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Life in a time of covid-19 - part 5: switching off




How to switch off.

Switching off is hard at the best of times, but as this is the furthest from the best of times that any of us has ever experienced, right now switching off is well nigh impossible. Or is it just me? Despite Life in a time of covid-19 - parts 1 to 4 and my advice to find our happy place; practise the ten daily gratitudes; and to be kind to ourselves, I find that I am not very good at practising what I preach. My mind jumps from one thought to another and my actions start and stop in a desperate attempt to keep up with my thoughts.

Maybe meditation ... or regular exercise ... or a good book ... or gardening ... or a walk with the dogs ... or baking ... or sorting through the freezers ... I'm doing it again: sprinting towards a finish line along a track filled with distracting potholes and all the time having to find different ways of not falling in. Or if these ways are unsuccessful, of actually falling in - I walk into a room and find I don't know why I'm there; precisely because by the time I get into the room, what I was thinking about that triggered my trip there has gone and I'm now thinking about something new. The anxious brain is a brain that doesn't have the capacity to function well. That functioning is no longer linear but multi-branched like a tree. And like a tree, if you start climbing upward from the trunk while panicking, you have no idea which branch you might find yourself at the top of. Getting back down is then hard. I know there are ways I could help myself ... not to climb out of a tree! I suffer from vertigo and like Tigger (in Winnie the Pooh) I would cling on, stuck and waiting to be bounced down ... but to recalibrate and make my thoughts more linear again.

Linear thinking gets things done and is a calmer state of being. There are two ways I can think of to attempt to achieve this. The first involves taking inspiration from your favourite superhero - don the cape or dream up an image of yourself with superpowers and slay all those distractions that bombard your thinking. Slam them down and hold fast to your intended course. Don't let them force you into enemy territory when that enemy is fear and anxiety and depression. Be strong and keep fighting. You know what those distractions are; limit them, push them down, and keep vigilant.

The second is more peaceful. It also requires effort, but is not so exhausting. The hardest part is the initiation - the beginning: it requires a pencil or pen and a piece of paper. Or if you like, a chalk board and chalk. Or a stick and some sand. Or lipstick and a mirror. Or the notes app on your phone. Write yourself a list. Yes, I hear you moan ... too obvious - tried that - didn't work - made me feel worse about myself. But ... !! .... please read parts 1-4 to see what the exclamation marks are for ... there are lists. And lists!

If you do a to do list you must remember the first rule of to do lists: don't talk about them. Talking about them is like talking about baby names before the baby is born; everyone will have an opinion. They'll criticise it; mock it; tell you it's unachievable. You'll sink into a dung-heap of disillusion, and overpowered by the stinking and pathetic ambition of each item on your list, you'll give up. If comparison is the thief of joy - see part 4 -  criticism is the thief of ambition. So don't share.

The second rule is to reign in your dreams. Avoid being too ambitious. Better for your list to have get dressed on it than spring clean the house; read a chapter of a book than finish War and Peace; plant a packet of seeds than redesign the garden; do five minutes of exercise than run the London Marathon in your back yard. You can build up to bigger things. Just don't aim too high too fast.

My list for today, for example, is full of small things -

  • do the washing
  • wash-up
  • finish this blog
  • nudge Littlest (who is no longer little but still Littlest in my heart) into completing her GCSE Drama coursework
  • plant the rose that is probably pot bound having been in its pot for over a year into the space I cleared for it yesterday
  • walk the dogs
  • go to work for a lunchtime meeting and to help out if it's busy there this afternoon - my prescription signing hand - see part 4 - is rested and ready after the weekend
  • make dinner - mince and tatties 
  • tackle the ironing pile

None of the items on that list is not achievable, but seeing it helps. If I follow that - if I tick each item off - I will have the sense that it has been a better day; a more managed day; a linear day, if you like, going down the list from one task to the next. If the dogs don't get a walk with me, or the ironing doesn't get done, I'll push those onto tomorrow's list and not worry. Tomorrow, I might start adding more lofty ambitions to my list but I'll keep them small. 

Finally - and to wind up today's blog and put the first tick on my list - Bertie Baggins wondered what I was doing yesterday




and came to have a look





You can almost see his thoughts behind those quizzical brows 'Well, I don't know, it doesn't smell like food - maybe it tastes li ...' *



*he didn't find out.  Fritillary and Quick Gardener 1 - Dog 0.

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