Olympimania

I am no fan of the shameless corporate promotion and unnecessary expense (Did someone say recession? No? Oh well that's ok then...do carry on spending all our money) associated with a major sporting event like the Olympics, and yes I am just bitter and twisted because I didn't get tickets.  But last week my Mum was one of only 8000 people who got to carry the Olympic torch on it's journey around the country, and fortunately I was able to swallow my cynicism just long enough to get my picture taken...

Message to my teenage self

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Too many years were wasted learning simply to love and accept myself, I look back at my teenage years now and this makes me very sad.

Two weeks from today I will be 24, my greatest wish is that I will never look back on my twenties as a time when I failed to live as voraciously and thankfully as I could have done.

Here is the world

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Biphasia vs. summertime

Sally... having no problem taking her nap!

One month after the conclusion of my biphasic sleeping experiment, I thought everything was going great.  I felt healthy, refreshed and my sleep patterns seemed easy and natural.  Then something went wrong.  And that something was summer.

Suddenly, going to sleep at 10.00 pm became really really difficult because it is so light outside.  Then naps taken any later than 10.00 pm became impossible to get up from.  And finally, I have developed the ability to hit the alarm and go back to sleep without actually waking up at all.

Bad times.

So instead of napping some days, and sleeping 6 hours monophasically other days, I have ended up with a combination of oversleeping as I miss waking up from nap time and intentional 6 hour monophasic nights.  Now I'm not sure whether it is the imbalance of sleep length or whether a 6 hour monophasic pattern is less sustainable longer term than a 6 hour biphasic pattern as I suspected previously, but I do know that I feel exhausted!

Really bad times.

But I am desperate to continue having more hours in my day to play with, so I'm going to try and push through this bad phase back into biphasia.

First thing I'm trying is putting my alarm at the other end of the room next to the light switch so I have to get up and turn on the lights just to silence the alarm! 

Collision

Why is it so easy for me to learn from experience, yet so hard to let go of the past?

It is irrational to assume that the behavioural outcome will be the same from different people who happen to find themselves in a similar situation.  I know this, I have studied this, I understand this.  And yet I cannot help but feel...

...the pain of betrayal so sharply, as if the expected outcome has already occurred this time around.

...the paralysing grief from the dreading of broken rules, that reminds me how easily that grief can tear the very fibres of my being apart.  Rules that haven't even been established this time, that aren't even there to be broken.  Rules that I don't ever want to make again.

...the anger at the thought that yet again I risk it being one rule for me, and another rule for him.

...the hatred of myself for feeling pain, sadness and anger directed at someone based on nothing they have done, but simply because I have learnt from something that somebody else did.

...the disappointment that the scars of the past are able to mark the present, long after the old injury is forgiven and forgotten.

...the fear.  Usually when I identify the source of my mental discomfort I feel satisfied that I am then in a position to address it, but with this I am not so sure.

For when past and present worlds collide, who can survive?

Sally star

Me and my Sally...at our agility training club's show this year... just doing our thing.

This was our second to last ever show, and this is one aspect of England I will really miss!

There is life

Life is precious these days.  Maybe it's due to the promise of imminent travel adventures creeping ever closer, combined with the sweetness of summer and the fact that existing suddenly feels so damned good.  But life suddenly feels immensely fragile and tremendously important.

I seem to be driving everywhere at least 10 miles per hour slower than I was just six months ago.  I am so close to everything I have been working for all my adult life that I am determined that nothing will stop me from reaching it.  It is an interesting detachment from my usually happily embodied state in that I feel so desperate to preserve my body, to trap the life force inside it.  I am constantly aware of my existence and overcome by gratitude for it.

Lying in the blue dark I feel the heartbeat of the other, smooth, even, calm.  

Ba-dum, ba-dum, you are here.  

I listen to the sound of their breathing, never quite to the rhythm of my own.  

In, out, I am here.  

I keep still, until the sensations on my skin merge and I can no longer determine where I end and the other begins.

We are here.  Nothing else matters.

What if I can't?

www.postsecret.com

Change does not suit me.  This is probably my biggest character flaw, because change is, after all, the only constant.  I try to be one step ahead of my inability to handle change, to push myself into experiencing it in full, even when I would rather turn away.  I am all too aware that my future plan involves a lifetime of change, the hardest part of which will be the impact it has on my relationships with those around me.

As I wrote in August last year:

"Yes it will be heartbreaking, yes it will leave me feeling numb over and over and over again, but this is the life I choose."

But honestly, right now, that scares me.  What if I can't handle the change?  What if I can't stand letting go once, never mind endlessly letting go?  What if it stops me from reaching out to others?  What if it just isn't worth it?

I may not be able to answer all my questions, but I do know it is worth it.  Worth it a hundred thousand times over, and I know why.  But I am still terrified.

And so I cling to the moment, to the here and now.  The ever-present reminder of how finite every moment with those around me is grounds me in the enjoyment and full participation in the present.

Perhaps that is actually the gift which makes the fear and the pain worthwhile, not the lifestyle or the travel or the people or the places.  The reminder that nothing is forever transforms the present into everything. 

Highest mountain in England...done

On Sunday I climbed Scafell Pike, aka the highest mountain in England.  Here are a few photos...

And I would have a photo of me at the extremely windy top... if my Mum hadn't put her thumb over the lense.  Oh well, guess I'll just have to go back then!