Gratitude: Bridges, Arm Waving and Stuff

me and bridges and stuff

Another week has gone by with my poor little blog being all neglected, mainly because the energy I started out with on Monday morphed into spending Saturday morning lying in bed, propped up against my pillows feeling so exhausted that reading was difficult.

It's been tempting during the last month or so to get really frustrated with my body and feel that it has been failing me, defaulting back into that strange mindset where I see my body as not only totally separate from myself but clearly out to get me, with illness being it's principle weapon. Yes, I know that's clearly slightly barking and horribly unhealthy, and I much prefer living without this weird thought pattern. So I'm very grateful that when I've had the occasional moment of thinking 'bloody useless body, it's doing this just to make my life difficult' I've been able to take a step away from the self-loathing and realise that everyone gets sick sometimes, it's not a moral failing and that I'm doing the best I can, and that's OK.

I'm grateful for Havi's blog, about destuckification and being a harbour seal, pretty much every time I read it. This week she wrote about bridges, and kaboom! Instant clarity dose. Immediately I thought of Amsterdam, it's hundreds of bicycle festooned bridges and how much I enjoyed wandering around it and discovering the next street, the next wall plaque, the next museum, the next café. Could I have done that if I was trying to cross all the bridges at once, and then berating myself for being too lazy when I failed at doing something that that was impossible?

No, and I wouldn't have enjoyed my trip either. But that's what I've been trying to do, thinking that I need to be crossing every bridge possible, right now. Some things are going to have to go, especially the feeling that I have to hurry through everything I'm doing and that if I'm doing something I enjoy that's clearly a selfish indulgence and obviously I should be doing something else instead. (Personally I blame tedious homework for this attitude!)

Gratitude number three is that waving my arms around is helping me rejig my thought patterns. I was slightly cynical when I first read about Shiva Nata, particularly after some of my not-very-enlightening yogic experiences. But this is tagged as delivering hot buttered epiphanies and at this rate I'll have to buy a new butter knife. This deserves a whole post to itself, preferably written when I'm more or less sure than my brain is fully functional.

And my last gratitude? Laughter. Despite feeling a bit bleugh I've laughed a lot, enough to snort piggishly and spit drink on myself. I've just spent about five minutes working out how to write this last sentence because it makes a large part of me want to vomit, so I'll just have to get it out in a rush and then hope I don't besmirch my bedspread: to me, this is how I would define being blessed.

There! And know I've realised that even though this post is probably far too long, I have one more thing I'm grateful for: all of you who come here and read and leave me wonderful comments. I've appreciated your support so much recently. Thank you!

Gratitude: The Spoilt Cat Edition

Obviously, this is being written on a Saturday rather than a Friday, to the accompaniment of ferocious purring from the spoilt, silken pawed cat who has decided to curl up on my 'work' cushion and cosy fake fur lined hoodie. Yesterday I went out for pay day wine and nachos, my first social outing since New Year's weekend, a cause for gratitude in itself.

I'm also grateful that the post viral fatigue that laid me low last weekend and at the beginning of the week seems to be easing off, and I'm glad that I was able to resist my inner workaholic and tell myself that taking a few days off from MA work was not going to lead to me failing the course.

Gratitude item number three is that I've been getting on well with my work colleagues. Although I'm not the most extroverted person (on Myer Briggs personality tests I'm always on the I/E borderline), before this autumn I always took it for granted that I tend to get on well with most people, even if I occasionally had to bite my tongue. And then I started working at the school where none of the other staff would talk to me. I know that you 'should' say that I'm indifferent to other people's opinions of me, but being isolated like that was incredibly depressing and somehow dehumanising. So I've been doubly appreciating the gossipy, giggly re-entry into work place banter, where the works of SClub7 suddenly becomes a completely viable topic of conversation.

And there's the stunning glimpses of sunrises and sunsets I've had on my walks to and from work. One sunrise was this incredible fuchsia colour bomb, just what I need to perk myself up on the chilly trek home.

My last item is probably going to mark me out as a big cat scaring meanie, but seeing Stanley (white and ginger cat) running away from the clockwork mouse he was meant to be chasing...well, how could you not laugh?

Blank Friday

I'm grateful that someone was walking down our quiet suburban road at 4.30 am and saw that some crazed arsonist had set fire to our neighbour's car. Luckily, the horrendous scenario where the fire spread from that car to their car and our car, and then leapt the few feet to our houses, and then the houses that we share party walls with, exists only in anxiety seized imaginations.

Apart from that this week has been a bit...blank. I spent most of last weekend fighting off some sort of immune invasion that made one of my tonsils swell up and ulcerate. I can now say that I've actually coughed up a bit of tonsil, a (hopefully) unique experience that I was not particularly looking to tick off my before 30 list.

And then I've spent most of the last week in that kind of dazed post viral fog where your brain drifts off halfway through a sentence...like it just did there, and I find myself zoned out and staring into space...with no idea how to end this blog post...

Friday Gratitude

I started my MA this week. After having previous plans for postgraduate study go hideously wrong, I never thought I'd get the chance to do an MA because I just couldn't afford the fees and living costs. Even though I think it's going to be really hard to work full time and study part time (ok, I know it's going to be incredibly hard) I just glad to finally have to chance to try and pull it off.

Being able to walk into work - I might be a little chilly at first, but I'm getting exercise, looking at the sky, and most importantly do not have to sit on an aged, smelly rail replacement bus, which has condensation running down the inside and puddles of water in the aisle, whilst listening to fellow passengers talking about stabbing people up. (I also just had to share that little vignette of my week.)

Working in the same building as one of my favourite friends, and the resulting delicious lunch we had today. Chicken + bacon + avocado + gossip = happy me.

Gratitude

grateful for moments of fleeting beauty

Gratitude is kind of a loaded word for me, as is grateful. I know that really feeling gratitude can be incredibly powerful and life affirming, but I also have quite a lot of internal resistance to the word.

I would guess because the way that the concept of gratitude often seems to be used to try and negate or invalidate your own feelings, but telling or implying that you should feel bad about x that's happened to you because of y that's happening to someone else, which is clearly a lot worse.

This happened to me a lot as a young teenager, when I had terrible eczema. It was horribly painful, and I I had areas of permanently raw skin, and even just walking upstairs hurt, as semi healed cracks reopened. The embarrassment of taking my tights off in the changing rooms at school and having a whole load of skin flakes fall out too was almost as excruciating. (In the end it got so bad I couldn't do PE, which at least solved that problem.)

Inevitably well meaning people would try to console me by telling me it at least I didn't have another ailment or disease. The result that I still felt unhappy about my skin falling off, because, really, who wouldn't, but also felt vaguely guilty about the fact that I wasn't grateful for being afflicted by it, instead of something else.

So, having got that off my chest, I hope I've established that what I'm going to be doing is being grateful for things that have actually happened, rather than for disastrous things that haven't befallen me. Positive gratitude rather than negative gratitude if you will. There will be a list, every Friday, and I'd love it if you shared your positive gratitude too.

• Starting my new job and finding out that everybody seems a lot nicer than at my previous job
  
• Having a really easy journey home from training on Wednesday, despite the snow causing most of the trains to be cancelled
  
• Seeing a crazy beautiful pre dawn sky on Wednesday, where the whole horizon was tinged with pink and the bowl of the sky was an intense blue
  
• The snow covered landscapes I've seen from the train
  
• Quality cat snuggling time
  
• Having that fizzy excitement feeling about starting my MA next week
  
• An interesting publicity idea for my charity