Gratitude for the small things.

There are ways to fill days that seem long and almost endless when the government says we must stay in our houses for the foreseeable future. At first it seems impossible, but there are ways. I remember saying, the first time round, thank god this didn't happen in the dead of winter. Somehow days feel less doom like when the sun shines for longer. But we are here again, and we have to make do. 

I have gone back to exercise again. Not running this time, it's a little too cold for my liking. But I have been jumping and stretching and sweating around my living room every day for an hour or so. I look forward to it. I like the nice woman in the HIIT workouts I do who shouts at me and makes good playlists. I like pushing myself. I like noticing a difference the more I do it. I love the endorphins afterwards. I think that's why I keep going back. I spend all day at a computer and moving my body in the evenings, pushing it hard at what it's made to do, feels pretty wonderful. And it is something to work towards. Goals are pretty good way to fill the days during a lockdown, I've found. 

But I am not just staying indoors. I thank my lucky stars (and my parents) every day for growing up and still living in some spectacular countryside. I walk almost every day. It clears the head instantly. And I could do the same walk over and over again (I don't, but I could) and I could find something new and beautiful each time. 

I am actually loving the cold. I love wrapping up to go on a walk. I love my nose going red. I love the frost, and the fog, and the ice. Today even the tops of the trees were white. It was magical. And I love coming back into the warmth of my home, putting the kettle on, putting the fire on. It may feel like Groundhog Day a lot of the time but somehow sitting in front of the TV with my family, the cat stretching in front of the fire, each evening is still joyous. Simple, but joyous. 

I will start my drama course again in a week which will also make lockdown seem less gloomy. It will be online, which is a shame, but I cannot wait to see my friends faces and to work on a skill I feel passionate about. 

The thing is, gratitude is what keeps me going everyday. Frankly I am living through this pandemic in an immensely privileged way. It can still be difficult, it can still make me anxious and down, it is still affecting my life and my future, but I have so many reasons to be grateful each and every day. I think Pollyanna was really onto something with 'The Glad Game'.

There are ways to fill these days just by being thankful, just by finding some joy in anything that might bring it. Tonight I will find joy in sitting down to watch The Great Pottery Throw Down with my family. That might sound really sad, but I don't care, sometimes you find gratitude for the smallest of things, and it makes them joyous. 

Forgetting to write.

Gosh it's been a while since I wrote my last blog post. I think it was last year that I got properly out of the habit of writing one weekly. The discipline and regularity was something I was proud of. I worry now that losing the habit is the result of laziness. Perhaps some of it is. 

But I've been thinking about this for a few weeks now. About having something to say. About producing "content." Surely the value of what I am saying diminishes if I am just writing it for the sake of posting it. 

The other thing is this year has felt like a black hole for creativity. Or thought in general. Lockdown, especially in winter, turns my brain to mush. This time of year, as jolly as the festivities can be, the rest of it feels bleak and slow. The short, dark days make me want to just hibernate. I know I am not alone in this, and yet part of me is suckered into believing that watching a few people on social media posting great, clever, creative things means that I am the only lazy, tired one left behind. 

Also, I am being very harsh on myself. I have been writing regularly, it's just not something I can post or share. I have a deadline and a goal but it might not even become anything. That's a new thing I am having to learn. That not everything I work hard on will manifest into something bigger or something shareable. I think that is what I am having to get over, that I can still be productive, creative and work towards a greater goal without having to show everyone to prove it. Let's be honest, it's the instant gratification that blogging provides that I feel the lack of in other writing. But that doesn't reduce the creative worth (for myself) of either. 

All that said, I have yet again reminded myself of the benefit of writing a blog post. The cogs are whirring again. My mind feels a bit clearer, having written through some thoughts. Like anything that you put off, when you actually get round to doing it it feels great. Maybe writing for the sake of posting has its merits after all. 

Birthday love.

On Wednesday it was my birthday. I turned 23. I have worried for quite a large chunk of this year that I was not going to feel very happy on my birthday. I thought I would feel lonely and scared and sad. Maybe that's a little bit silly, it is only a birthday after all, but I find them quite significant. It is the marker of another year that I have lived through, new milestones that have passed, new pains, new joys. It is a reminder to be thankful and that the world keeps on turning and that I am still here, still breathing and being. 

I was worried that I would be sad and that it would all be a bit of a flop because of all the sadness and anxiety over the last year. But this year, on my birthday, I was reminded of all that is good. I can even say, quite confidently, that it was one of the best birthdays I've ever had despite the fact that it happened in lockdown during a global pandemic. 

The thing about my 23rd birthday is that I was reminded quite overwhelmingly that wherever I am in the world and wherever I end up going next I am and will be loved. There were a lot of people who put a lot of effort into making the day special for me, my parents especially. I was thrown a Zoom party by friends I have only made in the last few months who were determined to celebrate with me. Two of them even performed a rap they'd written for me, which is something I never would have predicted for any birthday. I was given flowers and cake and bottles of fizz and cards and presents that had a lot of care and thought put into them. I felt spoilt, if I'm honest. I felt gloriously joyful and thankful all day long. I felt so loved. I felt, so completely, the opposite of loneliness. 

This is not to brag, though perhaps I am boasting a little bit. This is to show my enormous gratitude. I felt on top of the world and that is because of the people in my life. How extraordinarily lucky am I? 

I am too scared to write.

I am too scared to write. I am too scared to sit down and type something, anything, out. Writing makes feelings and thoughts come out that you were trying to avoid. I am trying to avoid feeling things other than a) neutral or b) happy. I am feeling happy a lot at the moment, actually. But I can sense things lurking and I don't want them to visit me.  

I am too scared to write because I feel anxious. I think that's the word that would best describe it. A vague but definite sense of almost panic. The fear of what happens when I do that, or this, or when I sit down to write. What happens then? What is lurking in me that I don't want to feel? 

The truth is I know exactly what is lurking in me. I know where it's coming from, and what it's about. But I don't always want to confront it. Not now. And that's what writing does, if you let it. 

I am too scared to write, but I wrote this. I almost confronted feelings. I certainly faced a fear. And that's enough, for now. 

It's funny, the way something so irrational can get all up in your head. 

Lockdown part II.

Lockdown when the days are shorter. Lockdown when it's cold and dark and meeting with friends for warmth and support is limited to the outside when the sun is shining. This time there is less uncertainty (all things considered), and more freedom. Still this time round I am safe in my home, with my family who are healthy, we have food, we have warmth (when the heating's working), we can sit in front of the fire watching Netflix. The Indian food van in my local town is still selling the Best Samosas Ever. 

Still, I think, with all of those things in mind, it is okay to be frightened. It is okay to feel down. It is okay to fear the long, dark nights ahead. It is okay to feel angry and frustrated. It is okay to acknowledge that undercurrent of anxiety running through us all. It is okay to feel scared on behalf of others, scared for their businesses and livelihoods, scared for their health. 

It is okay because to ignore those reactions and feelings would be to bury them. The idea of spending the next four weeks trying to push that all away is actually more frightening to me. That's how you spiral, that's how you get lost. 

It is okay to acknowledge that mustering the courage and the spirit we had the last time round is perhaps harder now. No one wants to do it again. It is no longer new and the energy it took to get through the first one has been spent. 

Some people will enjoy this time, and that's okay too. But to feel exhausted at the prospect of going through all of it again is not something we should be beating ourselves up for. 

I am going to have to practice a lot of self-forgiveness in order to get through the next four weeks. I am going to have to be really, really kind to myself. And that's okay. It's going to be okay. Deep breaths. 

Thanks to the cat.

I have that underlying feeling of anxiety today. A sort of hum beneath my surface. I go to do almost anything and I get a little jab in my chest, my brain jumping to something sad or unpleasant. My shoulders rising to my ears with the tension I keep holding. 

It is okay. It won't last. Perhaps by the afternoon it will have faded away. I know why I feel this way. Time of the month. Global pandemic. Climate change. Incompetent, self-serving government. The lingering remnants of a heartbreak, almost vanished but still there. 

Whenever I feel this way it is often my cat that restores a sense of calm. God knows what I did in the days before him. 

Today he stepped in from the garden and, as cats often do, immediately decided to turn around and go back out. But when I went to open the door he sniffed my feet lovingly before looking up at me with that imperious manner as if to say "it is time for a cuddle." 

I sat down on the floor and crossed my legs. He circled me slowly. I picked him up. He settled on my thigh. We sat looking out into the fresh morning, the sun warming his fur and my face. 

For a moment I felt so still and so calm, that anxious hum fading away. It was just me, the cat, and the sun.  

What a deep pleasure it is to be chosen by your cat for a moment of shared stillness. 

Simple pleasures.

I have a routine now. Thank god. For three days a week I commute into London to train at a drama school.  It is completely delightful. 

The sense of purpose in itself feels like a huge relief. The movement from one place to another, the ability to leave my house for the day and see something new and different each time is a privilege I'd never have thought to be so thankful for. 

Perhaps the commute is unusually enjoyable because there are so few people on the trains. There isn't that bizarre bustle for the last few remaining seats, nor is there any need to sniff in a stranger's armpits as we are packed like sardines into the tube. Although I long to be near other people again, and I can't touch or hug my new friends. 

I love a routine that makes me feel like I am going somewhere, literally and figuratively. I secretly love the hustle of getting past bad drivers in their Chelsea tractors on their way to dropping small children at school. I love the feeling that everyone has somewhere they need to be getting to. How strange it was for us all to be standing still. 

I am not writing one of those Dettol adverts that attempted to romanticise the soul destroying office work that we will all be glad to see the back of. I just like the busyness, the energy lifting up again, the ability to see other humans in all their shapes and sizes. 

I love that one morning I stood at the platform and across the tracks I saw a young mum and her son share a moment of pure bliss, their love radiating all the way to where I was standing. He pecked her with a kiss, and another, and another and I was witness to their lovely, happy moment. Now every time I see them across the platform I smile to myself, my mood lifting with the memory. 

Some mornings I hear James, the station master, speak into the tannoy. "Hello, Mollie" he says. I wander over to the office and we speak through the glass. He asks how I am, how my mum is. He tells me about the leaf fall timetable changes, and the holiday he is going on. He'll see me in November, he says. 

I love the feeling of going somewhere. Of seeing other people going somewhere. To be slightly over the top it puts a spring in my step. 

It is a simple pleasure, and I am extraordinarily grateful to have it.