know how she feels

We’re nearly at November and I’m not entirely certain where this year has gone – or quite what I’ve been doing with my time when not daily posting. I wish I could say that I’d been occupied by wonderfully interesting things, have been terribly productive and living my life to the fullest, but yeah, no.

SML has been maddening, excellent and exhausting in pretty equal measures and consumes a lot of my brain-capacity. I have a great team**, am working with my very fave people from the business and recently received a good-sized bonus and decent above-cost-of-living pay increase. Hrmmm – writing that makes me wonder why don’t I focus on those very excellent areas rather than the miserable, infuriating bits? But there have been many infuriating bits – mostly external consultant related (managing non or substandard delivery, intervening when they frequently attempt to steer us down a less-than-optimal path). I’m noticing that the more senior I become the more sexism I face on the regular. I’m glad I’m old now and give no (well fewer) fucks, because this kind of stuff would have destroyed me a few years ago. Still, it does all become really (really!) wearing.

Unfortunately both instagram and news reading have slowly crept back into my life. I think I’m managing instagram a little better this go ’round – and am delighted have found a couple of my very excellent blog pals of old. I still occasionally experience the “wow, I suck” comparison thing, but I try to remember that these are more and more pretty heavily curated views of people’s lives. The news however is not at all good for my psyche – and comments sections – what the hell am I thinking? In addition to both of those there’s been a lot of mindless internet scrolling and very little engagement with anything much – which I think is a symptom of the kind of shiftless state of mind – or possibly the cause?

All this combines to make well – I wouldn’t call it depression, because oh boy have we been there before – more a sort of malaise, world-weariness, mental exhaustion, lacklustre-ness?

Don made a genius point during the week that we’ve both become too focussed on holidays alone to relax and unwind. It’s rather like we mark time until we have an (infrequent) holiday, enjoy it tremendously and then take ages to settle back in to reality. As an example, it took me many (many!) months to shake off the post-holiday gloom after our trip to Japan earlier in the year. We’re off to Thailand in a couple of weeks which will be really wonderful, but we need to make a big effort to live our lives in between those times.

And so, self-care priorities (yes, here we go again). I’m going to try to show up here every day for the next month or so – perhaps this will engage my brain in non-SML ways. I’m going to try to do something (even if very tiny) creative each day – also to stretch the brain a little. Bessie and I were taking photos for her side-hustle business today and I had a few brilliant (if I do say so myself) ideas for placement and felt super-energised afterward. And yoga. And running (like less than 2km – just to get the heart rate up).

That should get me started.

xxx

** with one exception which will thankfully be resolved next week