Displacement therapy?

I don’t like sitting around on my backside that much.

Which makes sitting doing editing and read-throughs damned hard.

I feel a vague sense of frustration and my brain doesn’t operate as it should.

Most of my reading (of all sorts) is done either at night or at required points in the day, but I actually begrudge daylight hours spent inside – especially if the sky is clear and the breeze is a waft of air across the skin.

It’s probably why I take a year to write a book.

Or why my stitching moves forward with the speed of a snail.

I’m incapable of spending time with needle and thread during the day. There’s a form of guilt at taking the luxury.

Generally I want to be on the move, doing physical things.  My mother was the same. All her creative interests took place in the evenings as she was always ‘busy busy’ during the day. I can empathise. When I’ve been ill and been required to rest, it often feels like I’m caged. I develop a kind of cabin fever.

I took a couple of hours the other day to write two blogposts but I much preferred being outside for most of the afternoon, raking autumn leaves, even though there were as many leaves down after, as when I started. I find when I’m outside and busy, my brain falls into neutral. Perhaps my creative mind works through things subconsciously.

This morning, the dog and I will walk for an hour along a hopefully deserted beach. Heaven. Pure heaven. And I couldn’t imagine for one minute being seated inside facing a computer screen, or working away with needle and thread when the sky is soft blue, the wind is less than a snuffle and the sea stretches flat and calm into the Never-Never.

If it’s raining, I’m apt to put on a coat, grab an umbrella and the dog, and stride onward, rain not withstanding. But rain, in the spirit of climate change, seems to have disappeared from our weather reports.

I do a weekly ballet class. I walk twice daily with the dog, no matter what. I garden whenever I can because I love it –  the ultimate quiet. I’ve even joined a Sunday Icebreakers swimming group – heaven forbid!

These are things I do, not because I have to, but simply because I want to. Using up energy (and kilojoules).

 

If I’m inside, I don’t mind cleaning, cooking or ironing – it’s an activity after all and I couldn’t abide hiring someone to do it for me. I’m able enough, so what a waste of money that I can use for the business of indie-writing!

I always remember being told by a specialist once,  as my joints started age-ing: ‘Use it or lose it.’ Good advice, I thought. So I do!

Most of my friends are the same – we’re a pretty active lot in our 60’s and 70’s, what with gardens, beaches and grandchildren, and we’re all apt to think that life is short and we must make as much of it as we can.

But lest you think I have ADHD –  if it’s a calm day with sunshine, I can be found under the willow day- dreaming, dog lying beside the chair, both of us enjoying the Vitamin D.

Essentially however, reading and embroidery, and even writing,  are night time things for when the day goes to bed and a kind of peace settles over my house. They are meditative things that wind one down to bed. Yes, even writing. My writing is meditation in black and white and strangely, my best words come in the dark hours.

Busy bee? Maybe. More displacement activity , I think…