Give It A Rest. Back To Work or Back To Bed?

I'm thinking about going back to work.

I'm thinking about it because it's the end of the day on Friday and it's time to write my blog. Well, nearly time. Usually I reserve 4:00pm (my time of writing) for last minute bids which have been in the works for two weeks or so but which land on my desk with an hour or so to go of the working week. I laugh in the face of last minute bids. Seriously, nothing comes up as top of my Christmas list on a Friday afternoon work-wise, but actually these last minute things are quite fun because I have to supercharge my mental faculties and go for it.

It's nice sometimes. To feel one is to an extent the heroine of the hour. 'Elastigirl' (see below) swoops in with the slides at the eleventh hour. Delivers the goods. Writes beautiful slides. Creates a lovely balance between graphics and language. I say lovely. We're still talking about technology-related change. I love my job and all, but these slides are not Shakespeare I confess. I wonder what he might think of Power Point... Definitely up there with my desert island fly on the wall moments.

Shakespeare didn't consent to this by the way

Anyway, no bids or other work at the moment. I'm off. I may be the MVP (most valuable player) for my inability to sit still, (I learned that abbreviation via a process of elimination whilst reading Tina Fey's "Bossypants" this week) but I also know that if you don't rest (and by you I mean me) then you (I) don't get better.

I read this, but for feel good 

I'd recommend The Year of Yes - Shonda Rhimes. 

You go girl, I mean, highly successful award-winning writer.

Rest then. 

But rest can be bad for the mind even if good for the body. I've stacked up what I feel is a fairly impressive range of TV Boxsets, films and books over the last two weeks. I've also written a few notes to self, scribbled using my wonderful iPhone microphone which I discovered during my first back surgery. And I've slept a fair amount.

Netflix, I salute you. except it would be great if you showed all the 

shows available in the USA. Apart from that, you're, pretty okay.

I've also done my fair share of navel gazing. I really would prefer not to talk about that here, because I'm shaking a figurative finger at myself for that, and also I didn't plan on my navel featuring much in these web pages. Not as such. But the above does make me pause because it's rather unfortunate for my mental health suddenly being at home and forced to spend too much time on my own. My overall recovery could be disrupted by a dip in my mood, and I have felt that these two weeks.

Yep. This is me. And generous at it. This woman has super powers after all.

Unfortunately although the surgical procedure went really well and I even said goodbye to my stitches (staples even) yesterday, I have been struck with severe stomach cramps on the right hand side - apparently gas trapped inside me made worse by past stomach surgery. And not going anywhere despite a lot of muscle relaxants. I feel like I should be dropping around the house like Morph or Elastigirl. In reality I've got more hot air than both the Montgolfier brothers put together.

Pain that has come from a known but supposedly temporary source is unpredictable but unlike my mental health, because this is supposed to dissipate in days rather than months or years even it is annoying for each day it remains as a guest, tolerated but ever out- staying its welcome.

My mental health in the other hand. I wasn't exactly surprised to feel deflated (ironically) to be stuck at home with even washing my hair a now painful as well as seemingly gigantic task. But it had to raise its ugly head and remind me it was still there. "Oooh me! Me! Me! Me! Me!" as if jumping up and down and leaping for the chance to receive the ball pass.

Whereas in reality...

This.

Yeah, don't worry Depression, it's not easy to forget about you. And thanks for reminding me that staying away from work is not the way to further my career. You're right, it won't. I won't do anything at home while off sick because I'm ill and that, my dear, is the whole idea.

Hey there. You, know, I'm feeling a little big boned today.

But I also know that I won't get better hurtling back into work when I can still not stand without bending over in puffball agony. Not just because it won't be my most attractive pose. But also because I've been to the wellness centre at work and it's fab, but the duvets at home are within much easier reach thanks, and I can also wear my very cute jumper with the rabbits on. These are important considerations.

This is the exact style of jumper that I mean.

I own one of these!

Seriously, I cannot count the number of sick days I had off from school when I desperately didn't want to go and did and then felt awful, nor the days I didn't go and didn't feel good either. I also have had days when I went in to school or work or university when I didn't want to and it has been fine. Mentally I have to decide every time whether it's bad enough to be off or whether work (of whatever sort) will help to distract me and manoeuvre me into a better state of mind. 

This is not an exact science, but physically it's easier to determine. I can't move without being in fairly extreme pain. Okay. That means no work. Or at least if it subsides the smallest chance to work at home but absolutely no travelling, no carting a heavy laptop around and no uncomfortable clothing. My laptop's video camera will not be in use. I would not wish my frankly fabulous mouse pyjamas to distract people from the seriousness of my "message".

I don't have these exact ones. But like these.

And mentally while this is going on I have to do what I can (as always) as we all do to take care of the physical stuff so it's as unobtrusive as possible and provide some sort of active rest - watching, reading, writing... Okay I admit, also playing Angry Birds. Active rest meaning something that isn't too much or stressful (okay, might have to take out Angry Birds) but keeps my mind going and away from my navel.

Which is currently covered in an attractive range of winter woollen leggings and an assortment of sweatshirts people in the eighties might have thought appropriate for callisthenics. (My iPhone just spelled that for me, I take no credit.)

All this and more. I am an eighties icon

(lying down without the trainers)

So, it's now 6pm and would usually be time for clocking off. So clock off I shall. From my blog post. I have no idea how I'll feel on Monday but there are two whole days in between, including your favourite and mine, consumer goods made up price-hoiking day of the year, or Valentine's Day if you must. But as I always say at the end of these posts take care. Health is precious. Take that from me. Michelin man. Take care. X

(This was created by adventuregamestudio.co.uk

Those people have serious time on their hands

and even more serious coding enthusiasm!)

A Fat Lot of Good: January Drear and Diets

I made the catastrophic mistake of weighing myself on Monday. First day back at work and I added to that joy with a painful arm and a horrific number on the scale. And as the writer of this blog, dear reader, I choose to abstain from printing it here. Just know that I'm currently limited to a wardrobe selection of pyjama bottoms that have no elastic left in them, and a reindeer onesie I am supposed to put away after today according to Twelfth night traditions. Oh and some leggings. I am a wearer of leggings now. And giant sweaters.

Yes it's been a stellar week so far. I'm officially on a diet and I know that ahead of me I have weeks of it to come if I have a hope of shifting all the stuffing I have oh so casually stuffed myself with. And I'm delighted that the gabapentin I'm taking as well as the other pain medication and the antidepressants are such a tonic to this diet, for their potential to make people like me, who are, quite frankly, depressed enough without their help, thanks, able to help us to gain weight. It's an overused word, I know, but, frankly, and not without my classic British sarcasm: awesome. And now we add to it the fact I mentioned in my last blog: that another operation on my elbow is needed, meaning more time without being able to swim (it's not the right kind of physio) and only walking as the exercise option. Or cleaning. And let's face it, I'm not writing a blog about being a domestic goddess here. The house is tidy because I'm living mostly in bed.

So, "We get it," I hear you cry. "You're unhappy. It's January. Get over it. (Whatever the 'it' is you wanna focus on. Just get over it. Already." And okay, I should.) But really, this is the best time of year to embrace being miserable. We're all at it. I can scarcely rouse myself from my bed to turn on my laptop in the morning without my eyes moistening at the thought of work. They stayed like that all day today. Moist. Moist when I ate my Rice Krispies (being carefully calculated as part of my get-thinner-even-though-you're-on-weight-gain-meds diet by myFitnessPal). Moist as I went for my lunchtime walk listening to Hard Times (depressing month cause for depressing literature) and moist throughout the rest of the day. Moist now.

Ugh Pills. This is what mealtimes feel like.

Why is January so hard when I can hardly tolerate Christmas and find New Year's Eve stressful too? I would have thought I'd be happy to have it over with. Perhaps it's all those additives and the hangover (both booze and booze-free) from the partaking that has left me in this sorry state. But it is a pretty sorry state. Thankfully, everyone else is miserable too, or so it seems. If August is the silly season for news, January is the dreary destination for deadly dieting and depressingly downcast outlooks. People are giving up or cutting back on the booze (me too), cutting the calories (me too) and getting on the treadmill again (not me too, worse luck). I spent most of yesterday wondering how much of my medication I could forgo for the sake of my figure (I'm an idiot. My arm hurt a lot today.)

Now I'm just saying roll on April. Which is the cruellest month, but by which time I'm hoping I won't need some kind of fat sucking device for my normal jeans to fit, and my darned elbow should be screwed firmly together and actually behaving itself. (I'm giving my body my sternest teacher-like stare.)

The only odd thing I can say amidst this depression is that I can read the most sad and haunting things at my bleakest moments, because it's not the sadness or the despair which is the worst time, it's the feeling that this will never end, and since it may never end, and there's a numbness, why not try poking myself with something really tragic. At twenty one I watched The Ice Storm in such a state. It was the perfect film to get over with while so morose. Today I am going to read a new book on depression, and think about last year when I was travelling back to New York to erase my life there. Unfortunately I think the real life element of the latter is too close to actual trauma, so I will look for fictionalised versions instead. Safer. Distant.

Not an answer to the question: "What's a happy film we can watch?"

I did talk about New York though, and being lonely there while I lived there, recently, so if you want to join me in embarking on exploration of a topic that's important, though not perhaps one to get out with the Christmas crackers or happy birthday music, you can listen to me talking at about 22 minutes in about loneliness on Five Live. They put it on at 00:00 on Boxing Day. I.e. in the small hours when we were all stuffed with turkey, it was already time to stop being cheery (or fake cheery) and start being dreary.

A Life Less Lonely, Radio Five Live

What I think we need is a #joinin for January. In fact that's it: #joininjanuary. Who can come up with the most sardonic tweet for jaundiced January? I challenge you, reader, to join me and cheer me up by telling me that your tape measure doesn't go round your waist either, and that you've got your old step out from behind the wardrobe / from the greenhouse where you were using it as a shelf for pot plants. If you've managed to slice open your finger as my friend Lucy has whilst being middle class using a mandolin (it's a dangerous way to live, the middle class life) or similar, then #joininjanuary. And by the way, I'm still eating a few nice things on my diet hoping not to fall off the wagon before the pounds fall off first. So thanks, Marks and Spencer, for keeping your Extremely Chocolately Roll in stock. I may only have a sliver, but it's enough to make my eyes water. In a good way.

Darkness Visible, and the Black Dog: the Advent of Winter

Deer and darkness.

I've fallen out of sync with my usual blogging flow of posting something on Friday night, thinking that people can read it at leisure on a Saturday before they get up if - like me - they grope for their iphone/tablet first thing and wake up slowly with the news and a view of the world from bed before lauching (or lurching) from bed into real life: dressing gown, front room, kitchen, Rice Krispies...contemplation of other activities...quite possibly leading to a return to bed.

The reason for this - my being at odds with my self-determined schedule - is, I think, the time of year. I have never been very happy in the darker months. The incipient dullness and bleakness which approaches in October becomes darker and danker still in November, and today on the 1st December it has reached a state of osmosis with the world outside.

The black dog. It can be stronger than me in the darker months.

Even when it is dry the air is close to dampness. Old houses feel particularly heavy with the moisture each brick contains. In New York the iciness is cold and dry, and one's skin sucks in moisture or makeup in an attempt to build any kind of barrier against that unrelenting chill; in the UK the dampness is what persists, and icy blasts not so much a worry as the continual feeling that any minute now a cold, or, worse, flu, will strike us down to a diet of Lemsip, vitamin C, echinacea and Night Nurse, with a little soup and toast tossed in for sustenance.

And in addition to the above, if, like me, you are living with depression (to a greater or lesser degree, mine being relatively well and my mood good at present) things are often harder.

I have a black dog. He lives with me and we know one another well.

When I was 28 I fell down on a freezing and damp January night and put out my hands to catch myself on the cold concrete ground. Many years later my left wrist, which bore the brunt of the impact, aches in the cold and I start to sympathise for aged aunts from my early childhood, who would blow over their tea, clutched with reddened, wrinkled, swollen-knuckled hands and tell my mother eagerly about their rheumatism, their bunions, corns and arthritis while I sat on my assigned chair, tried not to move at all and consumed my one allocated biscuit. I am continually amused at those elderly conversations where these unsavoury topics were considered just the thing for polite company, even though the elderly aunts were the first ones to point out faults in others for conversational exclusion zones and faux pas.

I am split in two at this time of year. Part of me loves the dank coldness, particularly in the park. I am listening to the wonderful Martin Jarvis reading David Copperfield - unabridged. Martin Jarvis's sonorous voice with its amazing ability to voice each character with a different personality brings to life so much of this tale, and the fact that it is inhabited in a world of candlelight, unspoiled countryside scenes and the same sorts of bricks and buildings that would hold in that moisture seem the perfect companion for my walks, particularly when I am squishing through a muddy field in the late afternoon mist, sharing my space only with the odd scampering squirrel or the deer, their pelts darkened with the rain and lateness of the year.

Deer. They even manage to play rugby! I do well to get outside.

This year I cannot run because of my back and arm, which are much recovered but still aching (and aching more in the damp and the cold). Therefore I try to get out into the daylight to assist in the rehabilitation process but also to turn my face in the daylight and try to absorb every vitamin benefit it proffers. I have a daylight lamp for emergency use, when my spirits threaten to drop down in line with the fading light, but for now I am trying to get my only exercise and my only daylight together, walking during those few hours.

Injuries: A Pain In The Neck, No. Arm

The other part of me wants to stay in with the door firmly closed to visitors. Although I love the park and the mist and the melancholic landscapes, I look out from my bed onto the outside world and see grey. I see the sky as white as clay and it repels me. I wrestle between bed or walk. And this is not just a fight between positive exercise or needed rest, it is also a tug of war in my mind between feeling justified in eating all the good things that come at this time of year, or not. Mince pies, with their pastry cases so innocent looking, but capable of giving a sharp and thorough tummy ache by their inability to be digested; chocolates of all kinds, and, most delectable of all, the Christmas snacks and accompaniments, my interest in which is directly proportional to the percentage of pig in their recipes.

This is in fact, cauliflower cheese. With bacon and black pudding. #doingthingsproperly.

Today, bed is winning at present. It is so grey, so damp-looking outside, and I have another interview to do - on loneliness - this afternoon. It is appropriate, that subject. This is the time of year when I can most relate to that subject after sad, solitary weekends in New York walking in the frozen park and comparing myself in all of my obsessive loneliness to every group or couple. But at home with my husband not far away I am not lonely at all, so the pain in my arm can be coped with, the greyness all round tolerated very well. And the biscuits consumed in moderate proportion. For now.

Read I Had A Black Dog or read more about it here.