Feeling stuck

For a while now I've felt pretty lethargic and dissatisfied, it's almost like the princess and the pea syndrome, something isn't quite right and I can't put my finger on it. I thought it was work (which has been pretty stressful of late) but I'm currently on a weeks holiday and the 'somethings-not-rightness' just hasn't shifted. Maybe I'm feeling bored and in need of some inspiration? I'm really not sure, but I do feel like something's zapped my energy and I need to get it back. How I'm going to do that, I have no idea. I think a good place to begin is by taking it back to the basics - eating well and getting plenty of rest. Then reconnecting with the things I love - reading, writing and playing games (which I haven't done in ages!), with perhaps a touch of creativity thrown in. So basically plenty of 'me' time is required.

I think I quite possibly am exhausted - 2013 was a busy year with the majority of my holiday's being spent decorating or building flat-pack furniture, copious amounts of home improvements including a brand new roof and new front door, as well as a rather traumatic relationship break up. Looking back, I don't think I ever appreciated all that I achieved - in fact I've probably never really given myself credit for my successes and have always demanded more...the result, as with anything, is burnout and the more I give myself the space to write on this tiny little corner of my blog, the clearer it becomes. So it's time to try and put things right, to spend the rest of my week off taking care of 'me', resting and doing the things I love.

And here's a little reminder in case I forget...

A list of 'shoulds'

Recently i've felt like a hamster running around in a wheel but never seeming to get anywhere. I've had endless to-do lists, ticking one thing off only to find that another thing has been added to my list. I feel drained and run down, which is probably why on Friday I lost my voice and i'm now suffering with a chest infection. My body has made me stop because I was pusing myself too hard. It's a pattern in my life, I push myself too hard, get ill and have to stop, vow never to do it again, then recover and the cycle begins once more. I'm a compulsive overworker, I constantly try and squeeze a little bit more out of my day, the phrase "i'll just do this" is a recurring thought and I constantly fill my days with a list of 'shoulds'. In the process of doing this i'm so busy ticking off things from my list that I don't actually live my life and savour it.

It didn't actually hit me what an ingrained problem this was until a recent fallout with my partner where she claimed that I constantly tell her what to do - "you need to do this, you need to do that", she threw at me. It was only when I tried to explain to her that I wasn't ordering her around, I was only offering up suggestions that I realised there may be a problem - telling someone what they "need" or "should" do is very different from making suggestions in a "how about trying/doing this" kind of way. I use exactly the same phrases for myself, when planning my days they consist of "shoulds" and "needs", they're quite forceful words, I need to be gentler with myself and others.

This morning I woke up with a feeling that I need to change. I guess that the fallout along with being ill has opened my eyes and made me realise that my expectations of myself (and others) are too high and whilst I have recently felt snowed under with a massive workload, part of that pressure has been self-inflicted. From today I will try to slow down and try and live more consciously, the days are whizzing by and they shouldn't be. I'll try to be gentler with myself and rein myself back in when I start composing my list of 'shoulds'.

Hello 2012

Happy New Year! I can't believe that Christmas has been and gone and the New Year is here already. There always seems to be a bit of a lull at this time of year, my mood drops slightly and I become more aware of the post-Christmas void, the low after the high perhaps. I usually use this time for quiet reflection and give myself time to focus on what I want to bring into my life in the year ahead. For the past few years i've chosen a focus word for the year, a sort of affirmation of what I bring into my life. 2011's word was 'growth' which seemed to fit perfectly with the events of the year. For 2012 my affirmative word will be 'peace', not just in the sense of being emotionally at peace with things but also bringing peace to all areas of my life - I will create a peaceful, clutter free home and try and create some peaceful quiet time for myself on a daily basis, meaning less time online reading other peoples blogs and facebooking and more time spent quietly reading, improving my space and focussing on my own life. I suppose what i'm yearning for is a period of withdrawal and some time to retreat into my own space, even the thought of it fills me with a fuzzy feeling of warmth so I know i'm on the right track.



I think all that s left to do this evening is to curl up with a good book, bliss.

Hectic half term holidays

Well that's it, half term is virtually over and it feels like the week has flown by in a burst of activity. I had quite a bit of school work to do which took up the first 3 days of my hols, I also managed to get quite a lot of decluttering done which has made my head-space feel much lighter despite not making a huge visual impact on my home.

I feel like i'm going through a period of change at the moment and really need to clear my space, my shelves are filled with books that i'll never read again and my ebay pile is constantly expanding rather than contracting, it's time to do something about it. In my heart I feel like i'm not living the life that I could be, I need to be creative and yet i'm stuck in a job which gives me very little time for myself, things need to change. I'm not prepared to leave my job yet but I do need to start to focus on what I truly want to do with my life. I don't feel that teaching is my dream job but, as yet, i'm not quite sure what is, so it's time to start looking at alternatives and making small changes along the way so that I don't start to stagnate. For the moment decluttering seems to be the main focus and hopefully as I clear out the 'old' i'll make way for the 'new'. Lets hope so.

Busy, busy, busy

I've been meaning to post for a long time but there always seems to be something else demanding my attention. My life has been very much centred around my home for the past year, I suppose that since i've had to take on sole responsibility for the house i've been much more proactive in getting things done as I know that unless I do it no-one else will.

Reflecting on the things i've done I guess i've come quite a long way. Since taking over the house i've had the kerb dropped so that now I have a driveway, decorated the hallway, arranged for some new blinds to be fitted, had the leaky kitchen roof repaired, stripped down and painted the front door, renovated the living room table, had a fence built around the back garden, planted a plum tree as well as ventured into the realm of growing my own veg. Every weekend has brought new household bits and bobs that needed to be done.

However, recently i've felt a bit out of touch with myself and had a few low days and i've come to the conclusion that i've gone into 'house overload' and have been neglcting the things that I love. I need to find time for 'me' and give myself some space to regroup. I'd love to go on holiday for a few days but I can't afford it at the moment so i'm going to have to create some 'me' time whilst remaining at home. Thankfully, I have the six weeks holiday ahead of me (yep i'm a teacher) so that should give me a kickstart, but I know it will be all too easy to fill my days with housey things so i'm going to set myself a target of giving myself an hours 'me' time a day, minimum, and see where that takes me.

Wish me luck - I think I might need it!

Whoops!

Well I haven't been on here for ages, life and all it's busyness took over for a while...a very long while in fact. There were times when I thought about this blog and the posts i'd like to make but there has just been so much to do that by the end of the day i've been too exhausted and any attempts at 'posts' would have been nothing more than incoherent drivel! Over the past 8 months i've learnt that sometimes you've just got to stop, in fact I think that one little piece of advice has kept me sane. There really has been so much to do, i'm not quite sure how I managed fit it all in! I'm now officially a single homeowner after buying my ex out of his share of the house. Despite not being married there was still so much to do and the process of transferring the mortgage took a whopping 6 months to complete - the paperwork seemed to be lost at least 4 times which didn't make things any easier. Then the changing of names on bills seemed to go on forever and there were joint accounts to close too, combine this with various car problems and a nasty house leak, not to mention the actual process of coming to terms with the breakup and things seem to have been pretty much relentless.

However, it hasn't all been doom and gloom. In fact i've been quite productive over the last few months and i'm quite impressed with my efforts. I've redecorated the hallway, complete with a new carpet, and i've even made my own lampshades too! I've also had the kerb at the front of the house dropped so that I now have a driveway, plus i've bought a new car to go on it (yay!). I've managed to tame the garden, which sadly had been left to it's own devices since August, but which is now fully under control complete with a freshly dug over veg patch, a wildflower bed and plenty of seedlings sprouting in the greenhouse - i'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they'll keep growing. I've also kept myself well fed with plenty of home cooked meals, though I must admit that batch cooking has been a real saviour.

I'll update more soon, hopefully with some garden pics...but in the meantime here's what the wildflower patch looked like before...



and after my conifer clearing session...



I was quite proud of my efforts and I can't wait until the wildflowers start to grow!

Dreaming...

I have strange dreams, it's agreed between my family and friends that the majority of my dreams fall into the catergory of being weird or bizarre and they're often quite dark. I've been waking up at about 4am recently, it's frustrating as I tend to fall back to sleep around 6am and then I don't wake up until about 9am - luckily i'm on holiday so this isn't too much of a problem.

When 4am reared it's head this morning, so did I, and a vague recollection of dream-speak circled through my mind - "And you'll know it's me because it will be written in my voice". I can't remember much of the dream, only that I was going to leave a message for someone written on a wall. I've found myself intrigued by this statement as it has raised some questions which fit quite snugly with where I feel I currently am in my life, namely: What is my voice? and What does it say?

I've recently separated from my partner of 9 and a half years and as a result have found that I have lots of time on my own. As i've tried to ignore the hours ticking slowly by and the impending silence, i've started to question who I am and what I want from life. I suppose you could say, in dream-speak, that i'm trying to find my voice, a voice that represents me as an individual but also a voice that I will need to use to express my needs and viewpoints when myself and my partner eventually come back together to discuss whether we try and repair our relationship or whether we go our separate ways. So in a way my voice, the voice I adopt now, is new to me as it's coming from a different place, one in which I need to form my thoughts alone rather than from a shared viewpoint.

So now is the time for me to discover my voice and discover who I am. I think it's going to be an exciting journey.