Books: Journal of a Solitude by May Sarton

 

 

 

 

“Whatever peace I know rests in the natural world, in feeling myself a part of it, even in a small way.”   (Sarton, May: Journal of a Solitude, W.W Norton & Company, New York 1992, p.16)

"There is nothing to be done but go ahead with life moment by moment and hour by hour - put out birdseed, tidy the rooms, try to create order and peace around me even if I cannot achieve it inside me. [...] And here in my study the sunlight is that autumn white, so clear, it calls for an inward act to match it... clarify, clarify." (ibid., p.33)

Best known for her poetry, this is one of the journals May Sarton published, of a year in her life in the early 1970s when she was approaching sixty and living on her own in New Hampshire. It is a beautifully written account of life in solitude, her inner world, her connection to nature, the changing seasons, her love of gardening and animals, her writing process, ageing, depression and the meaning of home.

Sarton is honest about her flaws, such as anger and being difficult, but her self-criticism is tempered by compassion and serenity. She writes movingly about the redemption (and the restrictions) of  friendship and love, and her journal includes reflections on politics, race, feminism and literature and extracts of her correspondence and from other writers’ works.

I love her descriptions of simple pleasures and how she imbues everything with a sense of wonder. I am obsessed with observing the changing light around the house and the pattern it forms and was delighted to see Sarton detail this play of light and shadow in a lot of her entries. She also creates a vivid picture of the various ways she brings nature into her home - each of those still lifes is seen through her poet eyes. 

As I mentioned here before, the theme of home has been a big one over the past year, and so many of the books I read in 2020 happened to have the houses we live in and the homes we leave or lose as well as those we create for ourselves as a central theme, or perhaps I was more attuned to it in the year my childhood home was transformed and I wasn't able to visit my family. And of course I have spent most of the past ten months at home, and the fabric of the house (with all its issues!) has become interwoven with nearly everything I do.

Journal of a Solitude is the perfect read for level 5 restrictions / stormy weather / any time, especially for introverts. I read this over a stormy couple of days during one of the lockdowns and wanted to re-read it straight away – it is one of those books that you want to revisit and that reveals more layers each time. 

 

Walking, swimming and Sufjan Stevens

"Going barefoot in nature immediately helps clear your energy. Stepping out onto the sand, putting your feet into the ocean, hugging a tree, all of these clear your energy. Nature is an incredible neutraliser of energy." Anita Moorjani

A lot of my routines have fallen by the wayside. The fatigue has been acting up quite a lot lately and I am technically on holidays, so I took a break from my normal day-to-day, including elements of my healing-from-cancer regime. I am aware that I put a lot of pressure on myself to do all the right things, and that pressure equals stress, which is what 'all the right things' are supposed to ease... I am still trying to find a rhythm that allows me to trust the process and not beat myself up when I fall short of my often unfeasible expectations. 

Exercise is an antidote to fatigue, though I have a tendency to overdo it and then pay for it the following day(s). And sometimes only proper rest will help. But while I haven't touched the dumbbells and haven't done any running for a few weeks, gentle exercise such as walking and swimming has been a salve.

Stripey symphony: My sister and nephews in the Burren - hats made by my sister

 

 

John and I went away for a few days (within Ireland) and did a lot of hiking - since the lockdown walking has become a huge part of our life. In recent weeks I have walked around islands (Cape Clear and Omey Island, Inis Oírr - we cycled around the latter), in forests, on beaches, Greenways, the karst landscape of the Burren, on the loops near our house, 5km along the rocky shoreline to a pub and returning via the coast road. We have walked together (often in silence) and each on our own, with family and friends, with dogs, and with strangers: I took part in a forestbathing session with a lovely group and two wonderful guides and hugged a lot of trees on my personal forestbathing forays.

The old runners I have been wearing in lieu of hiking boots are now falling apart, and on the recommendation of a friend I am tempted to buy a pair of recycled barefoot boots. Feeling the texture of the ground is like a foot massage (I also regularly walk barefoot in the garden or on the beach to ground myself) and the balancing act of walking on a rocky shore or any other uneven surface makes you use different muscles in your legs.

 

I still go swimming in the sea at least twice a week, and it was a joy to explore other beaches and find hidden swimming spots. We took my nephew to Inis Oírr and swam in clear turquoise water. On Cape Clear I waded into the water among rocks covered in shells and emerged with bleeding scrapes all over my legs, from what had felt like lightly brushing against the stones as I floated. I loved even that. Being in cold water makes me feel so alive. 

 

 On the ferry to Inis Oírr

 

I spent the Irish heatwave of 2018 indoors suffering the side effects of aggressive chemotherapy and radiotherapy and unable to handle the hot weather. Last year I stayed covered up (the advice was to do so for a year following radiotherapy) and didn't swim until September. This year I have been exposing the surgery scar on my back and my radiotherapy tattoos with abandon (and SPF 50). Sometimes those souvenirs catch me by surprise when I see them or when my hand touches the scar in the shower - it all still feels unreal - and I marvel at what my body has been able to do since I finished treatment.

 

The soundtrack to these last few months has been at least 50% Sufjan Stevens, an all-time favourite. One of the songs I have been playing on repeat for the past couple of years ("Casimir Pulaski Day") is about remembrance and cancer and I connect with it on so many levels. This concert from 2006 is one I keep returning to. I almost feel I am in the audience when I watch this, and something about the overall aesthetic and the atmosphere - the wings, the uniforms, the group dynamic on stage, and of course the music - gets me every time ("Casimir Pulaski Day" starts at the 6-minute mark).

Flowers

From Lindgren, Astrid & Hartung, Louise: Ich habe auch gelebt. Briefe einer Freundschaft, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2016

I have been filling a sketchbook with botanical illustrations, experimenting with different styles, though most of them are quite realistic. I adore both the highly detailed botanical drawings of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and more stylised modern interpretations and am not sure where to go with mine, but enjoying the ride.

The ones in my sketchbook are all done with watersoluble coloured pencils. I only started rendering flowers in oils and acrylics as the main subject of a painting in recent years. Art history is filled with stunning examples of floral art, and they are hugely popular as a theme, yet for some reason I had only ever used them as part of a composition and rarely let them take centre stage.

I love Georgia O'Keeffe's big and bold sculptural paintings of flowers opening and blossoming. And cut-paper flowers and of course the real thing, fresh and ephemeral or preserved: For my birthday my nephew gave me a card with pressed flowers (which I will frame) and a beautiful necklace containing a daisy (and my sister's card was her own gorgeous botanical drawing). I've been revisiting The Paper Garden with Mary Delany's intricate botanical collages created with scissors and coloured paper and thinking about the lovely gesture of adding flowers to diaries and letters. Throughout their correspondence Louise Hartung would send Astrid Lindgren flowers in the form of bouquets and bulbs or pressed and attached to paper.

Since Christmas we've had two different amaryllises indoors, red and pink. Ever since my older sister pointed it out, I like to think of it as the plant of the three Wild sisters - my sisters' names are Anke and Sibylle, so bits of our three names are included in Amaryllis, in chronological order (I'm the middle child...).

The red variety, as so many red flowers, is a symbol of love, but in Victorian times, the amaryllis was associated with pride (which was seen as a good attribute, denoting beauty and strength) and in China the red amaryllis signifies luck. A pink amaryllis is a friendship symbol and I have been drawing it on cards. All varieties represent hope as well. Our two specimens brightened up our rooms in the darker months before the garden came into its own.

Biophilia

Homemade bird food - attempt #1, and a book on bees

'Barnabee', oil on canvas board (the model was already dead!)

"The effects of nature’s qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional but physical and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure."

 Oliver Sacks, quoted in this Brain Pickings post

"When humans come into contact with benign soil bacteria such as Mycobacterium vaccae, proteins from its cell wall trigger a further release of serotonin from a specific group of nerve cells in our brains. So it seems that a bit of weeding can be good for more than just your herbaceous borders."

Mitchell, Emma: The Wild Remedy. How Nature Mends Us, 

Michael O'Mara Books Limited, London 2019, pp.9f.

I have always found weeding therapeutic (although sometimes it can lead to ruminating), but it was interesting to read the scientific explanation in Emma Mitchell's wonderful book about the medicinal effect of nature on her depression. Through that contact with soil, together with inhalation of the volatile compounds and oils of plants (which produce some of the same effects on the systems of the human body as on plants - protection from viruses and bacteria), the endorphins from exercise, and the release of serotonin via sunlight on our skin and the eye's retina, a simple walk in a green space yields numerous benefits from nature's pharmacy.

There was an interesting article in The Irish Times recently about reconnecting with nature that specifically mentioned fractals, the visually complex patterns found in nature. I cannot find it online, but it quoted physicist  Richard Taylor, who explained that "Your visual system is in some way hardwired to understand fractals, and the stress reduction [of being in nature] is triggered by a physiological resonance when the fractal structure of the eye matches that of the fractal image being viewed." In some of Joe Dispenza's newer guided meditations, he uses fractals for tuning into the energy centres of the body, and I am keen to get back into those, though they seem too advanced for this lapsed meditator (I have only been doing very short meditations in the last few weeks).

I know I will always feel better after spending some time outside, but some days I don't heed that call and self-sabotage instead. So I am grateful for friends who get me out even on my worst fatigue days. This morning I was on the couch as my body was aching all over (the now familiar aftermath of going to see my oncologist for results - thankfully they were good! And yet, for the first few days the relief and gratitude are mixed with utter exhaustion), and just as I was tempted to binge-watch Grace and Frankie at 9:30 in the morning my neighbour asked me whether I wanted to join her for a walk. And of course it helped.

A few weeks ago we were dog-sitting, and even though I had a flu-like cold and there were almost continuous storms, I managed to take the dog for walks. They were exhilarating. I would slowly crawl up the hill to the bog road at the end of our cul-de-sac while the dog kept running ahead and looping back. There was a puddle that had turned into a pond and was effectively blocking access to the grassy bog road. But I was wearing wellies and waded through it, and each time I would stop in the middle, feeling the cold of the water around my feet and legs and looking at the abundance of lichen on a tree which seemed to glow in the dim grey daylight, and I would temporarily be lifted out of whatever thoughts were going around in my head and feel immensely grateful for another day.

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My nephew and I made posh bird food recently - it involved coconut oil and organic pumpkin seeds. I won't link to the recipe, as it wasn't really a success (it didn't hold together when I cut it). We might try the recipe from Emma Mitchell's book Making Winter next. The bird balls we usually put in the feeders all come in plastic packaging (though admittedly I haven't done much research around it. There must be other options - we did spot fancy ones sold individually in a shop in Oughterard, but they wouldn't be feasible for the amount the birds in our garden get through in a week!), so I figured making our own would be a good idea.

We had looked into getting bees, but right now it feels like a lot to take on, so for now we are focusing on making our garden as bee-friendly as possible. My sister gave John this beautiful illustrated book on bees. A while ago I brought a dead bumblebee back to life on canvas and we hung the painting at a child-friendly height in our sitting room.

All calm

My current moisturiser, made by my sister

A present for a friend

Milk and mask

December can be stressful at the best of times, but we have a choice in how we deal with it, and while I never really got that worked up about the season and am striving to eliminate the word 'stress' from my vocabulary (I am a big believer in the power of words and Marisa Peer's approach), this year we simplified it even more by agreeing to no longer give presents to every family member and generally opting for low-key in all areas. I kept up the tradition of baking different varieties of German Christmas biscuits, with my nephews helping me. The highlight of the pre-Christmas period was hearing John sing with the ConTempo Quartet again, in three different venues. The last gig had me in tears throughout.

It is an emotional time of the year for me. Christmas heightens the absence of those we have lost - the other day it struck me that I am the age (36) that marks the point where I have had half my life with my dad and half of it without him. Two years ago I miscarried a week before Christmas on the day of our 12-week scan and then was diagnosed with stage III lung cancer out of the blue a few months later. Both last year and this year I had CT scans of the brain, thorax and pelvis in mid-December with all the scanxiety surrounding them, and last year around this time my mum had tests that would lead to her being diagnosed with breast cancer. My feelings are swinging wildly on the pendulum between exhaustion and fear on one end and immense gratitude (my new mantra, given to me by my amazing hypnotherapist, is "Thank you Life") and joy on the other: right now, my mum and I are doing well; we have food and shelter and peace in our countries and loving humans and animals around us. I spend my days with fulfilling and rewarding pursuits, and in a lot of ways life is good.

Self-care is high up on the list of priorities this month and always. Two calming and grounding elements I find easy to incorporate into every day are aromatherapy and nature. I painted the forest scene above as a present for a friend, and it was quite meditative and therapeutic. Forest bathing has become a vital part of my healing, and in a way it has returned me to my roots (excuse the pun): we grew up in a village close to a forest, and my friend still lives there (as do my mum and younger sister). It brought back memories of foraging for wild mushrooms and hiking with my dad and all the exploring and playing we did in and around the forests of our childhood. I loved using so many different greens in this painting. Patients looking out at green from their sickbeds tend to recover faster, and luckily the views from our house offer an abundance of green.

My sister made me a lotion containing frankincense essential oil - I have been using this oil in various ways since I found out about its anticancer properties (I put it in a diffuser during my daily yoga practice, for example) - and geranium oil, one of my all-time favourites. I haven't asked her for the recipe yet, but a quick Ecosia search (I still use 'google' as a verb, even though I switched to Ecosia) yields a lot of great homemade beauty products including frankincense oil. It works well for all skin types, and the scent is heady and musky.

My friend Vu gave me the Weleda lavender bath milk when I was going through treatment. The combination of lavender and a milky consistency makes for one of the most soothing baths. It comes in glass, as does the seaweed face mask from a local company worth supporting, White Witch - their products are organic, vegan and ethical. John bought the mask for me, and I first used it after the worst of the chemoradiation, on the morning I finally felt stronger again, as in strong enough to apply and take off a mask (the things we take for granted when we are well!). I visualised myself emerging renewed and clear of all toxins and illness after rinsing off the mask. It smells energising, as it also contains mint, which together with the seaweed and the green tea forms a perfect trinity of green.

Slow and simple

Nearly two decades ago, in a secondhand bookshop, I came across a book that had Voluntary Simplicity in its title. I put it back, resolving to buy it a few days later, but when I wanted to do so, it was gone. I never found that particular book again, but of course there are thousands of similar books, and the topic remained on my radar and eventually became a passion.

The concept wasn't new to me, either. We were taught to care for the environment from a very young age, and Germany had a green wave during the late eighties and early nineties - on our holidays in England we were surprised at the ubiquity of plastic bottles and bags. A lot of our paper - from exercise books to toilet paper - was grey recycled paper, and plastic folders and the like were banned from school.

Even though it took a few years before I seriously started committing to a simple life (I was never a maximalist, but in my early twenties I was so attached to some of my belongings that I travelled with a 20kg suitcase when visiting home, just so I could bring certain CDs, books and clothes with me), I always felt drawn to it. There are several aspects to Voluntary Simplicity, and I am far from mastering them all, but living with less, more sustainably and at a slower pace, has been immensely satisfying and freeing.

Since my diagnosis simplicity and slowing down have become even more significant. I feel I am shedding anything superfluous, making space for what really matters. My need for tidiness may partly stem from anxiety and a need to control something that I can control, but it is so much more than that: Japanese Buddhism, for example, sees cleaning and tidying as a way to cultivate the mind, a spiritual practice - a view that has been popularised by Marie Kondo.

Through my meditations I have been accessing the observing self, often with great difficulty, and I am spending much more time in nature and can hold yoga poses for several minutes without getting agitated. Sometimes I schedule too much in a day, and it leaves me flustered, overwhelmed and reactive. That's when I am reminded of that proverb "You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes every day, unless you are too busy - then you should sit for an hour."

Holly recommended the unusual and wonderful book pictured above (The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey) and I got it from the library a few weeks ago. The book charts the author's observations of a woodland snail while bedridden during a mysterious illness. I could relate to so much of what Tova Bailey had to say about being ill, the isolation and alienation, though her illness was completely different (and I was lucky to only be bedbound during the worst of the chemoradiation. Incidentally, I was delighted to see that the author 'photograph' in the book is a painting of the author on a couch with her dog by her side. Last year I had painted myself and Daisy on the couch when I was unable to move due to side effects. Synchronicity!). The writing is lyrical and philosophical with a unique voice, and the writer and reader learn a lot about molluscs, and from them. 

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Here is an interview with Elisabeth Tova Bailey.

Sea and seeds

The Sea, the Sea and the sea

 Our hens love oats. They don't love cauliflower.

Gardening goals

Although the Irish weather isn't always conducive to an outdoor lifestyle, I have been spending as much time as possible in the fresh air. In theory I subscribe to the phrase 'There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing', but when rain and strong winds combine, it takes a lot of willpower to brave the elements. In my mid-thirties I finally own a proper warm coat (the Michelin man type) and a pair of posh wellingtons that I could run in if needed. Luckily there have been a lot of sunny days, including today.

I am gaining a more visceral understanding of the basic fact that humans are meant to move a lot and do so outside. My extreme hippy days are behind me, but I have become a serious tree-hugger (after rereading Luisa Francia, in particular), and I talk to our plants (and all the animals, of course, but that is nothing new). I have yet to do another lung capacity test, but have been running uphill and trying to gauge whether I get out of breath more easily now that I no longer have a middle lobe, but I don't notice a difference (the other two lobes expand to fill the gap).

We ordered seeds from this company and are thinking of moving the hens to the front garden. My 4-year-old nephew helped me weed one of the flower beds with astonishing stamina and determination on his part. All these activities are therapeutic during this difficult time, and every day I am grateful for our beautiful surroundings.

Thanks to a voucher (which we then forgot to bring) John and I spent a night in Ballymaloe House and walked the grounds when not eating or sleeping or looking at the art. We fell in love with a very friendly pig at the amazing Eco Preschool based there. One of my most vivid childhood memories is of playing 'kitchen' with things found in nature, and I was delighted to see they had a mud kitchen.

I still haven't been for a swim in the sea since my diagnosis (avoided it during and following chemo, and then there was a question mark over radiotherapy and swimming/bathing), but intend to go back. I am interested in the Wim Hof method, but also aware that I keep adding things to my very long list of healing modalities (which I will list in a blog post soon), and there is only so much I can do.

Outdoors

 Meditating in the grounds of Ballynahinch Castle,  August 2018

Our hens and one of our four-legged neighbours

Aidan at the beach in Spiddal

Since I wasn't able to enjoy the outdoors much during this summer's heatwave, I have been making up for it in the subsequent colder months. The week before my surgery we spent a magical 24 hours in Connemara, staying in the wonderful Screebe House, where we were greeted with a hug and glasses of bubbly by Ursula and a surprise awaited us, courtesy of thoughtful friends. The following day we went to Roundstone and one of Ireland's best beaches, where I walked barefoot in the water (the closest I have got to swimming in the sea this year) and then to Ballynahinch Castle for more walking and a meditation amid mosquitoes by the lake.

While work in the garden is less now, there is always something to do, and we are surrounded by animals (though poor Daisy is no longer with us). We got two hens in the summer, chosen and named by my nephews: Petunia and You-Know-Huhn (the naming required some prompts from the adults. Huhn is German for hen). They may not be very affectionate, but I love closing the door of the hen house in the evening and saying goodnight to their huddled shapes, and opening it in the morning and watching them devour their breakfast (organic food - only the best), with their fluffy behinds up in the air. The two donkeys faithfully show up nearly every day, knowing there are carrots, apples and the odd oatcake waiting for them. The other neighbouring field is home to two horses at the moment. Then there is Phoebe, our neighbours' dog, and sometimes one of the other dogs from the baile turns up, as well as various cats, who know where we feed the birds. 

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My current favourite song - and one of my all-time favourites - is "Galileo" by Declan O'Rourke. My own curly-haired bearded man sang it as part of Culture Night, accompanied by this amazing quartet. It was shortly after my surgery, so I wasn't able to go, but he sent me a video, and it makes me emotional watching it. A few weeks later Declan O'Rourke played a gig on campus, and John came home with two records, one for me, one for him, which we have been playing non-stop.

Daisy

Daisy and I earlier this summer. She loved that sheep wool rug

 Work-in-progress: Self Portrait with Daisy

Since my last blog post I have had surgery and Daisy has been put to sleep (it happened when I was in hospital; they let me go home for a couple of hours to say goodbye to her). She was over 16 years old, semi-blind and -deaf and had cancer on her nose and kidney problems. She was with us for one year, and it is nice to know that she experienced all four seasons in Spiddal. The scab on her nose had progressively got worse, and the monthly injections to prevent it from becoming infected no longer helped. Towards the end she was very disoriented, walking in circles and disappearing into the polytunnel - she loved her sauna - for long periods of time.

Animals feel it when we are suffering, and Daisy was so good to me. After the miscarriage she would lie on my belly, and she would curl up to me (or climb onto me as shown in the painting above) when I was unable to move during the worst times of the chemoradiation and nearly always cover or touch the affected area. I believe I received a lot of healing from her.

We miss her, but it was time to let her go, and we are so grateful for the year she kept us company. It is eerily quiet in the mornings without her demanding her breakfast.

Garden delights

Summer in the West of Ireland has been a mixed bag so far - no surprise there. But the sunny balmy days obliterate a sizeable chunk of the memory of rain-drenched days (weeks), and we can pretend we are in the Mediterranean and set up our garden furniture (which amounts to a bistro table and two chairs), drink white wine and eat olives and temporarily move the lemon tree outside. The latter was ill and nearly died, but after receiving the right treatment it is blossoming with the most divine scent.

After visiting gardens in Wexford, including this one and of course my mother-in-law's (she is the gardening expert we turn to, and I must not forget to mention here that she has won prizes for the fruits of her labour), we are sketching ideas of how to turn our lawn into something more abundant. Most seaside gardens our end of the isle tend to be quite bare, with lawns, bushes and rocks, and while it isn't possible to grow as many plants as in the sunny South East, there are a lot of options, even for this tricky, mostly exposed corner. Now to find the time (and the money)...

More botanicals

1|  The rose campion a friend gave me a few weeks ago revealed its intense magenta flowers while we were away. Returning from Germany's heatwave and its abundant gardens to grey skies and the worst rain in months, we were in a funk for a day or two, but these pops of colour helped.

 2|  We also came back to a courgette the size of a baby and have incorporated it into every meal (and a cake). And we are eating tons of salad, but so far have only two varieties in our polytunnel. I want to grow chicory - I love bitter leaves, and the above is one of my favourite salads, chicory with orange, walnut, balsamic and apple cider vinegar and honey.

Search for the pioneering photographer and botanist Anna Atkins in Google Images, and you get lost in this sea of cyanotype blue - her work looks so modern.

3|  I was sorting through papers in my studio and accidentally formed this lovely juxtaposition of two of my obsessions - 'Las Meninas' by Velázquez (on a transparency I must have used for a presentation in college; I noticed the image is flipped horizontally here!) and botanical illustrations (this one by Edward Minchen, I believe). I am displaying them temporarily on a shelf in the hope they will spark an idea, or simply to enjoy them for a while.

Springtime of the year

 Apple blossoms in the garden

A better world - my sister asked for a scene like this

The cherry blossoms have come and nearly gone and now the apple trees are in full bloom. This is always such a beautiful and sad time, and this year in particular.

The right music can be so cathartic, so today I spent nearly all day painting with two new-to-me songs on repeat.*

I must have been living under a rock not to have come across these before. John played me John Spillane's 'The Dance of the Cherry Trees' last night (it took him three years to play me one of his favourite songs), and we tried to find a word to describe the sentiment in that heartbreaking  'well done' line (all I could come up with was 'bittersweet', but it is so much more). It just destroys you.

The other song was one of those late-night car radio discoveries that are always heightened by the atmosphere of the night, but judging by the amount of views on Youtube the world has been aware of this song for quite some time: 'Emmylou' by First Aid Kit. (also, Emmylou Harris listening to 'Emmylou', and a cover of 'America' with Paul Simon in the audience).

* and last night was treated to this passionate violinist in concert, playing Gubaidulina (also previously unknown to me) - such a tour de force

Early morning walks

While daily walks have become a non-negotiable for me, I would love to be the person who goes for a walk or a run first thing in the morning. Especially when working from home, as a pretend commute. And on days off.

At least once a week over the past three months I have got a sense of what it feels like to be that person. I was offered some part-time work in a neighbouring village for a few weeks on the days I would normally work from home (saving up for that external wall insulation!) that mainly requires me to just be there, so in the 90% of quiet time I can do my own (portable) work.

Since we share a car and the village isn't within walking distance, John drops me off on his way to work, meaning I arrive almost an hour early, and in that hour I walk to the next beach. It is wonderful - I get all the benefits of a walk and the sound and smell of the sea and the sublime colours of winter sunrises. The days I do this I feel less lethargic while sitting at the desk. And yet I haven't done it once on all the other days when I didn't have an extra hour 'imposed' on me in this way.

Habits take months to form (the 21 days is a myth, sadly), and this job will come to an end before that magic turning point might arrive, so I will need to rely on my willpower and overcome my 'inner pigdog', as the German language calls the lack of the former, to make it happen. I am a morning person, after all.

The beauty that surrounds you*

Cottage at the bottom of our road

November morning kitchen view

Early morning commute view from the car

* John likes to sing this line from "Limerick You're A Lady" when we are in the car, accompanied by dramatic arm gestures pointing at the sunrise on the beach as we drive past, which prompts me to position his hand back on the steering wheel. While driving to work isn't fun generally, we are lucky to have such a picturesque commute (and it isn't long, 25 minutes). Whoever is the passenger (in the morning it's usually me, after one too many cringe-inducing driving incidents while at the wheel) marvels at the views and the light and tells the driver what they are missing. 

November has been kind but cold, no storms so far. We had a mouse, which made its way into the cutlery drawer and gnawed on our only pair of chopsticks. We think we have found and blocked the hole it came through and hope it didn't have a family.

Christmas is approaching way too fast, and I am busy wrapping up work projects and commissions, preparing for our (very small, thankfully) wedding, which is in December as well, and trying to paint at least one more room before the holidays, among countless other things. 

I haven't picked up any yarn in months, but with the dark evenings I think I will move from the studio to the sitting room (and the fire!) after dinner and do some knitting or crochet, something big but easy like a moss stitch blanket. It will probably have to wait until January, since I won't have many evenings at home between now and then, with all the Christmas parties. 

Reset - fruitfulness

A couple of months ago, when I was feeling particularly overwhelmed and flustered, a friend gently reminded me of the Pomodoro Technique, the virtues of which I had extolled in the past. It was the same friend who had given us the kitchen timer that gave this technique its name. I was still using the system on and off (setting the alarm on my phone), but her comment made me realise that I needed to make it my default way of working.

This week I am working from home mostly. It is not quite back-to-school for me yet, as I won't be starting work in the Uni again until the end of the month, and I won't be teaching before October, but there are various things I want to get done before returning to the externally scheduled part of my work, and these quiet days at home are a chance to do that and also look after the garden. So here I am with the kitchen timer instead of the phone beside me (although I am not sure whether the ticking noise will become a nuisance. It is supposed to add a sense of urgency, but I don't want to view this as a race against time), and it has been going well. 

I am finally (finally) revisiting the Pirates poem that I illustrated years ago, and hopefully it will be a physical book soon. Having given away several of the drawings and not taken good-quality photos of them, I had some sort of block about redrawing them, but it is high time, or the author's children will be adults by the time this gets published.

For my Pomodoro breaks I mainly do housework, which tends to be the biggest procrastination tool for me when working from home. I can avail of the bursts of sunshine to get clothes dry outside and race out to take them in when the next inevitable downpour starts. Today I also made use of some garden goodies during a break, making apple sauce and preparing beetroot for tonight's dinner.

For the longer breaks or the mornings and evenings, going for a walk or a run is a non-negotiable, and as of this week I have made yoga a daily habit. My sister got me started again when I was in Germany, and I was embarrassed to see how much of my flexibility has suffered. In the past year other things had taken over, between the new house and the garden, and my haphazard routine often meant I would only do ten minutes on the mat. Better than nothing, but it wasn't what I wanted. So now I put on Yoga with Adriene every day and do at least half an hour. I used to teach myself with books (I have never been to an actual class), as I thought I preferred peace and quiet and following videos would just be another version of screen time, but being guided is so helpful and ensures that I show up.