not the end but the start

I took a week off to get on with my side projects and get some perspective.
The long-awaited spring sunshine, a hangover-shaking run and a very pleasant coffee with friend R helped it has to be said.

On valentine's day I bought myself a little ammonite from the fossil shop on the grassmarket. It's 380 million years old and fits my palm when I feel it in my coat pocket. Everything, everything is so infinitesimally small by comparison and I find it comforting.. the cosmic brevity of human life.

Things have been more than a little fraught and manic recently, the last month, the last six months, the last seven years.. the last thirty if I'm honest.

I've always found it hard to focus on one thing, maybe it was easier to get lost in feeling like you are in thrall to multiple pressures rather than facing up to the real questions you need to ask yourself.

I've been thinking about them recently, trying to work out why I am the way I am and how I can strengthen the weaker parts of myself, the parts I have neglected, ignored and left unused but ultimately make me happier, more fulfilled, more myself. Ultimately I'm stuck with me for the duration, might as well make it bearable. No one else can do it for you.

I've been trying to teach myself to embrace the brave failures more than the safe easy wins (this blip being an example of the former I think). It's not about thinking the worst of yourself if you don't get it right, but the pleasure of letting go to the chaos of what happens if you try something new. Or more fundamentally making the choice to try something.. anything.. and not trapping yourself in a paralysing quagmire of self-doubts.

One of the bad habits I have is feeling the pressure of time: living life like some crucial exam I am cramming for and in mortal danger of being exposed as a worthless idiot if I fail. So while I took this week off I tried not to fear the closing horizon, to relax a bit and get some work done because I enjoy the projects I've set myself and not berate myself with the results. It didn't always go to plan. I had some lovely times with friends and family rather than the singular week of being a remote hermit philosopher I had originally envisaged, but I did get to gradually unwind and enjoy the heady freedom of time passing just because it can, letting it go and come back again like a tide to notice things in, not a river to race against.

Tomorrow I go back to work. And while it breaks my heart a little, I'm going to try to change the way I think about it. The pressure and distress it causes me is in some way a choice I am making to allow it to do so. And I can choose to not let it do so, not so much and not so often and not for so long. It's just a job at the end of the day, something I do to deliver the outcomes I want, not theirs.

Not every blip I write is like this or needs to be I know. I just felt like saying out loud what I was thinking.

[ my mushy psychobabble is optional, but do click the link. It leads to a lovely song from Peter Broderick. Found out about him via Jarvis's R6 show and am now slightly in love with his new album / website and it's not even out yet. His wee intro is a bit weird tho..]