The enforced rest day yesterday has helped. Now I am in that weird place between feeling well enough to get on with life, and not being ill enough to give in and lie in bed and stare at the ceiling. This is the part where I get frustrated and crabby. My eyes are still too blurry to draw or write much, and with no ability to concentrate, beguiling the hours with a good book is out of the question. That is if I had the ability to decide what to read, but when I'm like this, I can't settle on anything for very long without getting bored and grumpy.
This a danger zone for me. I made a list of how I was feeling in my journal, and it was full of angry, judgmental adjectives. Any moment now, I am going to pick up a self-help book and start constructing a new list of goals - for which, read OUGHTS!!! It was OUGHTS that got me in this mess, but my reflex response is to pile a few shiny new ones on the heap that is crushing the life and energy out of me.
My life would be so much better if I could only: be more disciplined/ do an hour of yoga and mediation every day/ write morning pages/ join a life drawing class/ get thinner/ go swimming/ have a twice-weekly face-pack/ learn to dance the salsa/ get 'The Seventh' published/ spend a week in a luxury Greek hideaway with Neil Oliver etc etc etc.
You've been there too, I know. (Well maybe not the Greek Neil Oliver fantasy, but you know what I mean.)
Right now, what I really need is to give myself a break. Be nice to myself. A little loving-kindness, forgiveness, acceptance would go a long way. But doing that goes against 40 years of habit. And it's a hard habit to break. And just now, I can't think how to start.
Maybe try one of your 'oughts', don't deny them totally. So say try to do 15 mins meditation per day and see how you get on.
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