Go date yourself

So I have recently, and by recently I mean for at least the last year or maybe more? Have been taking myself out and about.

Why is this worth posting about? Because I bloody want to. SO… For a long time I found myself doing things with other people. Long walks, going to shops and generally always having company. Have I confused you? Good.

There is nothing wrong with spending time with your friends, far from it I do actually love being in the company in my friends and doing these things with them. However I realised one day that it felt like I couldn’t do these things UNLESS I had someone with me. It was like I forgot I could do these things without someone chaperoning me (a high number of people disagree with this statement)

So I decided I needed to get back to being comfortable with myself again. I’m a big fan of protecting your peace and that includes spending time alone just doing every day things. So I began with the easiest ones of going to the shop or walks by myself again. To be honest this was the lazy way of easing into it, just hop in the car and off I go and I was always too distracted in shops to notice I was alone to be honest.

The harder part for me was doing something that was typically done with someone, for example lunch in a cafe. Sounds simple enough but if you have spent a long time never going anywhere alone this can be a very alien feeling to you. It felt that way to me anyway but I wanted to get back to pottering around by myself. I grabbed my book and off I went in my car to find somewhere, anywhere really that I could have a chunk of time to myself.

Ended up in a small seaside town of all things, not much in the way of tourism which was perfect. I wandered around a bit to get my bearings before sitting on the beach and reading for a while. No music and no other distractions, just simply listening to the waves and birds around me. With the lack of tourism attractions this meant the beach was actually very quiet minus the odd dog or two coming flying out of nowhere towards me in hopes of treats.

Honestly I’m not really sure how long I was sat there for, I think I just read until I got hungry but there was so many cafes around so this gave me a second chance to just wander about working out which ones looked the best to try. Have to be honest, I went in and immediately wanted to leave. Not because of anything they did but just my own self being there alone and everyone looks at the door when it opens just made me want to turn heel.

Stomach had other plans though, it was running the show so I did force myself into the cafe and sit myself down in the corner out the way. Now I was still fully armed with my book or my phone, but the point was to not need these things to be alone. No one should need a form of armour just to eat by themselves.

I forgot how easy it was to just be alone, I realised that sounds weird but as I said when you spend so much time around other people. The idea of doing things alone sometimes throws your mind through a bit of a loop.

In a rather funny turn of events, I have now spent so much time learning to be by myself again and protecting my own peace that I now rarely entertain the idea of hanging out with many people. Clearly I need to work on balance a bit better but oh well.

The point to this is that I hope you take yourself out, and I don’t mean by assassination. Take yourself on the lunch date, take yourself on a woodland walk or go to the cinema yourself. Why do we feel we need to go do these things with someone or we can’t do it at all?

Sure it’s nice to enjoy things with someone, but if no one is available don’t let that be the thing that stops you from doing something. There might be other people there in the same boat and you may end up making a friend. Unless you are like me and have resting bitch face so no one talks to you… try smiling or something I don’t know.

Point being! Go do the thing. Go date yourself and treat yourself to days out and you never know what it could end up turning into.

B x

The value of silence

Did I vanish completely again? yes. Are we going to talk about it?… no.

Now a friend and I were talking, because I was extremely excited to have the house to myself for a few days. Seriously I am talking dead silence except for me and the pets… it has been glorious.
Despite the fact I had no hot water the one night I was craving a relaxing bath… but hey ho. Not really a problem, just a pain in the rear.

However my excitement was to be alone in silence, I wanted to read. I wanted to write, I want the house to be clean and bloody stay that way. I have a rather chaotic mind and mayhem-inducing impulse issues. Something I can navigate quite well these days now I’m aware of what it is but before it was rather mad.

One of the ways I have found that I bizarrely now love is sitting alone in my house. This is always something that has been hard for me, I have always struggled to sit in silence. I fidget, I panic, and I need to fill the time with a lot of noise (including horrific singing or random imitations of cartoon characters. My Stitch one is quite good) it was highly uncomfortable and I needed to do everything I could to not be in it.

Ironically… I get sensory overload from too much noise and stimulation… so that’s amazingly helpful of my dumbass brain.

Now when I say alone in the house, I do mean alone. Just chilling in a room by myself isn’t the same for me. It is nice and I can relax but there is something different about the feel of the house when it is just me. It has taken me a long time to learn to appreciate this time and to know when to slow down and stop.

I am what people call “High functioning” and prone to burn out. I rarely stop and when I do my mind is right there to me tell how lazy I am being because I’m not actively doing anything. These days I have a better understanding that this time when I have the need to do nothing, is actually so important and the most productive thing I can do for myself

Everyone needs to recharge, everyone needs that time to decompress and just breathe during the day. Yet a lot of people are glorifying ‘the hustle’ and the burnout of never stopping. I am more impressed when I see or hear that someone is taking the time to stop. They are resting their mind and body and letting themselves have that recharge time.

Now sure maybe for some it’s an hour, or a whole day. Then they are right back to the grind and there is no issue with that, because they are aware when they need to stop even for a moment. Some people have these days once a week, once a month or every month. Most people don’t have these days and struggle to keep going sometimes.

So I bombarded my poor friend with ways I try and set my mindset for these days as she is very like me in the way of some days are just a struggle, or just getting her body to align to what she needs like actual sleep through the night and it’s often because of our day that this is an issue. So I decided to put some of those things here, you may already do them. You may think they are pointless and that’s cool too. For someone who reads this though, might actually be helpful and honestly if it works for one other person I’d be super happy, now it is all based around the circadian rhythm of your body and for those who have no idea what I just said…

The circadian clock has an internally driven 24-hour rhythm that tends to run longer than 24 hours but resets every day by the sun’s light/dark cycle. Which is why in winter we get royally messed up.

So I try to set this everyday even in winter by going outside within the first hour of being awake, doesn’t even have to be long just for 5 – 10 minutes to get natural daylight even in winter when it’s darker and fresh air. It helps get your body into the right mind frame that it’s morning and time to get moving.
I try to be outside a bit longer on my days off work in the morning, even though I will most likely be out about later in the day the morning is the important part to get my body behaving.

I recently tried doing morning journaling, the idea behind this is to help set your intentions for the day. Help clear your mind for the day ahead of you and it supposedly helps get the creative mind going as well. So I tried this, and honestly the morning did actually feel easier. I did the journaling during my time outside in the morning and I bizarrely felt more energised and calm at the same time.

Also zero screen time. You heard me, no screen for the first hour when you wake up. Anything that has came to you as a message through the night can wait, if it was an emergency it would be a phone call. Doom scrolling is often the first thing people do in the morning and it actually is one of the reasons people struggle in the morning. Your eyes adjusted to artificial light before you were even fully awake and this is why for the first hour it’s good to ignore your phone and get natural light.

Finally… water. Not coffee. For the love of god no one come for me for that, when I say this I mean the first thing you should have in the morning before anything else is water. It kicks starts your organs basically into getting themselves in order for the day after that I promise you are free to have whatever coffee you want!

So for mornings, no phone, have water, outside for 5-10 minutes and if it’s your thing a little mind clearing with writing. During my time in the house to myself having mornings like this also felt different and I genuinely felt very calm and relaxed on the day I did nothing. The next day I had loads of energy I felt very productive going about my day without feeling sluggish or worn down.

If you have chaotic mind, the silence is hard but honestly once you start to understand the ways it can help your whole body and mindset. It will be something that becomes insanely valuable to you. Now I appreciate that not everyone is the same and mentality’s will be different, but if any of this sounded like it might help then what is the harm in giving it a go?

Silence is valuable, so is rest. If you are burning out and struggling, listen to yourself and do nothing. Even if it’s for an evening or morning and see how it makes you feel. You can’t keep forcing your body or your mind to go until there is nothing left to make it go.

B x

What is success?

I personally feel I’m quite successful in my life. Are there things to improve? of course. Are there things I’m yet to achieve? you betcha. However I do feel that I am, success in the dictionary is genuinely described as “attaining wealth, prosperity and/or fame” and this is not how I view it.

So what is it? The money in your bank? The expensive clothes or fancy car? paparazzi annoying the ever living fuck out of you for their own 15 minutes of fame of getting that shot? Social status? I guess this is what comes to mind for most people when they hear that word. I did the leg work I asked around and the answers were all basically variations of being rich, famous and able to do what you like when you like. Nothing wrong with that if that’s what you want.

I think we should try and change that narrative on success. I feel it should be waking up ready to start the day, enjoying what you’re doing. Not exhausting yourself to survive between pay days. It should mean that you have found the work/life balance that people strive for, you found the flexibility to enjoy life and still have a productive work day whatever your job is.

Success is something you should carve out and define for yourself. It doesn’t have an age limit either, a lot of success stories are of famous people who got their “big break” late in life and that’s great for them. However anytime you try and look up success in any form it all comes back down to money. That is no life, to be money oriented and that if you don’t have a lot of it then you don’t have a successful life. Confused yet? let me break down my version of success

I have a home, that I love to look after and some times to DIY in to go with my own style or just as a change.
I have a car that I take care of and a lot of people can’t afford one, I worked hard for it and take pride in it.
I have great friends I can go to for almost anything in the world and they are there.
I have a job that I love, some days it exhausts me but that is a small fraction compared to the good my work does with animal welfare.
I have the freedom to go where I feel like, I can go to a beach, through a forest, I can travel down to see other friends.
I look after my health and recently have felt the benefits of this not just physically but mentally as well.
My days off work are not spent rushing around and being stressed out trying to squeeze everything in, they are always easy going and taken a slow pace. After all it’s my day off, it’s meant to be chilled and enjoyed.
I have a partner that I am very lucky to have, like finding a unicorn under a rainbow that is standing on a mountain of gold kind of lucky.

This is my version of success for me, I have things in life a lot of people can’t get or are struggling to obtain. I work hard to have it but I don’t take it for granted. I feel peoples goal in life should not be money, it should be having a safe home and good people in your life. Success should be your mindset not your bank balance, are you ever going to be happy if every day you’re consumed with being rich and not to be a downer but the reality of everyone on the planet being rich is like zero. Yes I’m aware people can achieve it yada yada but why is money your focus? why is fame the focus?

Why is the focus not being happy and healthy? If you have ever spoken to a pregnant couple or watched tv involving them have they ever said “I just want my baby to be rich and famous and have 15 cars” – No, they always say “I just want them to be happy and healthy”

Everyone’s priorities are different. I’m not saying you should all think the same because that is the wonderful part of being human, having your own thoughts and goals and emotions. All I’m saying is, have a think about it. When it gets right down to the bottom of everything would you rather have misery trying to achieve fame and riches, with a slim chance of it working, or enjoy your life just focused on your friends and having fun and enjoying it as it is. You’re going to miss a lot if money is the only goal in life.

Just saying think about it, think about your version of success or what you want to be successful in. Work? love? friends? life? travel? – Go for it, just take it as it is and don’t try and spin everything in your life to be about getting that extra money and fame.

B x