Lockdown Diary - Monday 14th September 2020

A normal, non-working Monday, yay!  Breakfast at 7 a.m. ahead of meditation practice with the NHS from 7:30 'til about 8:25 a.m.

Made myself a coffee and got on with a few items of correspondence I need to sort, then before I knew where I was it was almost 10:00 and time for yoga.

After a suitable energising yoga session I got changed and went out to post a letter at the nearest post office.  

Rushed back home to get on with organising stuff for son #3's imminent university adventure.  One thing that is bugging me - why does the university flat he's renting have a 3/4 size bed?  Who has bed linen for one of those? Well son #3 does now, but only because I've forked out for it. Every day we seem to discover some new item that we don't have in the stuff sons 1 and 2 took to uni.

I've just had email confirmation that tomorrow's final half-day of training starts at 7 a.m. UK time, so I'm going to need to get my shit together pretty quickly tomorrow if I'm going to be at my PC raring to go and fed and watered by that time.

As the day progresses further more last minute items are added to the list of things son #3 needs.  Hopefully we've identified the last of these items now and it's just a case of delivering him and the items to his flat on Friday!

It has been noted that these posts have been more downbeat, or worse, of late, and this has been a reflection of life as I am experiencing it. I am attempting a reset by taking direction from the things I have learned over the past year or two from the NHS mindfulness and Talking Therapies engagements I have had.  Largely it amounts to trying to live in the moment.  At face value that always seems quite glib like the 'carpe diem' or 'live every day as if it were your last' mantras: these are fine ideas in principle, however real life, practicality and the fact that what you want may not match what others want, severely limit your ability to live up to these ideals.  

When I say 'live in the moment' what I'm really doing is dealing with life minute by minute, hour by hour and not trying to establish or discern a future.  Far too much of the future is out of my hands and the life I'd like to have and would like to be moving towards only casts a dark shadow over today, since I am nowhere near achieving it and have no idea how it could come about. My focus is thus on today and now. That's not to say there aren't things in my diary that are in the future - I'm still putting things in place to make them happen - but what those things can be is still severely restricted by how things currently are. That all sounds rather vague, and I guess that's deliberate, in that aspects of the present and future would look rather stark if spelled out.

'Nuff said.

I spent a while in the sun in the back garden waging war on the bamboo. I'm not sure to what extent it will make a difference in the long run - only time will tell.

After that the usual evening ensued - watched another episode of 'The Bridge' - then got organised for tomorrow's early start for work and the rest was as always.

Today's tune is from the soundtrack to 'Lost In Translation'. This is 'City Girl' from Kevin Shields of My Bloody Valentine fame. This is the official music video, though I'm not sure it's on YT in an official way, so it may disappear.  In this case the video has certain redeeming qualities 😉


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