Tonight I am a slightly stressed-out rambling (potentially incoherent) version of myself. Not much different for the normal state of affairs, probably. I'm off out to the gym to balance out the brain tired : body tired ratio.
Because my brain is mush right now.
How many things at once is sensible. How do you all deal with the normal amount of stress that is part and parcel of the attempt to function as a passable adult?
I feel like I'm being stalked by animate email account monsters of my own making. How many email accounts do I even have? A quick tally give me a total of 4 main ones. A couple of other abandoned ones. But then there are online contact forms coming at me from I think 3 different places that spit out in to a strange combination of those accounts. My mother has discovered 3 of my email addresses and like to email me in triplicate now. Every time I open each of those inboxes I do it whilst leaning away from the computer, looking sideways and squinting a bit. As if that's going to save me from any monster question or task that might jump out at me.
So I fill my life with things, some of them thrust upon me, many of them of my own choosing. I have a job because it's nice to eat and have somewhere to live. I have a car because I'm lazy and have a terrible internal need to get out of Universal Lift Debt. I go dancing because I want to. Likewise we decided to take on this whole tent hire thing because we wanted to. The Aurora May (Pirate) Ball is in less than three weeks. I try and remember that I really quite like doing all the things I do.
These are all of the things that fill up my headspace. I imagine my own brain as a series of boxes with little tunnels connecting them, like a really fancy hamster cage, if you ever wanted to know. That's my headspace. I don't know if it's a real word, but just stay with me here because I'm about to use it a lot. It's all the things I'm trying to mentally juggle, and the space I'm trying to juggle them in. And it's nearing capacity. They're all interesting exciting things that I want to be good at doing. I do them all because I am an interfering cow and I like to know what's going on. It seems I like to jump in with both feet and see what happens.
But sometimes it's raining and your headspace is full.
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| This was me when I got home from work this evening. |
So what do you all do to cheer yourself up when it's grey and rainy and the world you have internally created is out to get you? It's either
Me - what do I do?
Here are some bullet points:
- Remember that I am not surrounded by idiots*.
Not statistically possible. Statistically you're all of average intelligence. Unless the hobbies I partake in attract people of significantly above or below average intelligence? Yes, let's go with that. Scottish Country Dancing is like a magnet for geniuses (nothing makes you feel dumb quite like having to google the plural of "genius"). You're all too smart for your own good. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling sort of thing? Are we inbreeding for bunions and pattern recognition and a slight absence of social aptitude. Our children are all going to be ace at their 8 times table if nothing else.
I digress. You're probably not all idiots. You can't statistically all be idiots. Remind me every once in a while to just trust you to do a thing. Sorry I'm a control freak. Sometimes I have to consciously remember that the rest of the world includes other people who are actually quite good at adulting and stand back and let them do a thing.
- Disconnect and get out of my own headspace.
A full headspace isn't always a relaxing space to be. Sometimes I can manage to really let my train of though wander off in to the wilderness. This morning I was picturing myself spinning poi. Which I'm rubbish at, and would like to be better at, and that make me a little bit sad, but that's not the point. Does fire weigh anything? What is the difference between spinning unlit fire poi and then spinning flaming fire poi? Does the fire add or take away anything? It goes "woosh". Does that mean it has resistance?Tell me, you geniuses!
Sometimes you need something else to drag you away from your own headspace. Like this awesome, if slightly spaced-out programme about Iceland. It has volcanoes, and glaciers, and cute fluffy foxes in it. That helped.
- Plan the next exciting, slightly-further-away thing.
I just googled "June temperature Toulouse**", for instance. If a Thing is happening now, it's fun, tomorrow = fun, a week or two away = stressful as heck, 3 months or a year away = fun. I'll try not to worry about the partially-finished dressmaking or the dances I haven't yet memorised. That's for the stressful period about 2 weeks before we go.
- Look forward to the next thing.
Like how there's dancing on Sunday, and how there's going to be mushrooms for tea.
- Get something out of my headspace
It's my space, and I get to choose what matters enough to be there. Two ways of getting rid of things, one to temporarily hit snooze on them and decide to worry about them in a few days, or to fix it in tomorrow's lunch break, or after X. That only really seems to work for me for certain things. Other things just nag. The other way is to just sort the thing. Like right now I feel ten times better about everything than I did yesterday because I came home past Halfords today and got one tiny step closer to getting new brakes on Daisy the tandem. It's not the most urgent thing and it has no bearing on anything else, but I did a thing and so I feel ever-so-slightly more productive. Does that logic hold up? Who knows.
- Indulge in a happy thing
Like going out for food, or drinking one of my special Birthday reserve of glass bottle coke, or watching Masterchef in bed. I am a big fan of escapism.
Do you ever cut up some cheese in to tiny pieces, eat it on Mini Cheddars and pretend to be a giant?
- Have a good moan about it all to you lot.
This serves the dual purpose of getting some of the fuzz in my little brain out and in to words, and making me feel smug that there goes one more week when I've managed to keep up with Tuesday Blog Time.
Even if I did come home and put on my giraffe onesie immediately, I have achieved one small thing.
So it turns out my phone had a "selfie" function all along. Found it tonight.
As for this evening, you will probably find me tuning out by watching this mesmorising, artsy, BBC4 thing. You're welcome.
*Unless you work for Halfords, who seem to be selectively employing idiots. Welcome to your interview. What we're looking for here is someone who is scared of telephones and can't read or add up.
**Historical averages of 13 degree low and 26 degree high temperatures, if you were interested.
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