Absolutely Whacked

I was going to sit down this evening and write a couple of posts giving details of what I have been doing over the last couple of days. I promised myself a few weeks ago that I would try and post every day because writing helps me so much when I am depressed. It is a way of focusing my mind without my having to try to take information on board and analyse it or act upon it.

But those posts are going to have to wait until tomorrow now. It has been another long day (partly my fault because I was very late to bed last night even though I knew I had to be up early this morning) and partly because I have been involved in a long day of presentations and discussions about patients having access to their pathology data.

So, I am promising myself an evening of relaxation. I am going to put my feet up and watch a film. I'll probably fall asleep while it is on, but what the heck, tomorrow is a day when I don't have anything planned and if I want to sleep, I can, and if I can't sleep it won't matter because I don't have to do anything that involves me in having to use my brain, or interacting with people, or anything that might be difficult to achieve.

The Art Of Relaxation

It's not something that I have thought about much before, but I have suddenly realized that I haven't been relaxed for a long time. This seemed a strange realization because there have been so many times recently when I have done nothing but sleep for hours on end. But this is not relaxation; it is more a case of exhaustion and the body saying that it can take no more and needs to close down in order to recuperate.

At the moment I am not studying anything with the OU. I wasn't enjoying the course that I was doing and I felt that constantly having to force myself to find the time and the enthusiasm to study was part of the reason that I was feeling so depressed. I may have been right because once I had made the decision to stop for a while I started to feel better. I wasn't completely out of the darkness, but I started to feel better than I had for a long time.

I still had things that I had to do. I had to write the notes and script for last week's lecture and that meant a deadline to work to, and it was a deadline that could not be changed or negotiated over. This was probably rather good for me. I didn't put the finishing touches to it until the day before it was going to be presented, partly because I had a significant change of mind about how the experience of my current psychotherapy should be described. I think that the change was successful and added to the impact of what I had to say.

Now that this event is over I have nothing major in my diary for a couple of months. This means that I can spend time on myself doing whatever I want and this weekend has been wonderful. I have done what I wanted, when I wanted to and thoroughly enjoyed it. Yesterday morning I finished knitting a scarf that I had started earlier in the week, then immediately started another one, this time a lacy pattern that is being knitted in a lovely mohair yarn in shades of blue and purple. It is progressing well and will be finished this afternoon.

I read a little this morning, and only put the book down and picked up the knitting because I could feel my eyes getting heavy and sleep calling to me. I am enjoying my reading again, and reading a little each night before going to sleep; this is again something that I have not done for a long time. And the reason for all this is that I have suddenly discovered the art of relaxation again.

I am doing things that I enjoy and doing them when I want to and not seeing them as a means to help to focus my mind on something other than how I am feeling. I'm not worrying about how I am feeling because I think that I am feeling happy. It's been a long time coming so I think that I am going to make the most of it while it is here. I shall relax, do whatever I want to, and not worry too much about the chores. Yes, I will do them, but I won't worry if I decide to put something off until tomorrow because I want to do something different. And that is going to include me taking the opportunity to visit a couple of museums that I haven't visited for more years than I care to think about, and one that I have never visited at all.

I'm rather enjoying relaxation.