WTS Day XXXII

A very uneventful day today. I am turning into a hermit; there is a word, I have heard, for the opposite of hibernation. It is estivation. That is more or less what I am doing. I had agreed to mind my neighbour's dog so picked her up yesterday evening and this morning we went for a walk down by Blackrock Castle. We were there at half-seven and that is the time to be there. At times I could see no other human, but it was not so deserted as to feel unsafe. The tide was mostly in and the sun was out. It was lovely and I felt very privileged to live so close to the sea and to such an amenity. The sound of the cars heading towards the tunnel added rather than detracted from my enjoyment, as it brought the fact of my being on holidays into focus. 

I brought the dog with me to Mahon Point market, parking in the covered car-park. I always park there anyway: it wasn't just because I had the dog with me. Plastic-free July continues apace. I brought the plastic bag my strawberries came in last week and reused it. The punnet was the only new plastic I acquired: all my veg came loose or in brown paper. I bought pesto in jars and a take-away salad in a compostable container. Like I said before, it's easy to go plastic free in the summer when I can go to the market. This is excuse-making as there are other markets I could frequent that operate on Saturdays. 

The dog's owner collected her at lunch-time, and all I've done since is get my eyebrows threaded and buy Parmesan (wrapped in waxed paper) and a cotton shirt for work (12.95, bargain). Then I had to make a work-related phone-call (less than fifteen minutes). It wasn't for my main job, but for a tangential unpaid hustle. That hustle has been worth every minute of unpaid time I have spent on it. This is advice I would give to anyone: you have to give to get. Not so much as to make yourself an eejit, but you have to invest more than you would think for even modest returns. 

That was my day. It was fine, but I have nothing lined up to do at the weekend. That is worrying and I must investigate what is on and what I could go to. I went to the cinema on Monday on my own. Going to the cinema was on the "43 before 43 list" that I wrote at the New Year and I only got to it this week. But I got to it. I'm getting to lots of other things as well. Because this is how the summer works. It is not like a fortnight's holiday or a really long weekend. Things go very slack, and that is when possibilities emerge. 

WTS Day XXIX

Have fallen off all the bandwagons I am on. I went to TKMaxx yesterday and bought a product there. I had nothing on all day and was having an at-home day, tidying my house while listening to this podcast of Emma Guns interviewing Gretchen Rubin, reading "The War that Ended Peace" by Margaret Macmillan, doing yet another load of washing, cooking super-healthy baba ganoush for lunch. No sooner was the aubergine gone into the oven to roast did I remember that I had eaten the second half of the cashew nut butter that was in the press. I went to Marks and Spencers to buy more. My local M&S is a shopping centre where there is a small TKMaxx. I felt conflicted: 

A. I made a decision to stay out of there for at least two weeks. I've done a whole week. It's a matter of honour and self-discipline. I'll feel better if stick to my guns. On a superstitious level, life has been good to me lately and maybe there's a link to my embracing various forms of routine and resolutions. 

B. No-one would know and no objective harm would be done. It was only the little TKMaxx, not the main one. I was having a very unexciting day and five minutes wouldn't hurt. 

Reader, I caved. I almost bought a new workout top and then I actually did buy a Bliss Foot Patrol, even though I have two unopened ones here at home. For ages and ages they had none of these so I snapped two up the last time they had them, even though I have yet to finish the first one I bought. It's a really lovely, acidic, minty foot-cream that is heavenly used straight from the fridge on a hot day and the discount on Bliss is always decent. It was 8.99, not the end of the world, but it was ultimately close to a tenner on something I don't need. Plus, I had picked at the forming scab that was healing my shopping habit. 

That morning I had thought about going into town to write in the café that's under the TKMaxx in town, but I didn't go in, partly because I felt if I went in I'd end up dragging around the shops and frittering away money. This isn't just about the money. It's the time. It's the meaninglessness of it. So I didn't go. This was the right decision. There's being a flaneuse, and then there's being a sad creature who mopes around the shops without purpose or direction. 

The other bandwagon I fell off was the one I climbed on only yesterday. Having left a notebook and a biro next to my bed, I woke up and as per usual went straight to Twitter and continued the very debate that had delayed my going to sleep last night. I did remember and wrote a little, but by then it was too late. I think I'll stick a post-it on my phone tonight, or put Freedom on for longer. 

That's it. Will just have to pick myself up and keep going. Disgusted at my lapse yesterday and more committed than ever now to abstinence. 

"Gratitude brings freedom from envy, because when you're grateful for what you have, you're not consumed with wanting something different or something more." Gretchen Rubin

Gretchen "Grateful" Rubin

I have decided to practise gratitude. I nearly wrote "started a gratitude practice "; I need to read some real books. You know, ones that don't come from the self-help section.

This is a serious defeat for my inner cynic. Not my inner skeptic, I'm still friends with her. I wrote before how I've always resisted the idea of counting my blessings. Was this because I was, as Brené  Brown would say, waiting for the other shoe to drop? She calls it the notion of being afraid to acknowledge your own happiness "foreboding joy" and writes

"Scarcity and fear drive foreboding joy. We're afraid that the feeling of joy won't last, or that there won't be enough, or that the transition to disappointment (or whatever is in store for us next) will be too difficult."

That's part of it, but in my own life, I've dismissed all thoughts of actively cultivating gratitude on the basis of one memory.

I had a GP at the time who's not my GP anymore. He was youngish and laidback and I kind of liked him. Other people liked him too and he had a busy private practice but I was one of his public patients. I was in the surgery one day getting my prescription and we were chatting.
"Why don't you go home, Ellen, and make a list. Write out all of the good things in your life."

I can understand now, the judgement behind his words, and the implications that I was an ungrateful, spoilt brat who couldn't grasp how lucky she was. "Ungrateful" is a word I've often had levelled at me. There I was with my parents still living and healthy, my educational opportunities, my prospects, my youth. What right did I have to be miserable?

I couldn't see that judgement then and, because I respected him, I went home and wrote my list. I'll dig it out next time I'm down in my parents' house but I'm fairly sure what was on it. My degree, my masters, the fact I was working on a PhD, my youth, my family, the friends I was sharing a house with, my active social life, the radio station I was volunteering at, the local paper for which I'd started to write reviews.
Within months my family was mad as hell with me, I'd lost my place in the house and was back living at home with no nights out at all, my friends weren't talking to me, I'd thrown in the PhD, the radio station wouldn't have me on the premises. I thought that all was lost. The only way I could get through it was to pretend it wasn't happening.

So when the books would talk about gratitude journals I think they're a dangerous idea. The one time I counted my blessings, most of blessings flew away like birds in the winter.  But is gratitude the same as counting your blessings? I'm beginning to think they aren't the same. Certainly we can be grateful for blessings, but counting them implies that somewhere there is a massive chart, where all our scores are recorded and adjusted. Being told to count your blessings means "Take a look at the chart there and see there are people with  far lower scores than yours. Get over yourself."

Katherine Baldwin

I've decided to be conscious of my blessings without counting them or keeping score. I'm going to pick three things each day to be grateful for. Typing those words feels really uncomfortable which might be a good sign.  I'm following the guidelines from JustCharlee, that I got from Katherine Baldwin via Twitter https://twitter.com/From40WithLove . These are:


Three Little Steps
Commit to writing three things you’re grateful for, for 21 days.

1. Commit and share
Whether that means posting on facebook or buddying up with a friend, making it public means it’s likely to happen rather than go the way of many a gym membership.

2. Choose a fixed time
Make it a habit like brushing your teeth. First thing in the morning and last thing at night are great because they set you up for sweet dreams or create a positive start to your day. Three little things. You have time for that!

3. Keep track
To find out what difference it has made, keep a note of changes you notice.

http://justcharlee.ca/wellness/three-little-things-how-daily-gratitude-practice-changed-my-life/

This is, incidentally, almost identical to the gratitude journal kept by Gretchen Rubin in "The Happiness Project"  www.happiness-project.com . Rubin writes

"Gratitude brings freedom from envy, because when you're grateful for what you have, you're not consumed with wanting something different or something more."

 That makes sense to me, and is what I hope to achieve. Not to stop wanting something more (relationships, children) or something different (writing) but to not be consumed by that want.  Rubin only kept her journal for two weeks but found by then she was able to integrate gratitude into everyday life. Unlike the morning pages, which are an open-ended commitment, I'll just do the writing-down of the three things for three weeks and then see. I will let you know the outcome here.

 

So what were my three things for today?

1. Seeing my washing flapping in the wind on the clothes-line. I'm in love with my clothes-line. Seriously.
2.Spending almost two hours catching up, in person, with some-one I hadn't seen in ages.
3. Posting my entry to a local short-story competition.

The last is quite a step towards the mountain of being a writer again. A tiny, baby step but definitely in the right direction. And I have twenty-eight more days off in which to do little else but potter around, fix up my house and write. A happy day :-)