Today I would like to be a tortoise. I would like to pull my head and arms and legs into a shell, and go to sleep in a box full of straw, and spend the winter in a shed. And nobody would find this at all odd because, you know, that’s what tortoises do. Nobody would feel at all hurt or insulted, nobody would expect me to send them Christmas cards, nobody would expect me to be anywhere but in my box. Because I am a tortoise.
Which is a long way of saying that I am knackered, and have been driving myself far too hard and expecting far too much of myself. I have been doing too much travelling, too much socialising, too much messing around on the internet… Not that I don’t love all those things, but there are ways of doing them that drain me, and ways of doing them that fill me up, and at the moment they all seem to be wearing me out. Hence my desire to hibernate.
How can I sort this out for next year? I have a couple of ideas, and they are mostly about being more clever with my diary. Firstly, I’m thinking about working from home occasionally. On an ordinary work day I travel one hundred and sixteen miles. If I don’t have to do that five days running, I think I’ll wind up much less tired. Also, I’ve seen a small ad from a piano teacher who does daytime lessons. One of those hours that I’m not spending on the train, I can use for piano.
Then I can be clever with my annual leave. This year, now I don’t have to use it on moving house and boring stuff like that, I’m going to book at least two separate weeks of absolutely nothing at all, as well as using some of it on actual honest to God holidays. And by ‘holidays’ I do not mean ‘visiting my parents on the Isle of Wight again’: dearly as I love my parents, visits to them are never as relaxing as I think they’re going to be. Also, it’s high time I went abroad again.
Next year, I’m going to let myself have fun, damn it.
Kathleen Jowitt 