No photograph today. I am very tired. A lovely weekend filled with driving on the coast and in the country, taking photographs, a vintage fair filled with all sorts of delights, a wonderful dinner with good friends, and I am exhausted. It seems there is always this pay off for having a good time. What am I to do, when the alternative is to stay at home and rest all the time? I rarely leave the house on weekdays as it is. I long for the weekends, when the Prof is home and we have the car and usually go out somewhere. I just hate that it often takes me half the week or more to recover.
I am in good spirits, I am not depressed, which is remarkable really as being able to do as little as I seem to be able to IS damn depressing. I try to take pleasure in little things - my coffee with cream in the mornings, reading, the flowers in the garden (the ones that survive with no care whatsoever as I haven't been able to do anything out there this year at all), time with friends - though each visit or outing has its payback. The truth is, weekdays are boring. It's not that I don't go out to work - hell, I don't need a job to amuse myself. There are courses I could take (creative writing, photography, yoga, a degree?) places to go (museums, art galleries, parks, cafes to write), things to do at home (organising, decluttering, decorating, baking, gardening, writing) - but the truth is I can only manage to do a tiny bit of what I would like to. Some days I can do very little at all - those days are the worst, when holding my arms up long enough to brush my hair is difficult, and taking a shower and making a cup of tea and some toast is the most I manage all day. So mostly, weekdays find me at home and doing very little. Yet sometimes I get away with it. I spend a couple of hours walking around the shops, or go out somewhere with a friend, and the next day I feel fine! A miracle that has me smiling all day. Too often, though, the next day I wake up feeling dreadful and realise the payback was just deferred.
I am realising there are activities I find restful (reading, country drives in the car) and others which sap me. Writing and thinking both tire me, so I am left in a quandary. I enjoy writing, but it and the associated thinking and planning wear me out. On a bad day, brain fog and inability to concentrate mean it can take me hours to write a blog post. This isn't the post I started out to write today, but this is how I feel. I am so very tired. I feel like I need a long, long rest. The trouble is I almost always feel like that.
