DouceLifeAt50.com

I had been feeling untethered for a few weeks.  As I roamed the yard and the house I wondered about what would come next in this time of uncertainty.  There were very few things I was sure of anymore, I was starting to feel cranky.   At the same time I felt grateful that I was aware of my crankiness.  I needed to figure out a way to go back to calm and hope.  If I could not raise my mood, I knew it would lead me down the rabbit hole of more crankiness and cause unkindness especially towards myself.  This was not the time to berate myself nor the time to allow the weight of fear and worries about the future to chip away at the calm and peace I had cultivated.  I had no worries towards my daughters as they had been able to come home from abroad.  I started to wonder how I could find the reset button to go forward and so that I could be on better footing instead of being lost in a place where I could not string words together.  My creativity was waning.  I questioned myself on what I could do to improve how I felt at the end of each day.  Instead of feeling little satisfaction about my day I wanted to feel appreciation for it.  

It is not easy to keep a positive outlook on life when it seems that each glimmer of hope presented to us is quickly replaced by dire news.  It felt like a rug was constantly being pulled from under me and that the ground I was standing on was slowly eroding.  I was spending more time distracting myself from worries of the future than keeping up with the things I loved to do.  How could I get off this merry go round that did not bring me much joy and get on one that did?  The answer came as I listened to a podcast about the benefits of getting up early and following a morning routine.  The curtain that had been blocking my sight was yanked open, allowing light to show me where to go.  I could feel the ground settling under me, I knew what to do.  Since my daughters had been back and we had all been confined, my daily morning routine had changed drastically, in fact I had dropped it all together.  Like a cold shower, that knowledge perked me up, I had found a remedy to my malaise (oh how I love to be able to use that kind of French word).  I had stopped setting an alarm in the morning, counting on the sun to wake me up.  I assumed that my body would respond to the daylight as in the past it had worked as my body had gotten used to getting up early.  But that was not the case, I lingered in bed instead.  It seemed that the sun didn’t rise until 7:30 am in the spring, in fact much later if it had not been for the cat habit to jump on the bed poking its face into mine until I got up to place her wet food in her bowl, or if I didn’t have to let the dog out after giving him a fresh bowl of water.  Both animals love having my daughters home but they don’t consider them responsible for taking care of their basic needs as they are usually only home on breaks and short visits.  Our two pets have their own morning routines down to a science.  Since I was getting up later I didn’t have the extra me time to write daily in my journal without any interruptions so I had stopped doing it.  I had let things slide.  It was time to clean the slate and start over.  As I laid in bed my alarm set for 5 am the next morning I told myself it should not be difficult to wake up as I had done this  before.  As the alarm went off I rolled myself out of bed fairly easily.  I exercised for 20 minutes, wrote in my journal as I drank my tea, then read several chapters of my book.  As 6:30 am came around I made coffee and reflected on time well spent then I went outside with the dog.  By 7:30 am I was feeling proud of myself and ready to tackle some chores.  The next day 5:40 had come and gone by the time I was able to get out of my comfortable bed..  Once up I went straight to writing in my journal, then reading while drinking coffee, then out with the dog.   As I went about the day I realised that there was a good reason why I should exercise first thing in the morning, it was not going to happen later.   Several days later I was able to convince my brain that this was good for both of us.  As I went to bed I told my brain that I was getting up when the alarm went off no matter how much time was available to me during the day.   The alarm woke me up from a dream, I felt foggy but managed to get up after a couple of minutes, I exercised.  As I stretched and swung my arms, I felt my mood lift and looked forward to my large mug of tea and journaling.  It had been a month since I had felt like putting my thoughts and feelings down on paper.  They had been trapped in my brain, once on paper I could let them go and move on.   After just a few days of getting up at 5 am and following my morning routine I felt stronger, more positive and happier with myself.   I am creating a new habit which makes me feel like I am on a better footing to go through the day.  I am more inclined to work on editing my photos, learning new things and doing chores than wasting my time with distractions that plug my creativity.

Once again, I stand more firmly on my two feet.  I feel relieved that my optimism and hope are back otherwise life would be much harder and my outlook on life much bleeker.   The feeling of the rug being pulled from under me has gone.  If I allow the fear and worry to rear their ugly heads, like a cartoon, a new rug is drawn back under my feet in beautiful colors, it gets  thicker each time.  I cannot see the future, the script is not written, the screen is blank.  The only thing that feels real is the present moment.  As I still my mind, I feel strong enough to keep the news and the fear for the future from eroding the ground around me and from stealing parts of the growth I have done.  I breathe and let go of what I have no control over.  I fall back onto the thicker carpet which to me represents resilience.   I feel grateful for the hope and the resilience that hold me up.  They are potent medicines to keep fear and worry from overtaking my thoughts.