I’ve been ‘oop north’ for the past ten days, for a combination of work and play – we opened a new Ronald McDonald House at Arrowe Park Hospital last Saturday, then I went up to Manchester for a colleague’s hen do and from there went on to Brum where we’ve been doing a week long radio appeal on BRMB to raise money for our next House at Birmingham Children’s. I really enjoyed being up there, and surprised myself with how quickly I settled back into Birmingham life, but I can’t deny it’s a nice feeling to be back in my own bedroom at last and not living out of a suitcase.
The appeal wasn’t quite as successful as we’d hoped, but the support we received from the staff at the radio station and our lovely volunteers was second to none, so overall I found it to be a very heart warming experience.
Ten days away has got me thinking about that saying, ‘a change is as good as a rest,’ and whilst I can’t say I’m feeling all that rested physically (too many 5.30am starts for that!), I am feeling a bit calmer mentally, I guess because I’ve had a week away from my tedious to do lists and day to day worrying. And, of course, from my computer, though my new iphone is making it nigh on impossible to refrain from checking the internet at least once every couple of hours. Which is bad. In fact, on the train home earlier I took a quiz, the result of which said:
“A mobile phone, internet access and regular news updates are bare essentials for you to enjoy any sense of calm. You live in fear of being left out, overtaken and out of touch. As a result, you’re constantly alert and often stressed and irritable. You believe if you’re not at the centre of things you’ll lose your place in the world. The idea of letting go makes you anxious because to you it’s like surrendering. This requires a lot of energy and you need to move beyond it to feel the pressure release. You need to shift your focus from the exterior world to the interior, and learn that what matters most is what’s within yourself, in the here and now.”
Never a truer word spoken! So I’m going to make a concerted effort to stop being so addicted to social networking, to stop being so..well…needy for attention, basically. My plan is simple, and comprises two parts:
1.Take part in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month – where you write a 50k word novel in a month) again during November. This should leave no time for anything else
2. Seek emotional solace in meditation – find a class and learn to be calm!
And finally, I thought I’d share with you a poem I found in an old notebook – I wrote it a year or so ago about a certain someone who has taken up far too much of my time and emotions, and have only now come to appreciate it’s not half bad!
HALF LIFE
You come out at night
Vampire-like
The shadows bring you to me
And the sunlight takes you away.
A light preamble
Barely exchanging pleasantries
Before we’re tugging at one another’s clothes
Hungry for what lies beneath.
Drunk. Always drunk
Or else reality sets in
Emotions. Those cold hard fingers
That claw at your hard heart but find no purchase.
You never were, nor are, nor will be mine
What we had or have or will have
Is nothing more than the passing of time.
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