portrayed in such a good light on this show. On purpose, because this show was also meant as a love letter for public service. We need people who want to do those jobs and I don’t necessarily mean the politicians as such but all the staffers, who work long hours on a governmental wage. Who do this because they want to make their country / the world a better place.

I thought about how these days many people probably don’t have a positive view on people working for any level of any government. The distrust in government and polarization of society has reached such a toxic level. We all know why: Russian and Chinese bots, Elon Musk, the Trump-cult in the US… I thought about all the staffers who might join government if Trump wins. They probably also claim that they want to make the world a better place. The thing is, that their idea of a better place and mine are probably diametrical and that scares me quite a bit.

Ugh, this is a gloomy note to end a post on. Can I turn this around? Less than two weeks till I’m back by the sea for a week. Even less than that till I’ve got time off work. I can’t wait. 

Yes I know me being by the sea is only an upside for me and not you reading this, but at least there will be more ocean / beach / dunes content (on my Insta and here) then and that’s hopefully something to look forward to…