The day after

So, yesterday was an experiment in fasting, with no caffeine and no solids. Not eating did not present a huge challenge, staying off the caffeine was much harder, although I didn’t get the withdrawal headache until well into the afternoon – I take that as a good sign in terms of addiction level.

In terms of the ‘rest day’ side of things, I did manage to take the day fairly gently – physically speaking, and also resisted the temptation to start painting a wall. But, I finished the current draft of the next Pagan book, finished making a rag rug, worked on a novel, had OBOD students to write to, and a bunch of blog related things to write and sort. A relatively quiet day compared to normal outputs, because I spent more time reading and had an earlier night than I normally do, but still busy.

I slept long and deeply, and I had some of the strangest, and most significant dreams I’ve had in a long while. I have reoccurring anxiety dreams about being back at school. Last night I dreamed about being back in the one space at school that was reliably happy for me, which made me realise that in twenty years of reoccurring school dreams, I had never dreamed about the good bit before. Why? I don’t know. It gives me much to ponder.

This morning I am a little slower and less sparky than I’d expect to be, despite having had the first coffee of the day. So be it. I came to realise yesterday that I need to learn how to be more accepting of tiredness in myself. I need to learn how to slow down, to rest, to stop. Yesterday was my best attempt at a quiet day in a while and I still managed to be really, rather busy. I don’t actually know how to do differently, without the context of a Druid contemplation day, or something else that gives me a framework and takes me away from things I could be working on.

I recognise it’s possible I’m just a bit of a workaholic – I am prone to addiction (see all previous remarks about caffeine). I am careful around any substance I might get hooked on having, for example, managed to become addicted to passive smoking on two separate occasions. Work is not something I’d been looking at that way, but it might be worth considering on those terms.

It’s there in how I frame things, even. I don’t know how to stop, and so I think to myself “I need to work on investing in gentler, frivolous things I enjoy.” I bring the language of work to pretty much everything I do, and I suspect that has consequences. So, clearly, I will be working on that…