Lunchtime Ramblings: Battery Recharge

My head hasn’t really been in the game for the last month, it’s become a bit foggy, I’ve been extra tired and lacking in energy.

I started comparing myself to my phone this week, which sounds daft..but stick with me.

My phone is by my side all day, I check and use it a lot, I go home and use it there while simultaneously using other devices and then I leave it sitting on all night while I sleep, not using it, just sitting idle by my bedside. 

In a way I kind of treat myself like that too.  I get up, sometimes I forget to have breakfast, go to work, run on empty until lunch, feel sluggish afterwards because I’ve eaten something unhealthy and then meander my way through the rest of the day.  

I’ll go to my other weekly activities after work, then I’ll come home, snack on rubbish and over stimulate my brain with devices galore and go to bed late because I’ve binged watched my way through some box sets on Netflix or watched about 4 soaps one after the other and then I’ll go to sleep with a few hours until I get up and do it all over again.

Much like my phone, which sits on charge for most of the day, I need to recharge my batteries and let myself get to full working power before I take on my tasks for the day.

For me that means more than going to bed earlier, I need a better diet and I need to put my phone and other devices down sometimes to give my brain a rest from over stimulation.

I’ve been trying over the last week or so to make sure I always have a breakfast to start the day off and to have at least an hour away from using my phone.  

I’ve had mixed success but after making myself go to bed much earlier last night, making sure I had breakfast and didn’t binge watch or eat too much nonense; I woke up feeling much more recharged and today I’ve hit a creative spark in terms of ideas for work, for one of my volunteering roles, for Christmas shopping and for my blog.

I’m going to try and charge my batteries more often, ensuring that I rest when I need to, eat the right things and try not to over stimulate my brain with an endless stream information.  

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Stepping Out Of My Comfort Zone

About two and a half years years ago I wrote a blog post about doing one thing every day that scares me. 

I've done this in fits and starts since then with varying results.
At the time of writing the original post, I'd just decided to resume driving lessons, the outcome being that I've now been driving for a year and that's a direct result of doing something that scared me.

I haven't stuck to that commitment of doing something scary every day, I've been less terrified to fry an egg (heck I poach them now) or get stuck at traffic lights on a steep hill but I haven't set out to purposefully remove myself from the comfort and security of my own bubble. 

I thought I'd done the occasionally daring thing, my hair was post box red when I started my blog, it's now black and blue but looking back that wasn't really a daring choice. That was done in an effort to put myself back in my box a little bit. 

I've kinda been putting myself in a box for the last while, not necessarily switching off aspects of who I am, but more allowing them to become dormant.

I've decided I need to start pushing myself out of my comfort again and switch some of those parts of Rachie back on.
The parts of me that relished adventure, discovery, fun and magic. 

I'm not necessarily going to try and put myself in a scary situation every day for the sake of it, but I'm going to seize more opportunities to metaphorically sink or swim by doing something that doesn't naturally sit in my zone of comfort.

If I'm rubbish at something, I gave it a try and experienced something new, if I'm great then that's a new discovery I can take with me onto whatever I tackle next.

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Quirky Reads - Essentialism:The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown

I’m on annual leave today, I’m not actually away on holiday anywhere, just taking a few days to chill and relax.  My original plan was to make use of Netflix, binge watch something, do some online shopping seeing as it’s pay day………today had other plans for me.   The internet was down, the television was down and my xbox game collection consists of games that are far more appealing to my 12-year-old nephew than myself – so I decided to read one of the mountain of books lying on my bedroom floor.

In a moment of amusement given my lack of technological stimulation, I picked up Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown.

This book was recommended to me by my colleague Chelsea, she had read one of my blogs last year about my inability to say no to things I don’t want to do (you can read that here if you wish) and recommended to me that I read this book.

I’d be lying if I said that I’ll go through the rest of my life suddenly starting to throw out no’s all over the place in my pursuit of becoming an essentialist, for a start that’s not the purpose of the book, but I recognised a few of my traits in the pages of this book.

I absolutely try to take on everything and do it all, I definitely try to take on other people’s problems or try to please them and I certainly look for the quick fix.

I do need to start looking at all of the things I take on and start thinking about what is actually necessary, what can I make the best job of, what is actually becoming a hindrance to my productivity as a person and a worker.

I need to start identifying the right things to say no to and why it is the right decision to say no.  

I need to recognise when my answer is no and stop saying yes.

Rather than allowing myself to become unproductive because my brain is too scattered between too many different things or because I can’t find the time or the space, I can start looking for what my obstacles actually are rather than just allowing them to put up a great big road block.

Finding some time to switch off from certain things like social media and needless noise is something I could be doing.I can’t remember who said it but I do remember hearing someone say

‘If you are connected everywhere, you are present nowhere’

It struck a chord with me and every once in a while it pops back into my head. I don’t think I’d manage to block everything out every day but I could make small steps by finding time once a week or a few times a month.

I deliberately avoid going into too much detail on my book musings because I don’t want to take away from someone what they could take from the books I've read.  

I’ve tried to do the same with this one and purely focused on what I am taking from it.

I’d highly recommend it to anyone, I didn’t realise before I read it how much my compulsive need to please others is preventing me from achieving the best results I could be achieving.
That won’t change overnight, but it will light a fire under my butt to become more of an essentialist.

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Laughing at me, not with me.

I’m far from being the perfect human being, I’m deeply flawed, make silly choices sometimes and I’m often annoying but I like to think that for the most part I’m an okay person.

  

I have some traits that I like and hate about myself in equal measure.

One is my ability to let things go and another is my reluctance to make a fuss.

I like that I can let very little bother me but it also means that I let others away with things that I shouldn’t. My reluctance to make a fuss kind of goes hand in hand with this. 

This week I let both of those take over. I visited a restaurant - I won’t mention which one - where the person serving me clearly found something amusing about my appearance. I am all kinds of quirky but for me I was dressed very tame, this wasn’t a 'what is she wearing’ or ‘she looks odd’, this was just straight up finding amusement 
at the way I look. 

I felt very uncomfortable as whilst I couldn’t hear what was being said it was blatantly obvious I was being mocked.
Making fun of your customers is bad enough, but to make it obvious is worse. 

In hindsight I should have cancelled my order and left but I decided to let it go and not make a fuss, but spent the entirety of my visit feeling insecure and sad.  I later felt guilty for complaining, as I always do when I complain about something as I don’t want to cause a fuss.

As someone who embraces all things quirky and individual, I’ve learned to care less about what others think and let a lot of my insecurities go, but I guess no one likes to be mocked when it’s obvious it’s happening. 

Although I will choose to let this experience go and not dwell on it, I will make a vow from here on in not to put up with unkindness or bullying towards myself or others. I’ve always had that general approach but I never seize too many opportunities it into practice unless I have a duty of care to others.   

That changes from today. 

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Lunchtime Ramblings: So Long Summer

Hello! It's me! I've been wondering if after all these days you'd like to read. 

Sorry, Adele is playing on the radio and I got a bit carried away! 

I've been thinking this week about how summer is starting to wind down, I say summer, the rain trickling down the window in front of me as if to mock my notions of a Scottish summer isn't much fun! 

I know summer as I know it is coming to an end because all of my extra curricular activities are beginning to reappear in my week, my music rehearsals are already back in the diary, the children's club I volunteer with is back on next week, my park group are meeting again soon and soon all those free and lazy nights and weekends will disappear.  

I don't actually mind that though, I like having those things to keep me busy and help my brain to focus on other things other wise I'd come home from work, I'd eat and I'd sleep. It's healthy for me to have other things to stimulate my mind. 

The season of summer doesn't end until late September but the period of time that I've conditioned myself to recognise as proper summer is about to reach its natural conclusion. 

Even though I'm 28 and have been out of education for a few years now, my brain still recognises time in a similar routine to when I was learning and studying.  

I'm slowly training my brain to be a bit more adult in a lot of ways, but primarily in the way I view my year, instead of in pre determined chunks but as a whole.

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Lunchtime Ramblings: Creating my own path

It's exam result day in Scotland, where school and higher education students alike are either anxiously awaiting their result, celebrating or wondering what to do if they didn't get the result they needed, wanted or expected. 

I've been there, longer ago than I'd like (this whole ageing thing is a bit rubbish), I was never as good as my  school friends at exams or school really, I didn't struggle but I didn't excel either so my results came along and they weren't terrible but I'd compare them to my friends results and feel like crap.   For the majority of my time at school, I just assumed I was stupid and I'd never really find my path, not like my friends who had it all mapped out and were on their way to skipping down their respective yellow brick roads to their respective wizards in search of careers. 

That wasn't for me. Or so I thought. 

I found a college course nearby, applied, got in and suddenly a light bulb went on in my head, this is what I was meant to be doing. College became uni, uni became a first class honours degree and I'm now working in a marketing role, using my strongest skills and my favourite pastime - writing - to create my own path.

I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, except for my temporary ambitions to be either an actress or a giraffe.  

Even when I'd started on my current path, I went through periods of unemployment and uncertainty on the way but rather than let it put me off, I just channelled it into creating my own content, writing stories, poetry, blogs, letters to myself and learning to be my own critic and eventually I found my way onto the next stage of my path. 

I am still learning and growing as I follow my path and enjoying the journey.  The best thing about it is, it wasn't pre determined.  A planned path works for some, and I do thrive on some planning and organisation but I get a kick from navigating my own way down my path and seeing where it takes me.

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Lunchtime Ramblings: Time is flying by

It's been about a week since I did any blogging, I've been trying to shift this pesky summer cold, I'm not quite 100% but I have just a lovely barking seal cough remaining. 

I decided today was the day to get back in the swing of things. 

This morning past quite quickly, which seems a silly thing to say because time is a measured thing that doesn't usually change.  I quite often find self thinking that time has gone slowly or quickly when what's really happening is I'm paying too much attention to the time and not enough attention to what I'm doing.

When that happens I usually need to have a bit of a word with myself to assess why I'm paying too much attention to the minutes ticking away and not on getting things done. 

The second the first of August came by this year, I did my usual how on earth is is August this year is disappearing thing.  Coupled with the fact I started my new passion planner this week, I had a bit of an internal panic about how quickly the years are rolling by and when I can start achieving all these ideas and goals I have in my head. 

I've since taken a deep breath, calmed down and remembered I don't need to have everything in life figured out right this very minute.  I'm 28, not 78, I have time, no matter how quickly or slowly it passes by.  

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