Hello, and welcome to May! We’re coming to the time of year now where (hopefully) the weather is getting better, and there are more things to do, places to go and people to see. All of that is great, especially in light of the last few years, when everything has been so strange. However, of course, we have to fit all those things in around the everyday things of life – work, childcare, paying the bills, and all that stuff – and sometimes it all gets really overwhelming, doesn’t it? I recently took a self-improvement course, and the idea was that there are two types of people – “jumpers” and “steppers”. The “jumpers” find it easy to dream big, have lots of lovely ideas for their lives and where they want to go, but have no idea of how to do it, and the “steppers”, like me, are really good at planning the next step, but sometimes have difficulty in raising our heads to dream and escape the monotony of every day life. Do either of those sound familiar? It really brought me up short, and I realised how hard I’d been working recently, so I decided last weekend to actually just drop everything and rest. I’m lucky that I was able to do that, as it’s just my husband and me at home these days, but surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. For the whole weekend, we just sat on the sofa, read, watched a little trashy TV (but not too much), ate snacks and let the world go on without us – and it was amazing! I stayed off social media as long as I could bear it, and absolutely definitely did not “just answer that one email”. We even contemplated going for a walk in the beautiful Quantocks, about a couple of minutes outside of our front door, but decided not to. And what was the result of this delicious idleness? Well, yes, I still have the ironing to do, and a couple of emails to answer first thing when I got back to work, but nothing I couldn’t handle, but by far the most obvious thing was that time seemed to stretch out, meaning that we could just savour the passing of the day, instead of rushing from one thing to the next, and the next and the next, and before we knew it, the day had gone and we’d seen nothing of it. It also meant that we didn’t spend any money either, which is always good in these times! And when I went back to work? Well, you know when you’ve been busy at work, then you’re busy at home on the weekends too, and it feels like you’ve had no break whatsoever? Well, I woke up after a great sleep feeling refreshed, absolutely ready for a busy week (my first day back involved an 11-hour day, so right back to it) and like I’d had a two-week holiday. So – my advice to you all? If you possibly can, take a proper break, soon. If it has to be when the children are at school, so be it, or get someone to look after them for the day, and if you’re an old wrinkly like me, take a day or so off from all the nonsense of life, and just be with yourself and how you can jump or step through your life in a more spacious and calm way – you won’t regret it!
Rest and Relaxation
