Lockdown Diary - Monday 1st June 2020

I like Mondays. Primarily because I don't work on a Monday.  It always feels like an 'extra' day, a day I have taken back for myself.  The idea of not working Mondays started life as a germ of an idea in a counselling session back in 2018. The counsellor suggested it and at the time it seemed a radical idea, counter to my thoughts about work and my relationship with it. The idea grew over the course of the latter sessions and at the end of sixteen or seventeen counselling sessions (can't remember how exactly many I had in the end), it was one of several practical actions I agreed with my counsellor that I'd take to positively improve my life. Of course it wasn't quite as simple as that. I'd have to get the agreement of my employer before it became reality, but that's how it started.

Yoga was good this morning, as always (that's another thing that came out of counselling), though I was glad I did it in shorts today as the energetic stuff is getting me quite sweaty in this weather. (Knew you'd want to know about that!)

Today I'm gradually dusting the Venetian blinds (really looking forward to when the cleaner can return, though I fear that may be quite a while), as and when I feel like it, as opposed to an all-out assault. I can only take mind-numbingly boring tasks in small doses, otherwise I rapidly lose the will to live.

Decided to break up the cleaning by finishing the Idler 'Introduction to Psychotherapy' course - I had two lessons remaining, one on Bion and the final one on Jung. Both were excellent, but the one on Jung was especially fascinating, so much so that I'm going to have read more about him and his methods, especially with regards to dreams.  

I now need to choose another course, and there are so many to choose from, many of which seem of interest: 'A History of London'; 'A Brief Introduction to Anarchism'; 'An Introduction to Plato's Dialogues'; 'How to Live and Eat like an Italian'; 'How to Read the Tarot'; and loads more.

Just as my lunch arrived, courtesy of me and son #2, my 'big' sister phoned, and so I decided to chat rather than eat (it's not as easy to chat and eat whilst on the phone, as compared to, say, being sat in a restaurant eating and chatting (and drinking) (thinks: 'I really miss restaurant meals with friends and family, damn it')). No specific news from either of us, just a general catch up on family, books, TV and other stuff of great import.

After trawling through the list of Idler courses several times, I've gone for 'The Science of Psychedelics', which looks very interesting and seems to fit with my current interests. I've already completed the first lesson, titled 'Basic Pharmacology', which, whilst I'm sure it was very basic,  introduced a lot of ideas and terminology I'm either unfamiliar with, or only vaguely familiar with, such as receptors, associative cortex, neuro-plasticity, neuro-modulators etc and so will need to watch it a second time.

In a couple of hours or so it's book club again, and this week we'll be discussing 'Three Women' by Lisa Taddeo.  It will be interesting to see what people made of it, I suspect it could be a controversial one.

Had my dinner early and started to watch the documentary 'What's the matter with Tony Slattery?'. I didn't manage to finish it, but what I saw was both compelling and hard to see how much he'd been affected by his mental health struggles.  I hope to find time to finish that tomorrow, though as I'm working I probably won't fin the time.

There were ten of us at book club, quite a low turnout for 'normal' book club. There were mixed feelings about the book: several people really didn't like it, and, whilst I didn't rate it that highly - nothing like as much as the hype on the cover - I didn't think it was that bad. I will post my review on goodreads tomorrow, if I find the time!

After book club, a bit of tidying (not much to do as the boys had done a good job of clearing up after dinner), then off to bed.

An exception to the rule about songs with 'rock' in their titles: Pixies with 'Rock Music' from the album 'Bossanova' 

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