Winning the war against lethargy...

Life is absurd.  Today I saw a dog sitting in the driving seat of a car parked outside my house.  The dog looked calm, relaxed and seemed to be patiently waiting for his passenger.  It was a boxer in a Mini. Of course.

I woke up and realised that I had effortlessly moved from depression and hopeless despair to irritation without pausing to take a breath. Is this progress?  I attacked the mounting pile  of laundry, went for a walk with Ralph, after having rowed over absolutely nothing, and then came home and cleaned the kitchen.  The laundry attack and kitchen cleaning are completely out of character.  The irritation with everyone, everything and the state of the world is all too familiar.  I am going to try and increase the unusual behaviours and decrease the irritation.  This is almost as monumental an ask as letting go of depression, but it is possible.

Cleaning has always been a source of distress.  I am not good at it, though I know of no university of cleaning I could attend to get better at it, and physically I find it sometimes completely exhausting.  I know there are my friends out there yelling 'Get a cleaner' but cleaners do not hang up all your clothes, or sort through your knitting wool collection for you or decide what shoes you should get rid of, and this is where my problem is right now.  The stress of tidying is greater than the stress of not having a cleaner.  I am perfectly able to polish my own taps and vacuum my own floors with my handy dandy Dyson.  it is the collecting mania that defeats me, especially on the days when I am already defeated. What defeats me is that deep, deep down I am a nest builder.  I like having things around me, preferably within reach, but the more things I collect, the more the walls close in, so this has to change and slowly, it is.

I have decided to make cleaning a default delaying activity.  I have done this with ironing.  when I don't feel like designing a new course or sorting through my piles of correspondence,  I can always iron.  The gliding of the hot steamy iron through wrinkled clothes and achieving this pile of perfectly crisp shirts in a very short time feels like a major accomplishment.  So what if the report isn't done or the tax forms not filled in.  I have a room full of ironed clothes.  Wow! My intention is to do something similar with cleaning.  Rather than build it up into this monumental task, I will use it as a way of avoiding other things I don't feel like doing.  May sound nuts, but it just might work.

Yesterday I took steps to bring this latest depressive episode to an abrupt end.  I got last minute tickets to Premal and Miten's concert in London.  The kirtan and singing is always an uplift for me and was much needed.  It took place in a beautiful church, the Union Chapel, in Islington, filled with arts and crafts details and fantastic wood carving and stained glass.  Since it was a church the seating was in wooden church pews.  Oy, how do Christians do this. Sitting on these hard wooden pews for a couple of hours was agony and I come with lots of built in padding.  Repeating mantras 108 times is really tough when all you can think is 'my ass hurts, my ass hurts,my ass hurts'.  Next time I bring a cushion. Synagogues always have  padded seats.  if it hurt to pray, Jews would never do it, also we need food and drink afterwards, but that's another story. The concert was very beautiful and did change my mood. As I said I have now moved on to irritation.

Tomorrow I spend an entire day with Premal, Miten and Manose in a smaller venue and I can sing for the whole day.  By then the irritation should have passed.  Maybe it will give way to anxiety, or maybe I'll even feel fine.  What surprises my life seems to hold for me right now. 

Meanwhile, tonight I am meeting with an old girlfriend of mine from my summer camp days.  She and her husband are in London for a couple of days.  How strange to meet someone after so long.  Shall I adopt a different persona?  I could be anyone.  She commented that my Facebook photo looks like I haven't changed a bit.  How nice to be able to project whatever image you choose on Facebook.  Kind of like those dating services where you describe yourself as young, slim and blonde, when really you're short, fat and brunette.  I guess I'll have to own up to the latter now.  I could always say I'm a multi-millionaire with a string of successful businesses all over the world, but we're meeting in a tiny Indian vegetarian restaurant not usually frequented by millionaires so I guess I'll just go as myself.  Today that seems a lot easier than yesterday!