Category: Self isolation

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Trying Not Trying

After I’d submitted my post yesterday, I realised I wasn’t happy with what I’d posted. At some point I’d slipped into the idea that my self-reflection (or wallowing, as it can also be called) was a kind of addiction. But this buys into my brother’s idea that I get a kick out of being miserable, and want to bring everyone down to my own level, as though unhappiness is a choice that I make and that I can stop any time I like – well, okay that does make it sound addictive, I can see where that idea came from. But it’s not quite what I meant, and I don’t want to be misunderstood, and I want to apologise to anybody who has to deal with the consequences of a chemical addiction, either their own or somebody close to them, and I’m sorry for any hurt or offence I may have caused by that analogy.

I know when I had the thought that triggered that post, the evening before, it made a different kind of sense, and it seemed very clear (as they always do), but now I just can’t think what it could have been.

Now I’m sitting here and I thought everything would come, but it isn’t. Staring out of the window at the early morning street, which seems no more or less busy than it has at any time in the last four months while I’ve been doing this regularly.

I sat on the bed this morning as I always do when I’m getting up, and noticed that although I was only inches away from the mirror, I wasn’t looking at it. I’ve said a lot about that mirror recently, but, as I realise now, I don’t actually look at it. Mostly I look at the floor, or I don’t look anywhere. Looking at my own reflection is a conscious choice, and mostly I choose not to. I remember sitting and looking at myself one morning – I think it was at the therapist’s suggestion, it feels like a long time ago, when we were still meeting face to face, but I also remember writing about it – I think the idea was to encourage compassion for myself, but what I remember was that it made me cry uncontrollably – not because I didn’t like the way I looked (although of course I don’t) but because of the misery and the pointlessness and emptiness in my eyes. I haven’t tried it again since, and I didn’t try it this morning.

Does accepting myself mean accepting all my failures? Does redefining ‘failure’ as ‘a learning experience’ make any sense if there’s nothing new to learn, or nothing that you can see and implement other than: ‘stop trying’? I’ve tried to make myself a ‘better’ person and it highlighted my faults and made me stressed and anxious and even more self-hating than I already was. Now I’ve stopped trying I’m probably becoming a worse person, but I’m trying not to care so much.

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Little Failures

Years ago, I was thinking of the things I wanted to exclude from my life – as if I could wish them away – and came to the conclusion that they boiled down to: loneliness and fear. Since then, I have come to appreciate solitude, and recognise that for me, fear (like hell) is mostly about other people. These last three months of lockdown have thrown that into a clear perspective for me. Now I have to start thinking about how I negotiate going out and interacting in the future – returning to the ‘real’ world. I’m in no hurry, though I have been to one socially-distanced outdoor yoga class (I found an excuse not to return last week), and I’ve been semi-invited to coffee at an outdoor café with members of a group I used to meet regularly. Maybe I’ll go – if the weather’s okay. I don’t know yet, it’s a couple of days away.

Looks sunny this morning, but I won’t be rushing to the beach – even in a normal summer, I avoid it at weekends. Be nice if I can sit in the garden though.

I wrote yesterday about the big things that have been missing from my life: professional career, satisfactory relationship; financial independence and writing…That last one is weird, I don’t know how to explain it, because clearly at the moment I am ‘writing’ every day, and if I say ‘writing success’, it will sound as though I mean mega sales, but that’s not what it’s about. Nor is it just ‘completing a book’, because I’ve done that, and got as far as self-publishing – which impresses some friends who don’t realise how easy it is. More sales would help, of course, but probably wouldn’t encourage pride in what I’ve written.

Well, as often happens, my writing is taking a different turn from what I’d planned this morning. I was going to set aside the big failures – the ones I have to live with and let go – and talk about the little ones that constantly trip me up – the daily ones that grind me down, and are probably responsible for my inability to achieve any of the big ones. But now I’ve started to write my mind has gone into a fog of wordlessness about all that shit. Although I’m slowly coming to recognise them more and more clearly, I still can’t see a way of explaining them without being misunderstood. And that’s part of the problem – my inability to explain myself in ways that make sense to anyone else. That’s one of the ‘little failures’ that I’m talking about. What else? Inability to make decisions; fear of expressing opinions that other people might disagree with; forgetfulness (the big one); inability to absorb instructions and implement them; conversely, inability to give instructions to others; untidiness and inability to self-organise; lousy time management; procrastination; lack of motivation, lack of empathy; all that stuff. In other words: dyspraxia.  

Inability to see any value, or take any pride, in anything I do.

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Poorly cat

Just dropped Miko at the vet’s. It’s all social distanced, I’m not allowed in so the procedure is: I ring the bell; someone comes and unlocks the outside porch door then goes back behind the second door; I open the door and put her basket down in the porch, then close the outer door again and they come back through the inner door into the porch and pick her up from there. I have no problem at all with any of that, I think it’s perfectly sensible and reassuring.

When she had her six month check-up in January, she had lost weight from the previous one last summer. I wasn’t too concerned, the same thing happened last year and I put it down to the fact that I was away for a fortnight over Christmas and New Year, and she has a habit of going on hunger strike when her routine is disturbed, even though she’s used to the friend who comes and feeds her.

They recommended I bring her in after three months for a free weigh-in with the nurse, and gave me an appointment for April. That, of course, was delayed and eventually cancelled. The vet rang me for a chat, she asked if I had or could borrow any bathroom scales so I could weigh her myself, which I don’t. Then she said they aren’t doing nurse appointments at the moment, but I could have a socially distanced appointment with the vet, and to call if I had any concerns, stressing that they have a duty of care towards Miko, but I was sure she was fine and that it could wait till her 6 month check in July – I knew I would have to pay in full for the vet appointment, whereas the nurse appointments and 6 month check are included in my care plan, but that wasn’t the main reason, it was more just because I didn’t want the hassle.

But last week, in the hot weather, she more or less stopped eating altogether. She’s always been very picky about her food, very rarely clearing her bowl. Her normal routine is two pouches of wet food a day, one in the morning and one evening, and a bowl of biscuits always available. But a few weeks ago when the weather got warm I began spacing her feeds out a bit more, so that she was having half a pouch four times a day. Then it got so that I would put the fresh food in her bowl, she’d come running and eat a mouthful or two, then leave the rest.

I called the vet on Friday and they had an appointment free that afternoon, so I took her in to be weighed and she has lost 500g since January – and a quarter of her weight since last summer.

They booked her in for a senior health check this morning, including blood and urine tests. I was going to write about how I’m feeling. Maybe tomorrow.

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Parallels

Staring at the screen trying to think of something ‘nice’ to say. Growing sense of discomfort all week, not just because of the heat – which even I have to admit tipped over into ‘hot’ yesterday – might even be in the red today (thirty plus), if the forecasts are correct.  

Looking back, I often put forward my travelling times in 2012 and 2013 (counting my sojourn in Prague as a continuation) as a happy time of my life, but it wasn’t always idyllic. Partly that was because of the irritations and frustrations of planning and organisation: finding accommodation; co-ordinating with friends and family I was hoping to visit; deciding routes; booking tickets; etc etc. There was also a degree of guilt over the pointlessness, self-indulgence and irresponsibility of what I was doing (although the blog posts I wrote at the time did lead – eventually – to the completion of ‘Single to Sirkeci’, and there’s still potential in there for another book – or two). The third source of stress was the knowledge that the life I was living would have to end at some time and I would be forced to return to the life I’d run away from – or some hazily understood and recognised version of it.

Perhaps you can see where this train of thought is going. There are clearly parallels between the feelings I had then, and the ones I’m having now. Daily life has its irritations and frustrations – though not quite as dramatic as working out where I’m going to be sleeping tomorrow night, and where travelling to after that. I’m certainly feeling guilt over the way I spend my days, the worthlessness of my life and the activities (or inactivity) I engage in, although that seems more forgivable now I’m officially ‘retired’, ie I’m no longer obliged to look for paid work in order to pay the bills (I do feel guilt over that in itself, but I’ve learned to come to terms with it). The third point, of course, is uneasiness about what happens next, moving back into a life of having to engage with the external world more directly after this period of quiet, solitude and reflection, of pleasing myself.

I look inside myself to see if I’m any better prepared than I was when I came back in 2012, or from Prague in early 2014. Every morning I check myself and think: nope, I’m still me, no sign of any miraculous transformation yet. I poke around in the past and I think I’m gaining a better understanding of who I am and the factors that made me, but still can’t find any way of unravelling the threads and exorcising the demons.

I didn’t want to write anything this morning. One of those mornings when it didn’t seem possible to find anything ‘nice’ to say. However, as I approach my quota, I’m not too dissatisfied with what I have written.

Over three months of this ‘lockdown diary’, I must have written about 45,000 words. Maybe there’s something in there worth saving.

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Same Old Same Old

Every day starts the same, same old stuff to get out of bed to.

Same old effort to justify myself to myself, to occupy myself – my time, hands, part of my brain that doesn’t need to be taxed too much. Just ‘do’ it, whatever ‘it’ is, get on with it. Going through the same old pointless motions. Trying to manage the thoughts in my head. Trying to drag out words from the back of my brain, words that never add up to anything, words that no one wants to read. Piling them up inside my computer, words upon sentences upon paragraphs and on and on, words that might last forever out in cyberspace but will never be consigned to ink on paper.

Trying not to think.

But when there is something else to do, something else I need to do, or feel I ‘should’ do, it’s even worse. Then I panic, because I don’t want to be dragged out into the world.

What a sorry specimen I am.

Yesterday I knew to expect a parcel delivery. But I ate breakfast in the garden anyway. And when I came inside there was a note through the door from UPS saying they were sorry they’d missed me, but the parcel is now at Costcutter on Such-and-such street, and if I don’t collect it within ten days it will be returned to the sender. Bugger.

It’s a big heavy parcel, too. So I’ll have to take the car – I had a similar one last year and tried walking with it, and wished I hadn’t. But the car hasn’t moved since I got it back from its MOT right at the start of lockdown, in late March. What if it doesn’t start? Then I’ll have to call the guys from the garage. When can I pick up the parcel? Not till tomorrow (ie, today now). I couldn’t spend 24 hours worrying about whether or not the car would start. So I had to drive it somewhere.

That took effort. But it did start. Which was a relief, because what if it hadn’t, and I had to go through the same conversation with the garage guys that I have every spring about the van (which as far as I know is still immobile. I spoke to them about the MOT a couple of weeks ago, and they confirmed that it doesn’t need to be done now till December, but although there are two sets of keys, and they have one from when I asked them to get it going pre-lockdown, and I have the other, I can’t get into it because they have the only one for the garage.)

But the car started. And I drove it about the back streets for a while, but all the roads are a mess because they’re laying 5g cables everywhere. So today I will have to think of a different route to go and collect my parcel.

And for this I’m getting wound up. I am a wreck.

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Socially-Distanced Yoga

After I finished blogging yesterday, I got a text from my yoga teacher to say that she was holding a socially-distanced class in the park in the evening and would I be interested? So I answered yes, and then spent the whole day stressing over the fact that I’d committed myself to going out and interacting with other people.

I went early, thinking I could go to the seafront to take pictures or take something in the park, because I’m rapidly running out of anything photogenic in my garden for my daily Facebook photo post, but I saw them all sitting around when I got there and couldn’t think of a way to avoid joining the group. We sat around for quite a while chatting because we were waiting for the last two people – as it turned out they hadn’t been able to find places to park. I was surprised at how busy the park was, and I presume the beach (two minutes walk further on) must have been the same. There were seven of us in the end: the teacher, her daughter, me and four others, two of whom I knew by sight, but I wasn’t sure about the last two, though presumably I’ve met them before. I don’t know any of them very well, and I didn’t say very much.

I thought it might just be a short session, but no, it was the full hour and a half, including lying down at the end. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy it – though I felt a bit awkward during the chanting (given that there were other people around, although we were in quite a secluded part of the park). I’d dressed in my usual leggings, tee shirt and sweatshirt, thinking it would be colder later when I had to walk home, I felt a bit overdressed at first by comparison with some of the others, but it did cool down before the end so I was grateful for that.

I went telling myself that I always come back from the sessions in normal times with a smile on my face, the five-minutes-just-round-the-corner community centre sessions. I didn’t feeling exactly elated walking back from the park, but thinking about it now, I’m glad I did it and I guess I’ll go again.

I was very unsettled all day yesterday, I suppose partly in anticipation. Today all I have to anticipate is taking the bins out and Zoom meditation for an hour at seven. I need to go to the health food shop to see if they have whole wheat flour – my last loaf had to be all white because that’s all I could get in Tesco. And I thought I’d go and check if the florist is open, as they sell garden plants too – in normal times – and my sad garden needs something to brighten it up. But who knows how many of those small shops will be opening again?

So maybe I’ll go out today – or maybe not.

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Jigsaws

Said a painter called Vincent Van Gogh,
‘My surname sounds just like a cough!
It causes such trouble,
because foreigners struggle,
and some of them don’t even know.’

Linda Rushby, 21 June 2020

Well, I’ve got that off my chest.

Very late this morning. I woke about the usual time but haven’t been able to get anything in gear so far.

Lay in bed thinking; ‘Why do I bother to do anything?’ Exercise, meditation, shower, blog… nothing particularly unpleasant about any of them, all likely to make me feel better, if anything, but I couldn’t be arsed. Who knows, let alone cares, if I don’t do those things? Only me. I am in sole control of how I start my Sunday morning – any morning – the only obligations are the ones I left off the list: feed cat and open the door to let her out, and even if I missed those for once, there wouldn’t be any sanctions, but I would feel pretty mean.

The sun is shining – once those things are completed (and I’m currently on the last one), I can sit outside and eat breakfast, and then the day is my own. Any day is my own. What shall I do with this one?

I need a new project – all the ones currently on the go are beginning to bore me. Maybe this passion for crochet is waning, and I need to find a new one. Current best guess is jigsaws – I started one on Friday. Some weeks ago, when lockdown was well bedded in and I was responding by frivolous online shopping, I ordered three jigsaws from ads on Facebook, none of which have yet turned up. Having cleared the kitchen table of the card-making/paper-crafting stuff which had been there since the beginning of March, I thought that maybe if I started doing one of the many jigsaws I’ve acquired in the past and never done, that would speed them on their way. I chose the most recent one, which is of Van Gogh’s painting of the café terrace at night – which is what inspired me to pen the limerick above,

Of course, I could also put my energies into something practical and useful, like tidying the study. I started on that yesterday – emptied a whole box of old photos and albums and stuck them on a shelf, then put the box in the recycling bin – which sounds good, but I only put that particular box in here last week some time, prior to that it had spent some time in the hall, after I took it out of the Chinese cabinet in the front room so I could clear away some of the bags of yarn and half finished crochet projects. Okay, slow progress, but it is progress.

Yesterday I ordered a replacement stylus for my turntable. When that comes, I can start playing my old records again, maybe transfer them to the PC. There’s a project. Hope they’re not too damaged.

I could even sort them into alphabetical order.

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One Day

Second poem from yesterday, as mentioned last night on Facebook – written yesterday evening just before I went to bed (I’d had a night cap of Becherovka with my hot chocolate, and was quite merry).

One day I’ll leave this house,
walk to the bus stop,
catch a train to the city,
or anywhere else,
under the sea,
and into the sunrise.

Or go like a snail,
with my home on my back,
to the forest, or the marshes,
or into the sunset.
To friends, and memories, and new beginnings,
talking and laughing and dancing and singing.

But today I am here,
and here is my home.

Linda Rushby 19 June 2020

What follows is a few lines I jotted into my notebook after I got into bed – they’d popped into my head as I was getting ready for bed, and sort of follow on, but are a bit different. It was actually after midnight at the time, so I added today’s date.

While there are:
Books left to read.
Words left to write.
Waves to listen to.
Gulls to fly over me.
Songs left to sing.
Wine left to drink.
Places to return to.
New ones to find.
I am glad to be here.

Linda Rushby 20 June 2020
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Non-attachment

What will I write about today? Therapy day. What will I talk about? I have two blog posts to read out, at least.

Is anything shifting inside my mind? If it is, it’s probably due to the lockdown, which has given me peace and space to be by myself. But it can’t last forever. How will I cope when I have to start engaging with the world again? Well, I have some control over that. When I first moved here I felt I needed to get out and make contact with other people. Now that seems less important. When I was a child I was told that shyness and introspection are things to be conquered, but these days I can see my self-containment as a gift. Am I getting any better at managing my response to and interactions with other people when they do happen? I suspect not, but I’m more comfortable about avoiding them, and less concerned about ‘missing out’. I can look back on memories of happy times with friends without feeling an urgent desire to repeat them – which is a good thing, I see that now. I can have my own happy times,

Trying to explain how I feel about that at this moment, I’m grasping for the right words. Contentment, maybe? No, too mealy-mouthed. Maturity, a feeling that I am on a mountain top, where I can look back and see my life and the things I’ve done, experiences I’ve had and people I have known laid out below me – no that sounds arrogant, which isn’t at all what I mean. Enormous peace that I can be who I am. Gratitude to all those people who have loved me and whom I have loved, forgiveness of those who’ve hurt me and of myself for hurting others, and knowledge that I no longer have to seek after love, but can be whole and by myself. Non-attachment, not detachment.

Well, what a wonderful epiphany for a Thursday morning – one which won’t last, I realise that. But it is there, and might return. I want to sit with this, be bathed in it, but also to keep writing, to complete this task, this daily commitment to myself, if for no other reason than that I can then get dressed and have my breakfast.

I’ve just expanded the sentence about being on a mountain top, and it’s brought back to me a quotation I first read almost fifty years ago, when I was a student and I have to admit I got it from the cover of a Strawbs album, but I think it was originally from Lao Tzu (a name which would have meant nothing to me then). I will have to look it up…

For once Google let me down, but I did manage to find the album on my shelf and scan it in – and lo and behold, it’s from the Buddha. Doesn’t quite say what I wanted though.

I expect Lao Tzu would have said it better.    

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Bin Day

Sometimes I break my routine. This morning I skipped my morning practice because I went to Tesco and it was already quite late before I was ready to go so I didn’t want to delay it by another half hour.

On the way back I noticed lots of people had put their green bins out. Green (recycling) bins are emptied alternate weeks, and I was sure it was last week, not this. I keep a card with the dates on by the calendar in the kitchen, but I couldn’t find it in any of the racks, noticeboards or heaps of mail that hang around that area for months on end.

When I came into the study (Miko was on the landing outside waiting for me), I saw the truck in the road outside, and ran back down the stairs, picking up the empty cat food boxes, milk jugs and other recyclable junk lying around in the kitchen, took it out to the bin and wheeled it onto the pavement. That reminds me, I don’t think I took the actual recycling bin, just the overflow, so had better go and check that now. I looked in the neighbour’s bin, and that hadn’t been emptied yet. I now think the truck I saw might just have been the normal truck going through on its way to the next area, because it had been here by the time I got back from Tesco.

Went down and checked the kitchen bin and I hadn’t emptied it, so did so. When I put my wheelie bins out I always leave them with the handles pointing towards the road. Glancing down the street, I noticed (as I have before) that most people seem to leave them the other way round, with the handles up against the wall and the lid opening towards the road. I used to do that, but what happens is the bin men grab the handles to pull them to the truck, so having the handles towards the back must make it harder for them – and it’s also easier for me to just push it to the wall and not have to turn it round. In case you’re wondering why I know so much about it, it’s because I’m usually sitting at my desk looking down on the street at this time in the morning. Actually, it’s more noticeable in the winter, because at this time of year they start bang on seven. The other advantage of leaving the bins the other way is that I like to think it deters people walking past from just dropping unwrapped rubbish into it if it’s left out at night.

There you go, I always say I write a lot about rubbish – today it’s literally true.

I’ve done a lot of delving into the past and the emotional substrata this week. Today I feel quite subdued, I have something to do that I don’t want to. I will get that done then sit in the sunshine.