Tag: Mental Health

Flagging by Friday

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Last weekend felt like spring. I made a lot of plans to step up my exercise levels this month, and to catch up with all the things with which I’d fallen behind over the last couple of weeks, and to keep my planned schedule going so that I could continue videogaming in the evenings.

On Monday morning, I went out for my daily run and the temperature had dropped by about ten degrees. Everything was covered in frost and my hands froze as I trotted round my usual route, desperately wishing that I’d put gloves on. This set the tone for the rest of the week.

I’ve worn gloves for my run every morning (though it did finally feel like it was warming up again today). I’ve run slightly more, but not a lot more. I’ve not been out for any of the long walks I was planning. I’ve kept up with cleaning and blogging, but not caught up. I’ve worked on my jam game, but not as much as I wanted to. I’ve not been videogaming at all in the evenings, because I’ve not had the energy for anything more than mindless web browsing and listening to music.

Energy has been sorely lacking in general this week, both physically and mentally. Geth hasn’t had any either because he’s got various absorbing work stuff going on at the moment, and when we’re both in that state we just sort of doze during downtime, half-there. Sleep hasn’t been great, and I’m waking up every morning with a lot of stiffness and aches and pains – something that’s chronic to an extent, but has been very noticeable recently. I’ve been having issues with breathing and joint swelling as well, which are things that largely went away when I lost weight a few years ago. I’m heavier than I’d like to be at the moment, but am still a healthy weight, so I’m not really sure if it’s related or not.

I’ve found it difficult to concentrate this week as well, so I’m really glad it’s nearly the weekend. Normally I’d be excited about videogaming but right now all I want to do is sleep!

Hoping next week will feel a bit brighter.

Full moon
Last weekend’s full moon looked amazing, but my phone camera wasn’t interested!

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
Idina Menzel – ‘Into The Unknown’
Kate Bush – ‘Running Up That Hill’

Sunday

Depeche Mode – ‘See You’
Duran Duran – ‘Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over) [The Story Mix]’
Roxette – ‘Listen To Your Heart’

Monday

INXS – ‘Need You Tonight’
Ed Sheeran – ‘You Need Me, I Don’t Need You’

Tuesday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘A Battle With Creatures’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
Don Henley – ‘Boys Of Summer’
Taylor Swift – ‘I Knew You Were Trouble’

Wednesday

Pet Shop Boys – ‘Heart’
will.i.am and Britney Spears – ‘Scream And Shout’
The Wonder Stuff – ‘A Wish Away’
Jason Derulo – ‘Want To Want Me’

Thursday

Duran Duran – ‘Do You Believe In Shame?’
Spandau Ballet – ‘True’
David Bowie – ‘Ashes To Ashes’

Friday

The Go-Gos – ‘Our Lips Are Sealed’

Spring feeling

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Since the snow melted last week, signs of spring have been everywhere, which has really helped my mood. The croci are budding nicely now along the snowdrops on the paths outside, and the supermarkets have finally started to sell daffodils – a month later than usual, but they’re very welcome! It feels warmer outside for running too, meaning I’m gradually starting to shed my winter layers. Last Sunday, I went for my first proper long run since September, and the weather made it really enjoyable. I’m really hopeful that I can get some good long runs done leading up to the point when races start again.

Since the announcement of the UK government’s roadmap for England on Monday, races (and parkruns… and of course non-running events too!) in 2021 finally feel like a matter of ‘when’ rather than ‘if’, which is a huge source of hope for me. Scotland is still more up in the air, so I’ll have to wait and see what happens before I know when I can visit home, but on the whole I feel a lot more positive about the whole situation now that I’ve got a bit of certainty. I know the proposed dates aren’t set in stone, but at least they give us an idea of when restrictions will ease.

I’ve felt a bit out of sorts for the last fortnight because I’ve not always felt able to stick to my schedule. However, I’ve done a lot better with it the last couple of days. I think it’s just that I need to tweak it regularly to make sure it always works for me – over the last month I’ve been doing a lot more cross-training (yoga and walking) than I was doing when I first drew up the plan, and so like everything else, that needs to be scheduled in so that it doesn’t take up more time than it needs to.

Bravely Default II arrived in the post today! I’ve been looking forward to this game for over a year and am going to be spending every spare second playing it from this weekend onwards. While still making time for all my scheduled stuff as well, of course!

Croci

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Revo – ‘Horizon Of Light And Shadow’
Duran Duran – ‘Ordinary World’
5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘She Looks So Perfect’
Arcadia – ‘Election Day’
Clean Bandit and Jess Glynne – ‘Rather Be’

Sunday

Revo – ‘Horizon Of Light And Shadow’
Will Powers – ‘Kissing With Confidence’
Taylor Swift – ‘You Need To Calm Down’
Ed Sheeran and Stormzy – ‘Take Me Back To London’
Lindisfarne – ‘Lady Eleanor’
5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘She Looks So Perfect’

Monday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
Ryo and Chelly – ‘Great Distance’
5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘She Looks So Perfect’
Levellers – ‘One Way’
John Newman – ‘Love Me Again’

Tuesday

Revo – ‘Horizon Of Light And Shadow’
5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘She Looks So Perfect’
Technotronic – ‘Pump Up The Jam’
Pop Will Eat Itself – ‘Get The Girl! Kill The Baddies!’
Daft Punk- ‘One More Time’

Wednesday

Bloodhound Gang – ‘The Roof Is On Fire’
They Might Be Giants – ‘Birdhouse In Your Soul’
Duran Duran – ‘I Believe/All I Need To Know

Thursday

The Beatles – ‘In My Life’
Nobuo Uematsu – ‘Chaos Shrine’
Robert Allen – ‘Bloxonius’

Friday

Vangelis – ‘Chariots Of Fire’
5 Seconds Of Summer – ‘She Looks So Perfect’

Is it too early for a midlife crisis?

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I didn’t mind being thirty-five. Not at all.

I was still coasting along with an ‘age doesn’t matter’ attitude, and generally feeling like I was still young and pretty much at the start of my life and there was still plenty of time to achieve all my planned achievements.

Being thirty-six feels different, and I’m not sure why.

Perhaps it’s just that multiple things have hit me in a slightly alarming way recently. First of all, I did a fairly major accounting exercise for my business in January and realised that I can’t just blame the recent slump in takings on COVID-19 (though of course the pandemic has been a factor): it started way before that. I’ve known for some time now that my editing business is not viable by itself as my long-term career. I either need to build up something else on the side (I hoped writing would play this role, but I’m still not making any money from my writing projects) or retrain so that I can move full-time into something else. I had two academic options planned out for retraining at the beginning of 2020, but the pandemic put them on hold. If life had continued as normal, I would have been a lot further ahead with those options right now, and so I really feel at the moment as though I’m paused (not by choice) in my career, and that a considerable amount of time is being wasted while I wait for the world to restart. I’m sure lots of other people are in a similar position.

Secondly, I’ve been struggling with the loud, insistent tick of the biological clock in recent weeks. I have always known that motherhood would not be right for me or my life, and so I have never planned (and still do not plan) to have children. Still, however logical and sound my 1,001 reasons for staying childfree are, there are times when I feel them drowning under the weight of worries like ‘thirty-six is VERY close to forty; you are running out of time to change your mind’ and ‘who is going to inherit your legacy, your family heirlooms and your videogame collection?’ and ‘don’t you WANT to experience this unconditional love that everyone talks about?’ and ‘your husband is a few years older than you and you are bad at maintaining friendships due to your introversion; you will quite likely spend the last few years of your life alone and unloved’. I will stick to my plan because I know it’s the right thing to do, but the feelings are hard sometimes.

Accepting the things you can’t change is the sensible and obvious thing to do in life. It’s also really hard work. There are a lot of things I wish were different – a lot of things that I was sure I would have managed to achieve by now – and I constantly feel like I’ve let my past younger self down, and that I’m also letting my future older self down by continuing to fail to achieve stuff (or stuff that was on the ‘list’ anyway… I know there’s a lot of unplanned stuff I can be proud of from over the last few years!), and generally being a bit mediocre.

But the life I have now is the life I have now, and I’m not superhuman (even though the mind demons tell me that I COULD be if I just tried a bit harder), and I know I’m doing my best at the moment, and the fact that I didn’t do my best in the past is something that can’t be changed.

Thirty-six is still not sitting right with me, and I’m not sure when it will. But I can’t go backwards, so here we are.

This week has been quite busy and difficult at work, which hasn’t helped. I’m hoping to be able to squeeze in an extra afternoon off on Monday to make it a bit of a long weekend, but we’ll have to see what happens over the next few days.

I’m very nearly at the end of Bravely Second and should finish it over the weekend. I’ve then got the demo of the newly-announced Switch game Project Triangle Strategy to enjoy before Bravely Default II arrives next week!

Running has been short and gentle this week as I’ve been resting a hip/glute twinge. However, my comfortable run speed has increased over the last couple of days, which usually indicates that my legs are up for a nice fast 5k at the weekend. We’ll see how it goes tomorrow. I’m also hoping to do a long run on Sunday (maybe eight to ten miles?), though the pace for that will be very sedate indeed as I’ve not done anything over six miles for months and months.

Crossing my fingers for a really quiet week next week! I’ve got various coding things I want to get finished/started, so hopefully I’ll have good news on that front next Friday.

Spiky ball
It’s been a spiky ball kind of week, trying to ease the seized-up muscles in my right hip 🙁

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

Backstreet Boys – ‘As Long As You Love Me’
The Drifters – ‘Under The Boardwalk’
Will Powers – ‘Kissing With Confidence’

Sunday

Revo – ‘Sylvan Tranquility’
Ray Charles – ‘Hit The Road, Jack’

Monday

Joe Hisaishi – ‘Kokoro No Kakera’
will.i.am and Cody Wise – ‘It’s My Birthday’
The Black Eyed Peas – ‘Just Can’t Get Enough’
Duran Duran – ‘Five Years’

Tuesday

Canned Heat – ‘On The Road Again’
Sarah Brightman & Hot Gossip – ‘I Lost My Heart To A Starship Trooper’
The Power Station – ‘Some Like It Hot’
Taylor Swift – ’22’

Wednesday

Judy Garland and Lucille Bremer – ‘Meet Me In St Louis’
Tom Lehrer – ‘Christmas Carol’

Thursday

Ewan MacColl – ‘Dirty Old Town’
Fontella Bass – ‘Rescue Me’
Coldplay – ‘A Sky Full Of Stars’
The Wonder Stuff – ‘A Wish Away’

Friday

Mike Hewer – ‘Snowman Party’
Queen – ‘Don’t Stop Me Now’

Three years blogging… and a reflection on some accidental New Year Resolutions

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For years, I didn’t start new habits at New Year – or if I did, they never stuck for very long. However, for the last four years in a row, I have chosen something to focus on every year and have stuck with it. My life is a lot better as a result, and so I’m hoping I’ll be able to stick to my main 2021 goal too.

At the start of 2017, I started going to Slimming World. The accountability of the group setting enabled me to lose the five stone that I’d been trying to lose for nearly a decade, and though I’ve not managed to stay at target during the pandemic, I only have a stone to lose again this next year (which is a lot easier than five!). Life at a healthy weight is immeasurably more physically comfortable and something that I will never take for granted. Once Christmas eating is done, I’ll be back on the light meals again – I’m following a calorie-based approach rather than SW now, but I’ll always be thankful for the motivation it gave me.

At the start of 2018, I started this blog. It was always my aim to blog every day and so sometimes, especially during the empty year of 2020, blogging has felt like a bit of a chore. However, the habit of getting my words out into the world has given me confidence to do so in other ways, such as reading at poetry nights and publishing text adventure games. I love having the blog as it just feels so much more ‘mine’ than social media pages.

At the start of 2019, I got sober. I’ve mentioned this before but I feel so, so incredibly grateful that I managed to do this (and get the first difficult year of sobriety out of the way) *before* the pandemic hit – I really believe that things would have gone nowhere good if I’d still been drinking in 2020. It’s still not easy, but life is so much more stable than it was two years ago, and that has been so important over the last few months.

And at the start of 2020, after four and a half years of more sporadic running, I started a daily run streak. The start of a new decade seemed like a good time to do it, and I just wanted to see how long I could keep it up. Again, this was incredibly well-timed in terms of the pandemic, as I discussed yesterday. Whatever life throws at me, and however long it takes for races to come back, I’ll always have my run streak to keep me motivated.

On to 2021, then, and this year the main focus will be to get my house in order (literally). I already made a good start by spending a few weeks in November/December sorting out all the junk that I’d been hoarding upstairs since we moved in, but there’s a lot more to do, and a lot of daily habits that I need to instil. One of the major negative factors for my mental health is that I constantly feel that my house is dirty and untidy, and so I can never fully relax. Making time for my house projects this year, and keeping on top of the upkeep, will hopefully allow me to feel a lot better.

On a personal level, I’m feeling quite hopeful today. Not for 2021 as a whole, but for one day at a time, which is how I’ve managed all my other big life changes over the last few years.

I’m excited about tomorrow.

Lancashire hotpot
Another day, another New Year recipe I made myself for the first time. Lancashire hotpot is all about the crust, and it came out just right.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Deacon Blue – ‘Queen Of The New Year’
Tears For Fears – ‘Shout’
Abba – ‘Happy New Year’
Traditional – ‘The Blaydon Races’
Beach Boys – ‘Sloop John B’

There must be some cross-training going on here!

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With NaNo done and a couple of days to go before I plan to start working on my Adventuron jam game in earnest, I’ve been working hard all day on de-hoarding my upstairs rooms. De-hoarding is a really difficult process for me because I’m so over-attached to stuff. Nevertheless, a lot of the stuff upstairs has been doing nothing but hanging around making me depressed, so it needs to go (or at least go into a box and sit in the garage for a year or two in order to convince me that I really don’t need it).

I’m really looking forward to having some floor space upstairs. A few more days of blitzing and hopefully it should all be done.

De-hoarding is a bit more physical than sitting on the sofa writing so I’m finding I’m quite tired in the evenings. It’s certainly a more strenuous form of secondary exercise than a yoga video!

Same again tomorrow, and hopefully I’ll feel like I’ve made a bit more progress.

Christmas star
I’ve used these star lights on the shelves downstairs for a few years now. I love sparkly lights at Christmas.

Today’s earworm playlist:

The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’
Duran Duran – ‘The Edge Of America’

A grey Monday

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A tiring mile in the strong breeze today…

…which I’m going to take as a sign I worked hard on my running over the weekend. Hopefully I’ll have recovered a bit of energy by tomorrow’s interval session!

I’m struggling quite a lot with anxiety today. I think I’m just getting a bit worn down by all the small stresses of the last few weeks and months. I need to find some forms of escapism, possibly via getting back to my writing and videogaming again. Geth is playing a tabletop RPG online with friends this evening so doing some of my own gaming might be a good idea.

I’m waiting for work to come in at the moment so I think my non-running activities this week will mainly be admin, house sorting, and trying not to worry about stuff.

Hallowe'en tealight holder
Now that it’s dark by 6pm, the tealight holders are seeing a lot of use.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Ultra Naté – ‘Free’
Cast of The Greatest Showman – ‘The Greatest Show’

The other side

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I’ve done a long video about yesterday’s running challenge…

(though you’ll have to wait till tomorrow for the video, as it’s soooo long it’s taking forever to upload to YouTube!)

(UPDATE: here it is!)

…and I honestly didn’t expect to feel quite so flat today. The whole thing was incredibly intense and I think it’s going to take me a good few days to recover both physically and mentally. I’ll blog about it once I’ve had some time to reflect, in about a week or so.

I expected I’d sleep all day today but I was awake at 7:45am – probably for the best as some urgent day job work had come in, and I was able to get it done nice and quickly. I didn’t intend to do my daily run until the evening as I thought my legs would be too sore, but by mid-afternoon I was climbing the walls and just wanted to get out there. My legs complained a lot, but surprisingly I managed my usual pace, pretty much. I had to find a new mile-ish route as I couldn’t face the usual one after doing it 24 times yesterday!

Tomorrow I’m heading to Timpsons first thing, as a slight bit of misadventure during the 24-hour challenge meant that my phone screen got smashed and I need to get it fixed. Other than that, I think I’m just going to try and enjoy some free time, as it looks like I might actually have some this week!

Pre-marathon
A picture from just before the challenge started, when I was still marginally sane.

Today’s earworm playlist:

U2 – ‘Elevation’
Idina Menzel – ‘Into The Unknown’

One step at a time

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Some very wet laps today…

…but the runs themselves were fine – legs seem to be behaving themselves at the moment.

Pretty much everything is just one foot in front of the other at the moment, just like running. There are a lot of difficult things going on at the moment, and 2020 is not improving, and it’s a bit tough to think long-term right now because it’s all a bit too overwhelming. I’m used to dreaming about the future a lot, but that’s not really possible in the current circumstances. Just one day at a time, and sometimes one hour.

Tomorrow will be tomorrow. I’m not thinking about it just yet.

First jumper of the season
It was properly cold today for the first time this autumn, so I have officially declared it jumper season.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Neil Diamond – ‘Sweet Caroline’
Dusty Springfield – ‘I Only Wanna Be With You’
Sigala, Ella Eyre, Meghan Trainor and French Montana – ‘Just Got Paid’
Carole King – ‘It Might As Well Rain Until September’
Gunship – ‘Black Blood Red Kiss’
Midnight Oil – ‘Beds Are Burning’

Grey days

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Another late-start just-a-mile run today…

…and I’m feeling a bit demotivated and really looking forward to having some certainty about my autumn running plans. Just a few more days.

I’m currently finishing off some admin and then I’ll be spending a few hours coding again. I’m really enjoying keeping my current game projects short and simple, as my games usually get very unwieldy.

Probably some Paper Mario again this evening. It’s a very samey week, but it’s the good kind of samey.

Just me
This is the face of someone who has completely run out of ideas for pictures to post on her blog. I’m okay. It’s a good four months into lockdown and I’m still generally appreciating this unplanned opportunity for a quiet year spent creating things.

Today’s earworm playlist:

ACE+ – ‘Central Factory’
Nina – ‘Automatic Call’
Rod Stewart – ‘Baby Jane’
Heaven 17 – ‘Let Me Go’

The midweek slump

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Not the usual midweek run…

…because I’m still not feeling that well. As such, I’ve decided to take it really easy with the running this week and just do short runs, then I’ll see how I feel at the weekend.

I’m still trying not to do too much brain-wise as well, as I’m a bit burnt out after the end of the game jam. However, I find that the creative part of my brain never stops whirring, so I’m constantly scribbling down notes for future games and novels and poems and blog posts, and lying awake thinking about them at night. Playing jam entries and other videogames does help, because it gives me something to concentrate on, so I’m trying to get my daily chores done ASAP at the moment so as to have a bit more gaming time.

I need to do a bit of housework tomorrow as the house badly needs it (lockdown has been bad for this as I find that when we don’t have visitors coming, I don’t prioritise cleaning) and we are going to have an ACTUAL OTHER PERSON IN OUR HOUSE ON FRIDAY OMG. It’s just the boiler technician, but I still won’t let people in the house when it’s not clean, which is why tomorrow is now a cleaning day.

Other than that, I will be trying (and hopefully succeeding) to relax again…

Sonic slippers
Back home in Edinburgh, Mum and Dad are sorting out my brother Malcolm’s old room at the moment, and have managed to unearth his Sonic the Hedgehog slippers from the ’90s. They’re still in fairly good nick and it sounds like Mum has adopted them.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Duran Duran – ‘Violence Of Summer (Love’s Taking Over)’
Duran Duran – ‘First Impression’