“I am free to do less”
Sleep helps us process and digest and learn
Day 59 !!
What can I say. I’m surprised to see the number 59 at the top of my daily messages to you all.
It has been easy to get here, day by day, hour by hour and moment by moment.
And I’m glad to have devoted this time to down-loading some of the things which are in my mind, which I find enjoyable to think about and share them with you. I have discovered that I enjoy writing and that many of you enjoy reading them. You may not have been able to read as many as I’ve written, and that is fine. You can always refer back to them.
Thank you to each and everyone of you who has written with your feedback, musings, your own discoveries, suggestions and appreciation. The contact and connection with you has been very nourishing and heartening to hear how you are doing, and how these emails have contributed to your lives.
Of course a few people have unsubscribed and left. That is great! They are free to go and listen to a different tune, a new song in a different voice. We are all free to choose and I celebrate conscious choices (there is a clue in the title of the emails after all!)
I did not have a plan as to how many days I would write to you each day. I had no idea that it could be 59 days. None of us has a crystal ball, so it would have been impossible to know in advance what this time would be like.
Even though we have had the same restrictions, each of our situations and lives are uniquely different. Some of us have enjoyed a quieter external life, a different pace, a new rhythm. Some will have struggled with being on their own, uncertain work and money, or being only with the few people under their roof.
What have you enjoyed about this cocoon-time?
Not knowing where the finish line is in a race, makes it hard to pace yourself. And, although I don’t think of life as a race, we rarely know where our finish line will be. So how do we live with this uncertainty?
I have been self-employed for 20 years. I left a salaried job with a good pension from the BBC Philharmonic in 2000 and embarked on a very uncertain work and financial future. I spent 3 years training to become an Alexander Technique Teacher. I didn’t know I even wanted to teach at that time. I just knew I needed to take better care of myself having got burnt-out with being On-Call 24/7, working evenings and weekends and lots of travel for several years.
I loved my training days in Kendal, and worked every weekend, backstage at the Royal Northern College of Music for those 3 years. At the end of these years of study, I had had enough of travelling. I spent a month at home, with no plans, no study, not starting on my business and just watching the clouds and enjoying a very simple life. (Oh, that is quite similar to these last few weeks, I now realise.)
Then I needed a fallow period to absorb all that had gone before and to refresh myself for what was yet to come.
These last 8 weeks have been a mixture of working online, phoning lots of people, offering new things in new ways, and being a part-time full-on parent every other week. Yes, my son has continued to fly back and forth from nest to nest and is doing well.
I’ve enjoyed slow time, reading time, baking time, walking and bicycling time. I’ve enjoyed working on Zoom, Skype, by telephone (yes the old fashioned kind with audio only) and two zoom Workshops so far. And I miss seeing you, and being in the same room and touching you, and you touching me.
So now I realise I need to pare back my evenings a little. You may have guessed that many of these emails are written in the evening. Just now I am tired and need to rest, and sleep and do less.
I shall write again when I am rested.
“I am free to do less”
Please write or phone and let me know how you are doing. What you have enjoyed, and continue to enjoy with the cocoon time. And what are you most looking forward to when you are able to choose more fully?
