Slamming the Door

The weeks since the end of October have been "interesting" as the fear and grief of the past year took their toll. It wasn't quite depression, but there were a couple of days when I was definitely skating around it. 

I didn't think it would be like this. I thought I should be filled with energy and enthusiasm and able to crack on with my life with vim, vigour and a renewed sense of optimism. It's not been like that at all. I've had days where doing the immediately necessary was my only priority. I did tomorrow, that which did not incur charges today. All the while struggling with this enormous sense of frustration at myself. 

My To Do List darlings, is ginormous. I have Things to do, people to See and a sense of a ticking clock. I've been drifting along; although I am deeply grateful to be here - at this point in my Life - I'm also aware that drifting isn't enough. I know I can drift, endure, survive etc etc but enough is enough. It's time to Live, to lace up my walking boots, grab my stick and map and journey. Journey as a verb, a doing word. Not a thing that is static and fixed. Life will happen anyway: taxes will need to be paid, my butt will continue to expand, there will be more wrinkles and grey hairs this time next year.  

I've used the time to create a Plan for World Domination. Of course a new Plan requires a new book, and thusly one was purchased. I considered my time frame and did some day dreaming. In the end I came up with a 10 year Plan (I thought I'd give myself some leeway to get side-tracked), wrote it down in detail and frowned at it for a few hours. 

There really wasn't anything quite as dispiriting as looking at my dreams all laid out in blue and white in sensible lines and bullet points. I took myself to the emporium of dreams, otherwise known as The Range (a down-market department chain store). It has an amazing art and craft section. I spent...well, let's not go into too much detail about that shall we...time...looking at all their goods and brought home many, many unsensible, irrational and delicious things to put the fun into my future. I channelled my inner six year old, scrawling all over my Plans with gold and silver pens. Highlighting and emphasising points with pretty stickers. It made me happy.

I've since broken my Plan into six week chunks with a list of things I would like to accomplish, the first of which I'm now half-way through. The first week was brilliant. I was focused and productive and feeling very pleased with myself. And then...I got sick. I got hit with a chesty cold that laid me out with a single punch and has been giving me a good kicking since. I am shifting it slowly, I am happy to say, it's now a question of getting rid of the dregs.

Unfortunately, it hit the week of Yule when my festive To Do List was a mile long. I had to postpone, re-book, cancel, rearrange the whole week. I don't know what I would have done without Rowan and Dave who did shopping and downscaled our plans with understanding and without complaints (and by the way, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to ever get past the ridiculous irony of saying to someone who endured six months of chemotherapy: I feel really awful; I'm sick; I can't today, today.)

As far as my Plans for World Domination getting off to a phlegmic start, I knew full well that the festive season would throw things out anyway. The idea was to start, that was the purpose of the exercise.  

I lived up to my promise to Dave. You may remember I have a deep loathing of turkey and I promised Dave that if he was still here we would celebrate with turkey for the festive season. He cooked me turkey for Boxing Day and I ate every scrap with deep prayers of gratitude. In actual fact, it was no great hardship. He performs magic with demonic poultry and made it not only edible, but delicious. Darlings, I did draw the line at cold turkey sandwich. That was a step too far. A woman has to have some standards.

I reiterate the Winter Solstice blessing I posted on FB: 

May the returning sun bring with it compassion, kindness, decency and a wish for greater tolerance and understanding between all peoples.

I hope that we all work hard to build bridges in 2017.

Love and peace to you all.