Anyone else really looking forward to Monday? Start of a new week where the main focus isn't 1000+ calories, and a static relationship to movement within 4 walls. Movement is my friend and I am sure I am not alone. Over the festive week reminders have had to be made to keep a talking relationship with my mental health. I can see it would be really easy to fall off the wagon and resort to type, arriving at the factory reset having learnt nothing useful and ending up in a catatonic state, all so familiar of the last 6 months or so. Reminders brink on the edge of keeping to a routine... ... which is my nemesis, avoided at all costs. At least, it used to be, these days we are associates, one day soon, possibly even friends. And this is yet another thing I have learnt from my son. Without routine his life becomes one big wobble of unstable emotions, meal times, bed times and wake ups. At 17 months old I continue to learn so much about myself through him. The positive effects of routine upon mental wellbeing is one of them. Exercise has been a vague routine that sticking to, over the years, has proved beneficial for me. The rush of sunny hormones, feeling the blood pumping around my organs, fresh air infusing my lungs whilst chucking out all the stagnant Carbon Dioxide, it's a great 30 minutes every other day for me.
I ran on Boxing day, and I'll run today (Sunday). Unable to run every day (it's always resulted in injury and illness compared to every other day which suits my entire system far better for achieving overall health) this should work out that I end up running on new year's eve which fills me with joy. What better way to reflect over the last year and ponder the unknown of next year than with some happy hormone inducing, outdoor exercise, not to mention all of this to a cracking sound track. A microcosm of self care. A new year gift to myself. "Impossible", I would have said as we browed January of 2019, time to myself, "selfish" acts of self-care were unimaginable. But as we crest the new decade self-care has taken over, like a virus and I'm ready for more! My phone's keyboard has rarely learnt a new term with such vigour as it has "self-care": it's the phrase to watch (before possibly vanishing into a black hole of being pretty up itself too). Self care will drive me into the New year but I think it is important we remember others and not to get completely lost in our own worlds. No one is an island, right?