Tag: personal

Reverb 26: claiming time

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Day 26: how will you make time?

How do you intend to carve out more time for the things that are the most important to you in 2013?

What did I decide on? Writing, cycling, people, prayer. I should also include sleep. I am not going to cut into my sleep time for any of this, because it will have a negative impact on everything.

So. Seven hours of work. (Lunchtime at the moment is either reading or wandering around town.) Eight hours of sleep. Nine hours to divide between everything else. That’s weekdays. As far as weekends are concerned, I get about five hours on a Sunday between the two sets of church, and so Saturday is the only day that’s completely free.

How to get the rest of it in? Yes, well, this is always the problem, isn’t it? And, much as I rave about cycling, and, indeed, need to keep cycling because it’s the only serious exercise I get, it does deprive me of an hour per work day (ten minutes train journey, plus ~ten minutes messing around at either end) that I was previously devoting to reading or writing.

Work time is, of course, work time. I have in the past tried doing the Angels of the Hours at work, but usually end up thinking, ‘well, I have a browser window open now, let me look at the internet’, so that doesn’t really work.

My Thursday evenings usually turn out to be the most productive: in the two hours between work and choir practice I sit in Caffe Nero, get my head down, and write. Either that or I go to Evensong at the cathedral. Both good. I will keep Thursdays going in this manner. (And I have dropped off the chorister minding list, hurrah! I know I am going for the love and the outreach this year, but really, watching fifteen small boys attempting to kill each other did nothing for my feelings for humanity in general.)

The obvious answer, to some of it at least, is to switch off the internet more. That’s the plan, then, from when work starts again. Computer goes off at 10pm. That gives time for prayer and reading and things like that. I really don’t tend to do much of use beyond 10pm; it’s usually TVtropes or obsessively re-reading comments I’ve seen before.

The writing is going to have to get squeezed in at odd moments. As it happens, this works pretty well, so long as I have a notebook handy. I think the trick here is not to dedicate a particular chunk of time to it, but to aim for the old thousand words per day.

As for people – friends, family – I think that’s what Saturdays are for. And so I shall aim to either meet up with somebody, or do something interesting with Tony, every Saturday. I’m quite good at joining in with social things at work, but terrible at planning things from scratch. Also, as this year, I want to talk to Anne on the phone a lot. (Mondays, or Wednesdays.)

I’m now looking at all of the above with deep suspicion, because I have a horrible feeling that I’m never going to be able to keep to it. I do think there is an element of truth in that, and that I do need to leave myself some wiggle room, give myself permission to fail at it. So there. This will not necessarily work all the time. It is worth working towards, though. And so I shall try to make those two big changes, and stick to them, and not beat myself up when I don’t, but not give up on trying. 10pm switch-off, and Saturdays.

Reverb 25: being vulnerable

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Day 25: how will you be vulnerable?

How will you be vulnerable?

The soft white underbelly, the flaw in the armor, the Achilles’ heel — weaknesses are what make us the most human, the most beautiful.

Next year, how will you tend to your vulnerabilities? How will you build them a shelter from the storm? How will you put them through physical therapy? How will you find a way to make them work to your advantage?

I am not sure about Achilles’ heel. I think I have Achilles’ ankles, and, short of wearing tight-laced walking boots day in, day out, I’m not sure what I can do about them.

That is not what this question is about, of course. This question wants to know about vulnerabilities in my head and my heart.

I will stop being afraid of them.

This year I want to love. I want to uncurl, to open up, to stop being scared of looking silly. Ephphatha. It sounds terribly soppy – but I am honestly so fed up with not caring about anything or anybody. Building shelters for my vulnerabilities hasn’t worked.

This is what I am praying this Christmas: let me love.

I do not care where it leads me. I do not care what it makes of me.

Let me love.

I’m not really sure where to start. Perhaps I will get drunk and read In Memoriam. Perhaps I will write all my thank you letters. Tonight, though, I think, I’ll go to bed.

Reverb 24: writing, praying

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Day 24: your most important habit?

What is the single most important habit you intend to cultivate in 2013?

Well, I’m going to cheat, and choose two. When I first saw this prompt, I thought ‘writing, of course’ – and then I saw somebody else’s response, and went ‘but I really ought to choose prayer, oughtn’t I?’

I can’t perform some mental sleight-of-hand and declare that actually they are the same thing, because they really aren’t. I could keep doing either of them without also doing the other. I want to do both of them for my own sake, but they aren’t particularly connected.

I want to do both. I want both to be the most important.

I want to write, and write, and write. It is one of those things that one only gets better at by practising, and I want so much to get better.

And I want to pray. I want to stop drifting away. I want to be anchored in reality, not floating around in fantastic ideas of who I think I am. I want to be opened up; and prayer is the way to do that.

These both seem like very inward-looking habits. They are: a habit that relies on somebody else, anybody else, is doomed to failure. Prayer is a habit that will turn me outwards, though. Writing makes me disagreeable and secretive; prayer makes me calm and joyful and friendly.

I do want to write next year. I want to write a lot. It can’t be my only habit, though, because it leaves me incomplete. If I had to choose, then, it would be prayer. But I don’t, so it’s both.

Reverb 23: letting go

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Day 23: what will you let go of?

Name three excuses — stories you tell yourself that are holding you back — that you are going to let go of in 2013.

1. As previously discussed, ‘ought to’. The idea that I cannot level up to ‘decent human being’ until I complete tasks X, Y and Z – when it would be much easier to complete said tasks if I had first accepted that I am a decent human being, accepted and valued as such.

2. My writing is terrible and I can’t plot for toffee. And that this is an immoveable obstacle. In fact, I’ve proved to myself this year that plotting comes with practice.

3. That everybody hates me. This is a mindworm that comes free with depression, and ranges in severity from ‘I’m not very popular’ to ‘I am completely pointless and useless’, by way of ‘everybody that claims to like or love me is either lying or bonkers’ and ‘I should not try to make friends because I will just look stupid’.

I could really do with letting go of my fear of looking stupid.

Reverb 20: losing, finding

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Day 20: what was lost and what was found?

What was lost in 2012? What do you intend to find in 2013?

What was lost? A lot of faith in a couple of institutions that, in one way or another, define most of my life. One of those I’d rather not discuss online; the other I’ve talked about a lot recently. So I shall leave that there.

In 2013 I intend to find: my box of diaries from years past; my confidence; my top F; time to read The Faerie Queene; time to write every day; possibly a new direction; clothes I want to buy.

Reverb 19: nourishing

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Day 19: how did you nourish yourself?

How did you nourish your beautiful body in 2012?

What self-care practices will you take with you into 2013?

In February I got into a useful habit of making a large batch of soup on a Sunday, which could be heated up in the work microwave, and did three or four lunches, and got me eating more vegetables with less faff. This went on for some months, but I have got out of the habit again. The problem is that Sunday is my busy day, and I do not always find time between morning church and evening church to cook – sometimes, to cook twice. Not to mention shopping and all that.

I went through a phase of consuming daily multivitamin pills and St John’s Wort (in the vague hope that they would sort out my immune system and the brain slugs respectively) but got out of that habit as well. I’m no good with pills.

At the moment I am eating a lot of clementines and satsumas and things, because they are easy and cheerful.

I have been wondering (vaguely, again) about getting a veg box delivered. I do tend to use food up if I actually have it in the house (unless I have completely forgotten about it). We did decide against it a while back, on the grounds that the market is so good, but we don’t actually go to the market, because of having to carry everything back. (I suppose the trike would help with that; but it is still a journey that I don’t necessarily have time to make.)

Also, try not to fall over so much. And go to the dentist.

Reverb 18: colouring

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Day 18: the colour of you?

What colour best represents the year you had in 2012? And why?

What colour would you like to invite into your life in 2013?

Be as literal or metaphorical, clever or crazy, or just plain off-the-wall with this as you choose!

I think it’s been a blue year.

Lots of different shades of blue. I have had turquoise seas and skies that faded from a blue almost as bright, paler and paler, until it darkened again into navy, midnight.

I have been looking for gold shells on blue backgrounds. Bright, vibrant, royal blue. Gold stars, too, and arrows. It’s a very medieval colour scheme, as much at home on the ceiling of Sainte-Chapelle as on the waymarkings of the Camino de Santiago. (Neither of which I’ve seen in the flesh this year, but let that pass.)

Something blue. I’ve been to four weddings this year, missed one because I was ill, and heard with pleasure of three to come next year. (Two on the same date, but there you go. I suppose there are only so many Saturdays.)

The blues have been squatting in my head for a while. Never mind them.

Next year. Next year I’m not sure about. Perhaps something very crisp and bright, with a glow around the edges. Yellow, perhaps, or a very young spring green. Something new and full of potential. Something that’s going to explode into something else.

Reverb 17: making a difference

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Day 17: How did you make a difference?

Think of one person whose life you made a difference to in 2012.

What did you gain from this?

How will you continue to make a difference in 2013?

This one was difficult.

First it hit me in the self-esteem. What have I done this year to make a difference to someone else’s life? Precious little. I have bought a Big Issue here and there… I found it very difficult to put my finger on one action that made one difference to one life. In fact, the only event that feels like it fits the bill is a tweet from one of my friends, saying that they had found one of my posts helpful, when they tried to get their head around synodfail.

What did I gain from this? Validation, I suppose, affirmation, a sense that my maunderings made sense to somebody outside my own head but inside the whole mess. The encouragement to continue to share? But my sense is still that I am the prime beneficiary here, that it was all for myself first and foremost.

In my head I have John Donne saying that no man is an island, and Carl Sagan telling me that, if I want to make an apple pie from scratch, I must first invent the universe.

There is nothing that I can do that will make a difference to somebody else without also making a difference to me. I will never know what difference I can make to someone else, because I can never get outside the fishbowl of my own mind.

And usually I am OK with that. I got used to the idea of being a cog in a machine long ago. I am – usually – quite happy to be a cog in a machine, so long as the sausages that come out of that machine are known to be good. I would rather – usually – be a good cog than an indifferent fork.

This year, that doesn’t seem to have been quite enough for me, and I’m not quite sure how to move it on. I think I need to reach out more, to open myself up more, to find a way of doing more without over-committing myself. To find something worth doing outside work and church, because those are two institutions that have been driving me right up the wall recently, and I’ve been beginning to doubt that I can make a difference in them.

See more people. Know more people. Love more people. See more of the people I know; know the people I know better; love the people I know.

Goodness only knows what that’s going to look like. We’ll see.

Reverb 6 and 14: learning and rewriting

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Day 6: What did you learn?

Compare the “you” from the beginning of 2012 to the “you” that you are now. What new skills or talents have you learned or discovered this year?

The one thing I started doing this year that I’d never done before was letterboxing, and as a result of this I have become reasonably good at using lino cutters to carve rubber stamps out of common-or-garden erasers, which is something I’d never attempted before. I have found some letterboxes made by other people whose skill has left me in awe (The Hero of Sherwood is spectacularly good; unfortunately I can’t show you a picture) but I’ve managed to make a few stamps that have a recognisable picture.

I’ve become competent at cycling on the road. This is mostly confidence and etiquette, but it bears mentioning.

I’m beginning to learn how to get proper plots into my stories. Mostly it happens without my conscious decision; part of me watches with bewildered gratitude as I exclaim ‘but of course A would do X if it turned out that B had done Y!’ – but it’s very exciting, because that never used to happen before. So I must have learned somehow…

There were various nifty little tricks I learned on various Microsoft programs, but that’s boring.

Day 14: the path that brought you here

Sometimes I spend too long at the end of the year planning for the new year ahead, so something like #reverb12 is so good for me.

This year was so full of change for me and mine that it feels like it wasn’t a “good one”. While I welcome the fresh breeze that change can bring, too much change just leaves me itchy and skittish, the ground loose beneath my feet. Then, when things settle again and the road ahead looks smooth and delightful, I think – what’s next?

But I need to remember to look back at the winding path before I start walking.

My question is: what was the most important thing you learned in 2012?

I think the most important thing I learned this year was that ‘I ought to’ is a very bad reason to do anything. I had run myself into a wall with ‘I ought to’ and had lost sight of what was actually important for me.

When I had learned to reformulate every ‘I ought to’ into either ‘I want to’ or ‘X needs doing’, I was able to see much more clearly where I was, what needed doing, and whether it needed me to do it. Then I was able to do it, but in a way that did not stress me out, or not do it, and not feel guilty about not doing it.

It has allowed me to do things – some of them very big, scary, things – on my own terms. The whole thing broke a very damaging pattern and I very much want to remember it, and take it forward into next year with me.

Reverb 5 and 13: destination and journey

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Day 5: What was your dream destination?

What was your dream destination in 2012 and why?

It can be a town, city, country or region — real or imaginary — and doesn’t matter if you actually got there or not!

Prestatyn.

Don’t laugh.

No, really. One of my mad schemes for this year was to walk Offa’s Dyke, the 8th century earthwork that marks the border between England and Wales. I was going to go south to north, for some reason that now escapes me, starting in Chepstow and ending in Prestatyn.

My reaction to most long-distance paths is, ‘ooh, when can I practicably walk that one?’ and Offa’s Dyke is no exception. This was going to be the year. I didn’t do it in the end, because I wasn’t rich enough and I wasn’t fit enough, and I did the Isle of Wight Coastal Path instead, this being much easier and less pressurised, but I do still want to get to Prestatyn. Or Chepstow. Whichever.

Day 13: Some selfie love?

Please post your favourite picture of yourself from 2012, self-portrait or otherwise!

By all means! This is me, on Midna-the-trike, on the way to watch the Women’s Cycle Road Race at the Olympic Games. Picture taken by Tony and sepiafied by Sam, his brother-in-law.