Sunday 26 January 2014

Insomnia

My peace of mind is less than peaceful just now. I have been out for walks in the surrounding countryside in a bid to find some peace and quiet.



What is it about being out in the air? It is pouring with rain at the moment, and I am seriously considering donning my coat and boots and trudging out into it. Last night, I set my alarm early, with every intention of squeezing myself into my running lycra and getting out early to stretch out and put some cold air in my lungs.


The run was thwarted by an abysmal night's sleep. I tried some of those herbal tablets that smell and taste like shit, hoping that they would let me get to sleep at a reasonable hour and stay asleep. They didn't work. Well, they worked enough to make me drowsy and floppy - so floppy that I was slightly concerned my hips would dislocate if I lay on my side - but I was still wide awake.

Cowboy messaged some time after 1am, and we talked on the phone for a little while. It made me miss him all the more. The PVP is bad. My dreams when I did eventually get to sleep were threatening and stressful. I woke up remembering why I don't like taking those pills - they dredge up some very disturbing dreams.

This morning, I lay in bed for several hours before I could bring myself to get up. I did some yoga to stretch out and get oxygenated, which was helpful. I often feel I should make it more of a ritual.

I know it's getting bad when my thoughts don't even make sense to myself. It's time to get out of here...

Monday 20 January 2014

Learning how not to be deluded

Despite my previous attempt to be rational and calm and not bite Cowboy's head off the other day - which I deemed to be successful - I followed that success with an epic fail of temperament.

Psychosis is brewing
He messaged to say good morning. Said he loved me. I asked him about plans for the horse expo which we'll be going to while I'm visiting next month. He said he didn't mind.

Something in my brain flipped.


It doesn't matter he had said. I blew it as far out of proportion as I could. I huffed and puffed and typed a ridiculous message back to him, to the effect of: If you can't say more than three words about anything, I'm going to assume you don't care about anything.

He was baffled. He asked me to call him, trying to make the effort that I had courteously requested the previous day, ready to talk to me. This is a visual representation of what he got from me down the phone:























I ranted, raved, accused; I was furious and defensive; I was entirely out of patience. Clearly, I was still bothered about our communication failure. I should not be so deluded about my psychological progress with issues that I think a simple two message exchange will remove an entire chunk of rage from my psyche.

He listened patiently. He asked what he had to do to make things right.

He is so very tolerant of me sometimes.

Saturday 18 January 2014

Learning how not to over-think things

I am a chronic over-thinker. People I don't even know tell me I'm over-thinking things (see my experience with a crash mat and a fake horse at the Centre of Horseback Combat).

I over-think what to wear in the morning. I over-think what people in the village would think if they saw me running (flailing) through the village in an attempt to get fitter. I over-think what people say. I over-think what people don't say.

Since he left the UK and went home, Cowboy and I have slipped out of one of our old routines. Before, we would always message good morning and good night, every day. Didn't matter what I was doing, the last thing I'd do at night would be to reach over, get my phone and type him a message: "Good night. Love you. xxx"

When he would send me a message some time in the afternoon saying "Good morning. Hope you have a beautiful day!" it would make me smile, and make me feel a warm sense of appreciation for him. It was as if he reached out through the phone and hugged me (this has an advantage over a real hug, in that he cannot tickle me this way).

We fell out of this habit recently. Maybe neither of us got back into the old routines this time. Life is a bit weird just now. Still, I found myself reading more and more into it. I decided he didn't want to message me any longer. I decided that he didn't say good morning any longer because he didn't care if I had a beautiful day or not. I started to purposely not message him, to see if he did care. I started to rehearse the fight we could have about how he doesn't care and never messages me, how he doesn't make any effort.

Coupled with my PVP about my upcoming trip out there, I was becoming irrational and aggressive.

Then I started to panic, and realised I needed to address this before I over-thought it into a serious issue in our relationship. I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to explain exactly how I felt: angry, frustrated, neglected. I planned to call him and give him an earful.

Luckily, I wimped out. I took a deep breath, and decided to message him, and be as calm and rational as possible. Here's how the conversation went:


And just like that, all of the stress went *pooff* and vanished. I felt very silly indeed.

Friday 17 January 2014

Pushing forward

Last night a friend of mine posted a link to this video on Facebook. It was about 1am and I couldn't sleep. I thought I'd watch the video, turn everything off and then go to sleep.



Suffice to say, I watched the video, cried, and then couldn't sleep. I'm excessively emotional these days. Sam Berns sadly died just a few days ago, just 17 years old, but that's not why I was emotional. What struck me was his uplifting positivity and perseverance.

Those of us lucky enough to live in relatively wealthy and developed countries are privy to a very safe, comfortable lifestyle. We are rarely hungry or thirsty, we have warm beds to sleep in, stylish clothes, and if we have a headache, we can take one of any number of painkillers to get rid of whatever is challenging us. We face so few real challenges that when something difficult does come into our lives, we flail about in panic, wondering how on earth we will cope.

The human body is extraordinarily resilient. Even with Progeria, Sam's body endured 17 happy years and allowed him to achieve some of his ambitions. Whilst he may appear slender and fragile, his skull protected his brain through the years to produce this intelligent, thoughtful and inspiring young man, who wants to show other people how to be happy. It's ironic that we so often look up to people who appear to have 'difficult' lives for advice on how to be more content with our own. Sam is firm on the point that he has a very happy life. Is that despite the challenges he lives with? Or do the hurdles give him perspective on what is important in life? Maybe we would thrive a little more with a few more sticky situations to battle through.

I loved him most of all for his words on pushing forwards. I am often guilty of lingering over the past, or dragging it along with me, or looking back at it and sighing. Challenge can stall us in life, surround us and make us come to a standstill, as if we can do nothing until the challenge has somehow disappeared again. Sam encourages us to push forward, move on through it all, to not be embodied by the obstacles in our lives.

I'm adding it to my resolutions for the year. I'm going forwards this year, not back.

Friday 10 January 2014

Starting somewhere

You have to start somewhere, don't you? Julie Andrews would suggest starting at the very beginning (that's a very good place to start).

When I lay in bed this morning, wondering how on earth to summon the energy to just roll off the mattress and fall into the bathroom, I felt a bleak despair wash over me. I have spent a week looking at websites of personal trainers, and then feeling too cowardly to email or call them. I've looked at my wasting quadriceps and gluteals and felt ashamed and terrified by the thoroughly poor state of my fitness and strength.


On my recent trip to London, I wandered around the Natural History Museum, and had to sit down next to an elderly couple after I walked up a shallow flight of stairs and felt dizzy, light-headed, breathless, my heart pounding. In the words of Nicki Minaj: You outta work... I know it's tough. But enough is enough.

Thinking about it, I've been out of work(ing out) for months. I tore my plantar fascia last June, which healed up in time for me to go to America, where I tore up most of the soft tissue in the medial aspect of my knee. That healed up just in time for Christmas, when I was struck down with various germs that have kept me laid low for a few weeks.

Cowboy told me last night that Sunshine is fat and out of shape, and huffed and puffed her way through the entire ride last night, grumpy about how bad she felt. I think I understand what she's going through.

Here I am: over-sugared, under-sweated and acutely aware of my body's tendency towards premature ventricular contractions at bedtime. My PVC gets worse when I'm unfit, I've learned.

I forced myself up, and made a start. This start, in fact:



I pinned this to a Pinterest board months and months ago. I did it today, and felt instantly better. The best part is that you don't sweat doing this workout, so I didn't have to change into workout clothes and then shower and change back into normal clothes - the hassle puts me off more than the workout itself. Four minutes is doable, then straight back to whatever else needs to be done in the day.

I intend to pursue more thorough and longer duration workouts, as well as this four minute tabata training. There are plenty of hills around here for building bum muscle and quads strength, and for stamina training. I just need to get out into the cold and the wet and the mud and get to it.

Today was just a start, and starting is often the hardest bit.

Sunday 5 January 2014

The library

What a strange start to the year it has been. The weather has been grey and dull, with many parts of this small island flooded and without power. I have spent the last five days in a bit of a funk, not sure what to do or where to go or what I want from life just now.

I look at my colour-coded list of things for 2014. Some have been ticked off already. That should be achievement! It feels like nothing. So many things feel like nothing. I wondered this morning if the demons were sneaking in again, dressed up as sadness that Cowboy has gone home, or dressed as bad weather and an overly sugary diet recently.

I'm undecided.

I had a craving for adventure today, and because the weather was shoddy, I decided the best way to satisfy the wanderlust would be to put Skyrim into my Xbox and wile away some hours. I ran up and down a mountain. I killed a dragon, a bear and a troll. I found a dead goat and took its horns to use to decorate my house. Then I went to my second home (where the wife and kids don't live and I can get some peace and quiet), and built myself a library, a trophy room and a greenhouse.

I sent my character to sit in the chair in the library for a moment, so I could see what the room looked like from the reading spot.


The room is a tower attached to the side of the house, and the bookcases line the walls. With the doors closed and my hired magician left in the kitchen to find himself a biscuit, I surveyed my new reading nook. It's a lovely place.

"Well, bother," I thought to myself, triggering my warrior to get up again and do some more running around. "It's not even a real house." Annoyed and needing to vent some frustration, I ran outside and killed another troll.

I've added the library to my "ideal home" list. It could double as my office, it would just need a large, leather-topped desk in there, as well as a very comfortable chair or a small sofa where I could sit and read. Assuming I will ever have time in my life to just sit and read, of course... That's an amusing notion.

While I live at home with my parents, I am discovering a lack of meaningful space. This is not the house where I grew up, they moved here a few years ago, and it is ordered according to their needs. There is no spare chair in a spare room where I might take myself to read, or to earmark as my spot. My dad has generally agreed to share his Man Cave with me - his study and little haven in the house. Still, I am surrounded by things that do not belong to me. Most of my possessions are up in the loft, packed away and waiting to be shipped to my more permanent home, once I have one...

I crave the home of my own. Perhaps that is why Skyrim's adventures today were mostly about shaping a home and not about killing dragons. Next Skyrim quest will be finding books to fill up my library.

Wednesday 1 January 2014

Obligatory 2014 post

2014 is the Year of the Horse (so they tell me), which seems to me like a pretty good start. I actually started 2014 in the bathroom, picking at in-grown hairs on my legs, because I'm just that glamorous and exciting.


I hear Sunshine has turned into a bit of a snarky biatch whilst she's had some time off over the festive period, so Cowboy has gone back to ride her fat butt off and remind her not to be so uppity.

I spent a few hours yesterday with a notepad and a pen, and scribbled out two pages' worth of things I wanted to achieve, acquire and investigate at some point in 2014. Some of them were urgent, and need to be done two weeks ago, including renewing my passport so I can go to the US in February, which is cutting it really rather fine indeed... Well done, Bee.

My two page list has been streamlined and formatted into a colourful Excel spreadsheet of a checklist, with headings like "URGENT", "SH*T THAT NEEDS DOING" and "SOUL FOOD". There are other, more boring and business-like headings for more boring things like my business.

"Soul food" is the biggest category. It's a list of things that I want to experience, skills that I want to practise and improve, new things that I want to learn about. It includes conquering my fear of making bread, learning about how to keep chickens, finally learning how to use my camera in a more advanced way than just pointing it and pressing the button, and going back to do more horse archery.

As I enter 2014, jobless and living with my parents (again, the patient souls), with my partner in crime on the other side of the planet, and having given up something that I worked extremely hard for when I eventually admitted it wasn't what I wanted, I put together this list of soul food in a bid to seek out happiness and success this year, without having to radically change my entire diet, appearance, wardrobe or daily habits.

Yes, I would like to develop gluteal muscle mass, I really would like to have an arse to fill out my jeans, so I will probably need to do something different there, but generally I just want to enhance what I am already very lucky to have in life.

Wishing all of you a successful, happy 2014. Spend time with your friends and family, give some things away, go outside and play in the rain. Be excellent to each other. Etc.

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