Day 22, Catch Up 1 – The Chiropractor

I left the laptop in Suffolk on Wednesday night as I knew DN2 needed to use it, and I was about to go on my travels.  So here I am catching up with things that made me content.  I’m pleased to say quite a lot has made me happy in the last few days.  I have worried of the value of writing so often, about the narcissism of writing about myself, but it’s also been necessary.  I am managing the pain of loss but as the next piece shows, the pain of loss has a way of being there whether you like it or not.

Day 21 Midsummer Madnesses

I made my mind up early in the day as what would qualify for this challenge.  I even told someone I had found my challenge moment, but actually, I’ve changed my mind.  To be truthful I’m not even sure which I would want to hold the pole position for this Tuesday, so I’ve going to mention both, and you can choose, or not, as you want.

Day 20 - Thank You for the Music

The weekly, and sometimes biweekly, trips to work from home are perhaps the most difficult times in my week.  The leaving of one place where I am happy and content with friends around me, to go to another where I find my job rewarding but am always aware I am alone and new to the area and living a kind of half-life, is not easy.  Equally, having settled in at the cottage and found myself a rhythm and peace, to go back home and fit in with a life I have missed for a few days isn’t straight forward either.  When I was with the Last Man it was thrilling to have these two facets to my life, but now much of what I found so exciting about the city is no longer here, and it is looking at how I manage the transition that has occupied my thoughts for the blog today.

Day 19 - Giggling in Church

If you've ever seen 'Vicar of Dibley' you will have a fair idea of our lovely parish church.  The village numbers about 330 of which very few go to church regularly, although everyone turns out for the Carol Service and the Church Fete.  We are part of a Benefice of three churches who all share the same vicar, but unlike Dibley we have a number of non-stipendiary vicars and lay readers, and several individuals in training for the roles.  This means we have plenty of people to take the services, which they all do cheerfully and capably, but sadly, very few capable of playing the organ.  Down at the 'Big Church' in the next village  they have a group consisting of the inevitable guitars, a saxophone, a flute, and, I think, a set of drums who can add to the variety of accompaniments should an organist not be around.  The Big Church is a tad more informal that our little place, we say 'trepasses', they say 'sins'.

Day 18 A Soft Saturday

There are lots of uncertainties in my life at present.  The house move may or may not come off, DN2 has another job interview and have told myself I can’t get a new car until I know what is happening.  The house move will mean a serious amount of downsizing, so I have to face the prospect of sorting all my things out, and leaving behind all I have designed to help rebuild my life after the break-up of my 22 year marriage and loss of my marital home.   If you have read the blog from the start you will know it’s been a painful business but I have created a space that brings me comfort, a space that reflects me, from the little piles of papers that still need to be sorted, to a herb and spice cupboard in alphabetical order (heaven help you if you mess it up)  In short I’m a bit of a mixture, I don’t like to use the work ‘enigma’ because I don’t think I am, but I believe there is something surprising about my inconsistencies.  Then there is the recovery from the Last Man, which has passed the first desperate early stages and is moving into sad acceptance that Happy Ever After was, of course, only for others and fairy tales.

Harry Nilsson - Without Her (1971) - Day 17's Post, a bit late

In lieu of a post today may I offer up the words and tune of this sublime ditty. It reverberates as a comfort and a snare.

Day 16 – Back to the Gym

The breakup of my relationship has not been easy.  Partly this is because I’ve done this before.  I know how difficult I was when my marriage ended, how much trouble I caused, how utterly melodramatic I was.  In my defence I couldn’t help it, I remember sitting on my bed and weeping for hours in helpless pain.  I remember walking for miles just to calm the ‘what on earth is going to happen to me’ panic.  I remember the terrible suicidal thoughts overwhelming me so the only way out I could see was to end the pain. 

Another day, another thought

So this is the first post that hasn’t been written on the day, but in this case the day after.   I didn’t think of anything first thing in the morning, then I travelled to home leaving Norwich quite early and found myself embroiled in DN2’s difficult situation that has arisen.  It seemed more important to discuss her issues than to gaze into my own metaphorical navel.  After a decent chat we travelled the arduous 62 steps from my front door to the pub (it’s 83 back I find) where a gathering of nice and decent people was clustered round the bar.  We arrived just as the round was being bought, and thus supported by a life sustaining glass of red I chatted to these dear and lovely people, and laughed and relaxed.

83 steps back and DN2 and I prepared our supper, and continued to chatter, enjoying the rare treat of a midweek catch up.  I didn’t turn the laptop on all night.  I have a selection of happy thoughts to choose.  Which would you nominate?

Day 14 – The Lesson for Today

I’m stretching the concept of ‘contentment’ today to include embarrassed smugness.  I have a trainee teacher in with one of my lessons, she’s lovely and going to be a very good teacher.  She’s a languages teacher, but the training school thought she ought to get some experience with PSHE as it is often parachuted into timetables as a filler, and would be useful on her CV.  I’m quite passionate about good quality PSHE education.  I’ve taught some appalling PSHE lessons in my time, and yet when I left my last job, the cards I had from my young students were touching and demonstrated maturity of thought, so perhaps my assessment of myself isn’t always dead accurate.

Day 13 Silence is Golden

I have to discipline myself with garden tasks, because I find once you start a job in the garden it quickly mushrooms and becomes a big project.  With limited energy levels and concentration, it’s really important not to take on too much.  I get easily dispirited at the moment, the ‘critical voice’ within me rising to tell me that I can do nothing properly, as evidenced by my single state.  This is self-destructive, and as I am given to such a mindset, sometimes it feels better not to try, than to try and fail.  Again, I would propose that this reaction too, is unhelpful.  I used to write lists and have written elsewhere of my ex-husband’s habit of writing an impossibly long list of jobs to do in a day, then beat himself up, and somehow manage to blame me as well, when he only achieved two of the jobs, which in actual fact was about all a normal human being could expect to do.

Day 12 - Counting my Blessings

The sun is shining, the roses I planted all those years ago are bursting into fragrant beauty. 

The lupin is a white spire that just fits next to the hosta, which is enormous and lush, and remarkably, largely free of slug damage. 

The solomon’s seal I planted in the shade drips with little gems next to another hosta, variegated in bright stripes.  I’ve bought petunias to plant in the troughs on the window sills and so it is with a smile I return to the warmth and sunshine and continue to enjoy this lovely summer Sunday.

Day 11 - Saved from The Bridge

There is always a moment when the dementors get you.  That hopeless ‘why am I bothering’ moment.  If I’m honest this thought haunts and tempts me, and it is writing, this act of self revelation that helps me not fall prey to their kiss, not willingly offer up my soul for the numbing emptiness of the nothing of existence.

So how do you feel about that?  Pity? Embarrassment? Envy?   Yet today my moment of contentment was talking not to one, but two friends, who are gamely ploughing through my prose.  And being friends to me.  

Day 10 – Pink, the new black

I woke this morning, aware that I had slept the night through, even though my dreams were not always fun.  Fortunately the cottage is in a very quiet spot in the centre of the city, and sleeping with window open doesn’t rack up the decibels.  So, more refreshed than I’ve felt in a while I got up to make my morning cup of tea, and a little shot of happiness was promptly administered.

Day 9 – Focus

Back at work today, and as much as I was nervous about my ability to cope, I knew I had to, and you know what, I did.  Ok, everything took much longer today than normal, but fortunately study leave still continues for the sixth form.  I managed to teach the lessons I had left, although I did have to print off a five minute lesson plan, something I haven’t used since last September, just so I could get my head round the flow and dynamics of the lesson I was planning.  Normally I can hold all the variables in my head, but not today.  Admittedly whilst collecting my printing, I did offer some help to one of our PGCE students who had that ‘can’t see the wood for the trees’ look in his eyes I know so well as he was telling me about the lesson he was planning for his final assessment.  It is to the credit of my dear colleagues in my last job (you know who you are) that I feel so at home with mechanics of teaching, aware that the processes of learning are far more complex and interesting than the ‘man on the street’ (please forgive the implicit sexism, the phrase ‘person on the street’ somehow doesn’t convey the same sense) might think.  So there I was asking about how he was demonstrating progress, suggesting peer assessment using a modified mark scheme might help, how was he differentiating his questioning, all the time watching his mind sort solutions to his problems, watching his shoulders relax.  Ok, I’ve lost most of you, but hopefully all will realise that I forgot the pain that haunts my days and nights, and immersed myself in the present, and the job I love.

Day 8 – The Storm Passes

Another difficult day has, at last, ended.  Not much of anything that might be called ‘contentment’ has happened today, except the wind that has so buffeted us has finally abated.  It is warm enough to have the back door open and a bird is singing loudly, and I like to think joyously, as dusk approaches in my little garden.  Thanks to my last 2+  plus years with the Last Man, I know this bird is a blackbird.  That he is not here to share this quiet pleasure with me is, sadly, still a pain I have to bear.

Day 7 The Struggle Continues

Sadly the fever has not yet gone, and despite my attempt to go to work I really couldn’t concentrate and so after my lessons had finished, I came home and went to bed.  Fortunately my teaching load is not great at this time of year, so I didn’t feel I was letting my students down if I put my needs first.  It’s one of those things in teaching, much as good self-care demands you balance your needs against those of your work place, the reality is we all struggle on when we shouldn’t.  Some work places use illness as a weapon for picking off the ‘weak’, but that’s for another day, as I have told myself this is a daily task, and today I have really struggled to find any contentment, and remembering pains of the past hardly fulfils the remit.

Day 6 – The First Bump

I knew it was going to happen, I knew it wouldn’t be an unceasing, blissful journey of smelling roses and smiling at the dog.  So this is the bit when living in the moment really matters, when actually you feel grim and know the tears are not that far away.