It’s been a while. I’ve had plenty of blog ideas and even scrawled a few of them down on random scraps of paper, but have had some difficulty converting them to coherence, because the other areas of my life have been clamouring for priority.
It’s been a fruitful time. 3 subjects of study completed, with varying degrees of excruciation and reward. OK, possibly a little more of the former than the latter – there were a few moments when I had to dig deep - but P’s still make degrees and so does the occasional credit. I delivered a work project successfully, and publicly so. I got out and about socially to a few poet-y events. I ticked a few things off a very long standing “to do“ list.
On a more personal level, there are other signs of progress. The addition of regular high-potency fish oil capsules to my life seems to have reduced my dependency on caffeine for concentration. Or maybe it’s the extra sleep that I’ve been careful to claim. I got through a week of walking around town and concentrating through study visits without a fatigue crash. The day or so of active resting afterwards was a great excuse to power through a couple of novels. Not bad when I consider how tired I was walking and how slow I was reading only a year ago. My clarity and fitness is nowhere near complete, but it does feel like it’s returning in an incremental whisper.
And that’s just it. The secret to success is feeling successful. I’m sure during these weeks there have been many not-as-good-as-I-used-to-be moments. In my darkest hour, I stared at the blank page and inch-thick pile of articles that I needed to decode and my confidence very nearly deserted me. But I chose instead to focus on the memory and sensation of times when I have done what I wanted to, and well. I chose to actively pursue the state of mind that success creates, because it creates the interior state that drives further success. There’s a certain magic to it.
It works. Possibly not with the same ease as in the past, but it is so much sweeter now because of the adversity which I’ve overcome along the way.
