Thoughts & Feelings in January
Take Care of Yourself
Do you know that even opening my page and putting a few words in a sentence is better than having my thoughts just ruminating inside my head. I told my partner this morning I was feeling a bit down. Sometimes I wonder am I more than a bit down. Could I be depressed because I’m anxiously avoiding doing anything that might make me feel even more or less so? What I mean is I do things that bring on more work and leave less space just to enjoy life and when I’m confronted about why I chose to take on more rather than less I defend myself by saying; ‘well if I don’t do it, it won’t happen.’ Then I complain or become resentful that others are doing what they want to do and don’t seem to care about community, arts and wellbeing. Not that I know what others are doing or how they feel about life.
I know that January and this time of year is challenging for me. My energy levels are low. I feel tired a good deal of the time and I have to motivate myself to get out and about and accomplish what seem like simple things: making a phone call asking for information; arranging to meet someone or preparing an application for a project, etc. Turns out, according to my partner, that I’m usually a little low at this time of the year. We call it the January blues. I think it’s because of the weather and darkness, so I don’t think I’d cope in the north of Norway where I went twice last year. Once in February and once in September.
Of course, it could be the certainty about the future with all that’s going on in the world, which I’m trying not to get too sucked into talking or hearing about. We are also recovering from storm Eowyn, resulting in a power cut and realising just how vulnerable and dependent we are on electrical energy. I didn’t mind so much having no connection to the internet or mobile phone signal but on day two when it looked like it was going to last for at least another day people who hadn’t already bought provisions began to buy more bread and essentials. If you didn’t have gas you couldn’t even boil water and hardware stores, also in the dark had sold out their camping stoves and other such materials. Batteries, and candles, were in big demand and the few local shops that briefly opened were selling such items to people cueing up outside their doors.
As we walked to the park on Saturday morning, the day after the storm and still without electricity we passed a man at the ATM, unable to extract cash, which certain shops were only taking as their card readers were out of action. ‘They want a cashless society and now they want cash!’ The irony of it all, we empathetically agreed. And what was this man supposed to do to pay for things in a time of need?
We all need support and to be able to ask for it in our interdependent world requires us to observe what is happening, ask our body how we feel about it and have the courage to ask for what we need. Sometimes it’s enough to just listen and allow ourselves to share how we’re feeling for the healing to begin. It may seem like a simple thing to do. To just check in with one another and ask; ‘how are you feeling?’
