Sometimes friends apologise for not staying better in touch. Perhaps this is because of some sociata idea of what it means to be friends. Sometimes, when they say this, I want to instead thank them for not being too much in touch. If every friend I had wanted to know about the minutiae of my life I’d not have any stories to tell. I’d spend my life glued to my phone and miss out on what’s in front of me. I find myself thinking, please don’t say that you’re sorry when it’s unnecessary and don’t do something because friends ‘are supposed to’. See me from time to time. Smile when you do and share some laughter. Take occasional moments to show me you love me, as I love you.
Yes, it’s true that I’m
like anyone else and sometimes fear missing out. Sometimes I hear about a group
of my friends meeting up and doing something together. I contemplate for a
moment, how, if only I had taken a different path, I could have been there too.
Nostalgia grips tight and I shake it off, like a dog shaking off the water
after climbing out of a muddy lake. We can’t live all the lives laid out in
front of us and I’ve chosen this travel-focused one. It’s pretty sweet. The dog
still smells but you can hose it down later. Its tail is wagging.
Each friendship, of
course, is different. The nature of some involves more frequent conversation
than others. Some friendships work well though instant messages – the
conversation is vibrant, funny and natural. Others seem to me to never quite
get flowing through on a phone screen and yet, face-to-face they glide,
effortless. Some in-person conversations leave me feeling rejuvenated. Some
take some time to process. Most though are a mixture of both: a flood of warm
feeling towards the other person, the delight of connection, followed by a
readiness again for my own space.
As much as I fear
missing out, I don’t need to know everything about my friends’ lives. I prefer
to know what is devastating them or what they are celebrating. The extremes at
both ends. And I prefer to be told direct, rather than through some other
person in passing, although I’d also prefer to know than not know at all. I
like long walks and conversation. I like sharing good food and bouncing
thoughts and ideas back and forth. I like exploring somewhere new: a monument,
a mountain, a bookshop or an idea. I like art galleries and museums and slow
meanders through airy rooms where conversation flits back and forth in low
voices: yes, history, politics, art, philosophy, but gently so.
I like people making me
laugh. Hysterical giggling and hula hooping.
I like friendships that
look forward more so that backwards. People who suggest places to visit next
year and things meanwhile I could read this year, because they saw it, read it,
and thought of me. I like seeing photos of job offer emails and chickens.
I love gifts, like
hand-knitted socks.
But most of all I love
when I can be with someone and feel comfortable being neither more nor less
than me.
You all know who you
are and I’m grateful for you all.
My little sister, the Midget, put three loads of washing on,
one after the other, pinned them out on the washing line which stretches the
length of her back-garden and commented on how, with the wind and the sun, it
was perfect drying weather.
I rolled my eyes a little because she sounded just like the Mother, adult-like.
A little while later we headed out of the house and went for a walk
It rained.
However, as we were walking, she mentioned how being an adult still surprises her. Like being an adult was something as peculiar as being a fairy. Something unnatural and kind of weird.
Of course, I was curious about what she meant by the term she used, ‘adulting’, and being grown-up. After all, my little sister is a house owner with a stone carrying ring on her finger. I might be the one without the regular job and traditional lifestyle, but I’m not ‘adulting’, I’m an adult.
I dug a little deeper wondering what all of this meant.
The other night one of her colleagues came to visit
We played the board game Carcassonne and I cooked dinner. Early in the evening, the Midget sighed, declared it was time for some ‘adulting’ and disappeared out to the shop. Her colleague shook his head with bemusement. He finds her comments about growing-up funny and totally out of character as her supposed incompetence is in sharp contrast to her behaviour at work, which he described as confident.
So, on our walk, I asked my sister about how she feels at work and if she feels like she’s ‘adulting’ when she’s there. The look she gave me said no before she even opened her mouth.
At work, she said, she just felt inexperienced. There was so much more knowledge to acquire. At work, she feels like an adult. She’s an adult who’s learning what’s required for the next step in her career.
I moved the conversation onto sport.
Sport has always been a big part of her life
She’s not doing quite as much as she’d like to right now perhaps, but for the last however long, she’s been in and out of physiotherapy after being taken off a pitch on a backboard and in a neck-brace.
For a few months, I could lift heavier boxes than she could. It was incredible. But, in general, I’ve become used to the idea that she’s fitter and stronger than me. At one stage I could beat her on a long-distance run, but I’m not so sure now.
But because of the injuries, she’s feeling unfit. She might be unfit, but she knows what she’s doing. She’s got the first-aid kits, the tape, the punch bag and the tackle pad. When it comes to sport, she feels like an adult. She’s an adult who’s training to be faster and stronger.
So where is all this ‘adulting’ happening?
I pinned it down to right here in the house. What my sister seems to mean by ‘adulting’ is form filling and kitchen floor sweeping.
It takes time to learn to do these ‘adulting’ tasks
I think the real issue here is she hasn’t accepted the learning process and expects perfection from the get-go. She’s so good at almost everything that she believes something so ordinary and everyday as writing a supermarket shopping list should come easily. And then it doesn’t.
I’m reminded of my Great-Nonna’s housekeeping book
The one where she systematically made a tiny amount of money feed and clothe the whole family. The difference between the challenge facing my sister and the challenge my Great-Nonna faced is vast. My little sister, confident and capable at work, respected and admired within her sporting circles, doesn’t have to worry about looking after the individual pennies. She just needs to get enough food in the fridge to eat during the week.
The Great-Nonna had to treat budgeting like an art form. It demanded time, patience and took time to learn.
I think this is the step my sister is missing. Her to-do list doesn’t include ‘learn to write a shopping list’.
And I think the Midget is doing herself an injustice with her terminology
She’s not playing at being an adult, she is one. Her theory
is she makes too many comparisons to other people. Not to me, because I’m ‘unconventional’,
but to other people who seem to manage to keep their kitchens clean and
refrigerators stocked.
Well, one of the many things I love about my sister is how she is not the same as everyone else. I love how she has priorities and she’s fierce about putting them first. You can’t prioritize everything, so some things fall to second place. If we run out of food, the supermarket is probably open 24 hours. It really is not a big deal.
But comparison is a hard-to-break habit.
The other week we watched a chunk of a home video
In the video, my sister was a cooing baby and I was toddling around bashing things. Our parents were the age we are now but seemed to look younger.
Except it’s all perspective, and how old we look tends to relate more to a context than anything else. Children can’t guess the age of adults without clues like grey hair and such a clue is less viable when so many people dye their hair. At work, I’m often assumed to be younger than I am. I doubt this would be the case if I was in a different job, but many language assistants tend to be just post-university age. Not all, I know a fair number who are the Mother’s age, but many.
What’s more, I’d look quite different wearing a formal jacket, my nails manicured, and my hair styled. Or if you could also see a photograph of me ten years ago.
I look in the mirror and see my grey hairs and contemplate that I am getting older
Meanwhile, whilst the Midget fusses about ‘adulting’, the
Mother is ageing backwards. Having got the art of ‘adulting’ pretty much
perfected, she’s likely to be found running around the garden in her
welly-boots, swinging on her wooden garden swing, or trying to hula-hoop on one
leg.
Truly, my family are the best.
As a side note here, this post came about because I asked the Midget what she wanted me to write about and she said herself. If you have something you particularly want me to write about, let me know.
Here in my Southern Spanish town, you sometimes have to think ahead. On a Sunday or a festival day normality ceases. When it rains nobody goes out as, due to a lack of adequate drainage, the streets flood. During the working week, many places close mid-afternoon, and places like the post office simply don’t bother reopening until the next day.
Here you can’t depend on a 24 hour supermarket or the bus arriving on time. On festival days (or during rain) the bus may or may not choose to run. Living here means that you have to be prepared in advance.
Planning ahead is also how I manage my own, unpredictable mental health. Since last week ended with a random burst of unsleepable madness, I thought I’d reflect a little on my ‘recovery day’ process to make sure that Monday morning had no choice but to go to plan.
I’m going to briefly cover…
The things I drop from my to-do list
The actions I take to get me back on track
The importance of good transitions
Sometimes the most important is what you don’t do
On Saturday night, before I went to bed, I wrote down a list of all the things I had to accomplish on Sunday. Then I removed everything I deemed unnecessary and could be put off. Writing this article wasn’t important enough to make the list, even though my original plan had it being edited by Sunday. Practicing Spanish was removed from the list too. Anything related to work was scribbled out. Any admin, scratched through.
It wasn’t that I was ruling out practicing Spanish, not at all, if I fancy practicing Spanish then that’s fine. But the thick black line removing it from my list affirmed that it wasn’t the priority for the day.
A rescue day, as I think of it, is not a normal day
On normal days I practice Spanish and I write articles. I stick to my bigger plan of learning goals and creative ambitions. On rescue days I rescue the little part of me that has been neglected and is screaming for attention through my sleep (or lack of sleep) and through all though ugly ways that stress makes itself known.
So what does this mean that I doing?
This morning I followed my morning routine, although much slower than normal. I had my coffee and my cereal. I watched a video about learning watercolour and I did yoga. Later I meditated.
Routine is important to me because when I’m working within a set routine I don’t need to waste energy making decisions.
Then I put my bedsheets in the washing machine and tidied my room. While the washing was whirring away I painted a pine cone and emailed my mother updating her on my life and my yoga practice. Keeping my mother vaguely in the loop is important.
The lady who I live with invited me to eat lunch with her.
In the afternoon I went out for a walk
It’s been raining here, most unexpectedly, and I perhaps lacked some fresh air. More importantly though, I needed to create space for my mind to mull over why it’s so upset. In the evening I went out for a coffee (descafeinado) and chocolate cake with a friend before going early to bed.
Which I guess doesn’t seem all that mad…
In fact it’s not all that different to what I normally would do. The difference comes in the transitions. When I’m picking myself up off the ground it’s rarely the activity that matters.
What matters is how I approach each activity
In one of his books I remember John Kabat Zinn suggesting we take special care to note the attitude we bring to the beginning of a meditation practice and the attitude with which we leave it. I try to apply this wisdom to each of my activities. Of course, it’s only possible for me to do this when I’m willing to slow right down.
I’ll give you an example
I posted my pine cone painting onto Instagram and was about to scroll through the feed, but noticed that I hadn’t consciously decided that this was what I wanted, so I paused, set a timer for ten minutes and then returned to Instagram. When the timer went off I stopped it. My thumb hovered over the feed for a moment while I thought. I knew I wanted to keep reading, but I also knew that I’d decided ten minutes was more than enough time, and so I stopped.
Or another example
At the end of the meditation track I play, the background soft noise continues some time after the meditation itself has ended. Normally I stop it playing and just get on with my day, but today I paid attention to my need to get up and be busy. I decided to wait until the very end and only stand up once I knew exactly what it was I was going to do.
But of course this is not easy
Rescue days might contain fewer tasks, but they are anything but easy. It is much easier to be busy. It’s easier to keep pushing yourself because that’s the muscle that you’ve spent your life strengthening. If you’re anything like me ‘more’ feels more natural than ‘less’.
But to slow down and catch myself, to not march but amble and take note, to set myself up for Monday morning and from there the rest of the week, this all means that I won’t just survive the week ahead but that I have the opportunity to enjoy it.
Living here in Spain the pace of life is slower
You can’t brutishly charge around expecting to have what you want when the rest of the town is busy having their extended lunch break. And you can’t expect that dinner is going to be an option at the moment you feel hungry. You have to learn to slow down to the pace of life around you. And you always have to be prepared for when, maybe, things don’t go your way.
So yes, I did less with my Sunday than I could have
I focused on what matters to my mental health most, and I made sure that I was aware of how I start and end each activity. I want to be the one choosing how I live rather than allowing myself to be led by compulsive desires.
And now I am prepared for Monday morning.
Do you actively change your behaviour to recover from a bad day? Or do you keep pushing on?
My favourite type of restaurant to frequent in Spain belongs on the edge of a small town. Outside on the road, or in an unmarked parking lot sits a collection of cars with the appearance of being unwashed, although the land here is so dry and the air swirls with so much dust that they could have conceivably been washed that morning.
Every time I approach such a restaurant I feel a little afraid. You can’t see too well inside, maybe older men sit outside, smoking, suggesting an all boys club, but on entering you discover the place to be loud with voices high and low. You take a seat, anywhere you want, and you’re offered the menu of the day: a selection of courses that will be brought out, one after another to be shared between you and your companions, all for a fixed (and very reasonable) price.
This is my favourite type of restaurant because it forgoes all that pesky decision making that comes from having to choose what it is you want.
Here I can just eat.
Sometimes though, life ain’t quite so easy.
“So—do you know what you want?”
This is the question my mother emailed me with after reading my previous blog posts (lessons from the mother), and by the question, she didn’t mean just for dinner, she meant in life. I stared at her email for a moment, considered my lists, my plans and the feeling that floods my heart when I’m doing something that I consider to be important and then my fingertips hit the keys in determined strokes. I wrote back, “Yes, I think I do.”
I thought, for my mother, as well as any other reader, I’d elaborate. I’m going to briefly elude to three stages of how I got here.
This isn’t guide to how to work out what it is that you want, I wouldn’t want to suggest that such a process would be the same for you, this is just a story of how things were for me. But, what with you being human too, chances are you’re going to relate to some part of my journey.
The stages so far:
Stage 1: Recognising I didn’t have a clue Stage 2: Accepting my long term goals were my long term goals Stage 3: Writing down the next step
Stage 1: Recognising I didn’t have a clue
Towards the end of my degree I proactively made an appointment to see the career counsellor. I was a few months off finishing my degree and hadn’t worked out what I was going to do after graduation. I had, in one moment, contemplated teaching, but after volunteering in a primary school for a while I came to the solid conclusion that teaching would be a long slog of me against the system.
This chap who was supposed to advise me was probably a great source of information for physicists looking to move into a hedge fund or academic department, but he didn’t excel with hysterical me. It was hardly his fault.
Wisely, in hindsight, he suggested speaking to a medical professional
Although he didn’t express himself very well. Of course I did not feel that not knowing what job to apply for constituted a mental health problem. I figured it was a very common challenge facing many graduates and that it would, in time, resolve itself.
It didn’t.
In fact I didn’t understand that not knowing what I wanted was a real problem until a number of years later when my psychotherapist pointed it out to me. Graciously she guided me into the understanding that my incredible, analytical, rational brain (the one that was at home in the world of quantum mechanics) was a bully, and that my emotional needs were being squished, surfacing only in inelegant spurts of anti-social behaviour.
I needed these two parts of my brain to cooperate
The compromise however would have to be from the rational side of me. The side of me that understands my bank balance, writes my CV and earnt a degree. I really despised this idea, but eventually, after much fighting with myself, recognised that my emotions are impossible to reason with.
Now I had surrendered some of my stubbornness it was time to move onto the second stage.
Stage 2: Accepting my long term goals
It surprised me to discover that what I want is nothing new. The things that make me the happiest are pretty much the same things that made me the happiest when I was at school.
The desire for travelling has amplified rather, and become more nuanced. Painting and drawing have been pretty consistent activities throughout my life. And I whilst my standards have risen, my writing has been prolific since I was a teenager. I might have started my diaries when I was in my twenties, but the Christmas holidays of my sixteenth birthday I churned out 20,000 words. A year later I’d created most of a novel.
My problem however was that it all felt pretty much like playing
I’d written that novel after stopping studying English at school at the grand old age of sixteen, and although I did art at AS-level it became a horrific endurance battle as the department entered civil war.
So whilst other people around me studied to be artists or writers, I played at both and loved both hobbies equally. Meanwhile I was pretty obnoxiously certain that I was going to become successful, well-off and influential because of my incredible analytical mind.
Thankfully, after a few false starts, I ended up amongst the psychotherapists cushions. She helped me think through some very important questions. What will being well-off give you? Successful in whose eyes? Influencing people to what goal?
At which point it hit home
I want to be immersed in the things which require a soft ego, gentle humility and that are driven by listening to the world, not shouting at it. I want to paint, I want to write, and I want to learn by opening myself to all the incredible people around me.
Here steps in the Crabbe and Goyle of my brain
Crabbe says yes, but you are going to have to get a proper job one day, and Goyle says, but don’t you want to be successful like your house-buying, PhD winning, money making peers.
At first I fought them.
Then I realised that they, like most bullies out there, need a bit of compassion. I was rejecting them and therefore they were going through a bit of a rough patch. This time it was my emotions that needed to get to work. It was time to show some compassion, to myself.
I needed to commit myself to doing what I love.
Stage 3: Writing down the next step
So, these fluffy goals of creating art, writing something and seeing the world aren’t exactly your business SMART goals. And I’m sure intelligent goals are very useful for some people, but what I need is a direction. At this stage, it doesn’t bother me that I haven’t got a clue where I’ll be in five-years time. I don’t currently know which continent I’ll be living in six months from now. I’ve kind of made a nest of uncertainty, and whilst it’s not necessarily plastic wrapped perfect, it’s tactile and stable.
I know that in five-years time what I will be doing is creating art, writing stories and conversing with strangers. Therefore, all I’m focusing on right now is getting really good at those three things. I plan on spending the rest of my life continuing to get really good at these same three things.
So all I need to know today is what small step I’m making
Each week, or every couple of days I review my goals, write down the next small step I need to take, and then I focus on doing just that. It’s simple.
In the future I assume I will need to put more emphasis on being more financially stable but I’m practicing my humility. I’m not in the place to do that right now. I’m practicing my generosity, I believe I’ll get there eventually. I’m practicing my self-kindness, I’ve just picked myself up off the ground after a rather nasty fall.
I need to get a stable footing before I try to cartwheel
And so today I wrote this article, and I painted a picture of a photo I took a few weeks back whilst visiting Granada and I practiced my Spanish.
So, yes mother, I know my life goals. And I’m achieving them every single day.
In summary:
For me, it’s easy to be so analytical that I forget to follow my gut feeling.
My gut feeling, what I like and don’t like, is actually surprisingly consistent. Therefore I pay attention to this and set goals that reflect what I actually enjoy doing.
Getting the next step written down helps me keep my mind focused on today, whilst moving along the path of creativity I’ve actively chosen for myself.
It doesn’t mean I know what I want to eat when I’m presented with a menu
So if I’m feeling overwhelmed, I ask the waiting staff for a recommendation.
Spain is a wonderful place for trying new food. You can pick at the food, share it, swap it, taste only a tiny amount of it and this is all considered to be polite. It’s how you’re meant to eat.
A few weeks back I found myself having a drink with an acquaintance, who turned out to be a reader of tarot cards.
I have a literary fascination with
tarot cards, by which I mean I love a bit of magic realism sprinkled into
literature and so my tarot card knowledge comes almost entirely from Chocolat
(and the sequel the Lollipop Shoes) by Joanne Harris, and one of the Philippa
Gregory historical fiction novels which touches upon the life of Joan of Arc.
So later that evening, quietly, I
asked if I could possibly see the tarot cards for myself. Sate my curiosity.
Which is how, in a mixture of English and Spanish (for the session was
conducted in Spanish but I was instructed to think in English) I learnt that
things in my life would change, in a good way, but not in the expected way. And
that I apparently have issue with the patriarchy…
Which perhaps means nothing, but at
the same time did get me thinking about how people change.
In the last article I wrote about
meditation and how I’d slowly, and reluctantly, gone from
random commitments to meditation to a more consistent approach. And that this
idea of daily practice, had impacted my daily routine, forcing it to change.
Now I’m going to
start part two of ‘things I learnt from my mother’ by looking at the early
hours of that daily routine.
I
have never been good at mornings
Going back a bit it used to be that
I was simply grumpy in the mornings. Having a strong cup of coffee didn’t
seem to help much. The only cure for my grumpiness was time, and so I simply
got on with accepting myself as a grumpy morning person. My dressing-gown
through my teenage years read ‘grumpy but gorgeous’ on the back, but I can
assure you that in the early hours of the day, weighed down with so much
grumpiness, I am far from gorgeous.
Things hardly improved at university
and got progressively worse when I had a 9-5 job. Except my job was 9:30 to
6:30 because there was no paid lunch break and my boss recognised that it would
be better for all concerned if I was given the extra half-an-hour to become
more humane.
My
mother meanwhile considers seven o’clock
to be a lay in
As a child I would wake up to
discover her taking a freshly made shepherd’s pie out of the oven, although it
wouldn’t surprise me because I was used to being
woken by my mother’s battle with the pan cupboard long before my alarm went
off.
I learnt to be a heavy sleeper.
Back home as an adult, dealing with
trauma, sleep became challenging in a whole new way. In the evenings I would
have to convince myself to go to sleep, knowing that I would wake up amid engrossing
nightmares. At times I feared sleep. Even now I occasionally have evenings
where the idea of sleep suddenly fills me with a sense of dread. Although, I
also believe good sleep to be one of the best things ever.
In my darker days, in the mornings
my patient mother would wake me up gently with a cup of tea and slowly I’d
emerge from my dreamworld. I couldn’t force myself out of the dreams, but
having that moment of being cared for early in the day really helped. It gave
me something less frightening to cling to.
And slowly I got better. At which
point I moved to Spain and started working again. At a school, where my first
class tends to begin at 8:30am!
Which,
I admit, was at first a challenge
Which is why I’m
obsessive about having a strict bedtime. I used to laugh at my mother for
heading to bed at half past nine, but nowadays at half past nine you are very
likely to discover me in my pyjamas preparing my coffee for the next morning,
whilst my house-mates contemplate what they’re going to have for dinner.
But what’s
much more surprising is that by 7am I’m no longer in my pyjamas. In fact, this
morning at seven I was in leggings and on my yoga mat, as I have been for the
last couple of months.
Now I
wish I could give a profound reason for it
I wish I could give you a sensible
explanation, but the only one I have found is that I finally got fed up of
starting the morning trying to bully myself into waking up. I’ve
seen the mother in the morning and she too has a dazed look about her. And yet,
she just gets up and starts the day and bakes shepherds pies. And by 7am she’s
shook off all grumpiness.
So, having surrendered in my
morning battle, I have surprised myself by discovering, I love mornings.
Which
brings me to: people change
When I was in the routine of
therapy, nightmares and feeling sorry for myself I could have easily become
stuck in the idea that ptsd was going to be who I was forever. My
psychotherapist described it as a chronic pain, something that I would carry
for life.
And then the mother would put on
some eighties songs and we’d be hula-hooping in the kitchen and
making up silly routines, laughing at ourselves and I would forget that I was
broken and miserable and instead stare at the incredible woman in front of me who
had taken the place of my mother. Because the mother of my childhood did not
suddenly think three o’clock in the afternoon was the time for swivelling her
hips to Abba. It was for work, jobs, lists and hoovering.
My mother’s
mentality isn’t to say, “Have a nice day.”
My mother says, “Have
a productive day.”
But
between Super Trooper and Waterloo my mother taught me an incredible lesson
People change.
And if people change, then I can
too.
But
the question becomes, to what?
At the same time my psychotherapist
was drumming home the importance of knowing what it is I want. If you know me
quite well you might think this is a bit odd because I am always doing things
and am clearly quite ambitious. The difficulty I have had has been that I’m
not always sure what it is I want and what it is I think I should want.
My psychotherapist suggested that I
needed to practice acting on my frivolous desires. She said that if I wanted to
run up the hill to the ice-cream shop and buy an ice-cream then I should run up
the hill and buy an ice-cream.
I pondered this. At the time I had
no income, and even now my income is erratic. I’m lactose
intolerant, so I could not have a milk-based ice-cream unless I took a lactase
tablet. If I were to run up the hill for an ice-cream, as my psychotherapist
suggested, was I supposed to tell her I’d done it, and could I also do it
combined with another task such as posting a letter.
Which,
you’ll gather is
missing the very valid point
When you extrapolate these
analytical thoughts into the whole of life you can begin to comprehend how
knowing what I want from the start is a much healthier option. Life’s
to short to waste on all this meaningless analysis. Rather than trying to
please everyone and then having a tantrum and being manipulative to get my
subconscious needs met, I need to pull my wants out into my conscious mind and
act on them.
Tomorrow I will probably practice
my having what I want by passing by the bakery on the way back from the market.
These
little lessons began to congeal
And I began figuring out that I
didn’t have to be the person that I’d planned
to be when I was fifteen but that I could be the person who I want to be today.
As my mother was vibrantly demonstrating.
Pulling
together all these thoughts, here’s
a quick summary:
In part one I wrote about
meditation, and about how having a daily practice is much healthier than an ad
hoc approach.
Then in part two I discussed my
history of mornings, and how coming to terms with waking up in the morning and
learning to love the early hours has been a process of surrender.
And finally, I wrote about how my
mother gave me belief that people can change in the cliché
of ‘show not tell’. And how my psychotherapist started me along the process of
knowing how it is I want to change.
Okay,
I admit it, despite not believing in magic, I want my own set of tarot cards
Old-fashioned ones, softened by age
and use. The rational physicist in me says not to be silly or frivolous, but
the girl who was fascinated by a book on witchcraft from the school library and
stories of magic-realism wants the tactile ownership of the magic for herself.
Maybe, today, there’s
something frivolous you can do, just for you. Just because you want to.
You see I was rather loud in my breaking of a glass, outside
of the Casera’s bedroom door, at seven in the morning. Making noise at 11pm is
normal here. The kids in the apartment above run up and down the hallway. The
‘grandmas and grandpas’ in the ‘grandma and grandpa club’ hold a weekly disco.
At seven though the apartment block is in silence. As there are no carpets, and
few curtains, every sound, especially my clunking door reverberates throughout.
When you smash a glass of yogurt and then proceed to clear
it up, cut your finger and wrestle with the cat who is very much awake and
bored, you get into trouble.
History would suggest that I wouldn’t even think of being up this early
However something has changed. For reasons unknown to me I’m doing morning. I’m up early drinking coffee made in my new, tiny Italian moka (pot that you put on the hob to brew coffee). I eat breakfast. I have a short yoga routine. I practice my Spanish. And all before heading out to school.
Waking up, doing yoga, meditating before bed…
These are all things I have wished to do in an elegant habitual fashion for many years. Doing them though didn’t happen. I lacked the willpower to force any of it to happen. There were odd days, once every six months or so where I would wake in a spritely fashion and have a remarkable morning. Odd days. A good intention of executing efficient and energetic morning routines everyday would gestate in my mind. I’d tell myself that this would be a new beginning. The beginning would never get started. The next day I would find myself wondering what devil possessed me to set my alarm clock so early.
So when, at the beginning of January I found myself waking
up, and feeling awake before seven, I figured that it was a temporary
aberration. I would soon revert to my clumsy bear-coming-out-of-hibernation
style getting out of the front door. Brushing my hair would return to the
wayside. My hair would revert back to its messy bun. Coffee would wait until
break time.
A few days later, when I was still getting up early, I began
to worry. Yes, I could now touch my toes, what with all the yoga, but the
awake-ness was weird. It was abnormal.
The teachers at school were still recovering from Christmas
They bumped into students as they passed them in the corridors, eyes not quite open, cheeks limp. In classes, the students folded their arms and lay their heads down to rest. The teachers forgot what they were supposed to be teaching and their already Spanish timekeeping took a turn for the worse.
Meanwhile I was bouncing. The children were drinking
chocolate milk and eating cookies for breakfast, but it was me who exhibited
the characteristics of a nine am sugar high. I experimented with decaffeinated
coffee in the mornings, but it made no difference.
I began to worry. When I have too much energy, or when I
sleep for fewer hours, I tend to be charging into a wall. I decided that with
so much energy, the outcome could only be a catastrophic crash and so, wiser
than I once was, I decided that I needed to implement emergency measures.
I figured my emergency measures needed to reflect my resources
I’m practical like that. And January has been sunny. Daily, I have a bright blue sky, a warm yellow sun and I have to wear a moisturiser with UV protection. On a tangent here I’ll add that it would be embarrassing to burn. The colloquial Spanish word for a Brit is ‘gamba’, which means prawn. Back to my resources, I have sunshine and access to a balcony. So, on arriving home from school, I pop the kettle on and migrate to my plastic chair in the sunshine. The heat can be so intense that I have to turn my back to the sun, but it’s a place good for relaxation.
Here I engage in the very serious task of winding down.
This is important as at school I am a fountain of energy
I have no idea how to persuade a teenager on too few hours’ sleep who hasn’t had a decent breakfast to tell me about his life in a language he feels foolish speaking in without spurting stories. My tactic is visible, genuine fascination. I smile; I laugh. I am a caricature of the English. They tell me that in their free time they play football, see television and play video games. I tell them they watch television and ask what position they play on the pitch and how they win their favourite video game.
In England I would be pretty self-conscious about the bursts
of extroversion that spew from my mouth each day. I cross the threshold of the
staff-room each morning with a cheerful doubling up of my welcomes: “¡Hola!
Morning! How’s thee? ¿Qué tal?” When I do speak Spanish, I find that putting it
across with a bubbly extroverted spring is much more successful than with
self-doubting, quiet articulation. Nobody understands doubt within a voice.
Everyone understands grandiose gestures.
All this is exhausting
Exhausting, excessive bubbly behaviour and changes in my sleep pattern are to me like a sick canary in a mine shaft. They’re a warning of trouble.
Hence, when I arrive home I curl up in the sun and read. I
choose to slow down. Sometimes I have a siesta. I cook and listen to a podcast.
Instead of writing on my computer, I pick up my journal. In fact, I avoid my
desk. There are so many ways to get sucked into the computer that feel good,
but are, after a while, quite draining.
Sometimes I go for a walk.
I have no idea how regular folk manage their energy
I work less than twenty hours a week and it still takes me a lot of effort to manage that small demand on my time and energy.
So far though, I haven’t crashed. I’m still doing yoga each
morning. I’m still meditating before I go to bed. I’m still making a fool of
myself at school in such a way that the children can’t help themselves but engage.
I am happy.
I’m wondering, if, maybe, just maybe, I’ve cracked this
morning thing…
As long as I don’t disturb the Casera’s sleep with any more
broken glassware.
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