Category: anxiety

Everyday cake

Posted in anxiety, cooking/baking, favourite quotes, health, life, reading, solace, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ...Tagged , , 7 Comments

Other people’s words about … cake

The other day, in a dark moment, I was trying to compile a list of things that make me feel better when I’m feeling bad.
(I write these lists often. You can draw your own conclusions about what this says about me!)
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One of the things that’s always on my list of consolations is: CAKE.
Cake never fails, right?
Lovely blogger Stacy Ladenburger talks about this over on her blog Delightful Crumb.
Her solution is something she calls ‘Everyday Cake’ —
a cake to eat and bake through all life’s trials and tribulations.

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Everyday cake.
Even the idea consoles me …

Note:
I have never posted a recipe on my blog, and don’t intend to. One reason is my self-imposed word limit. It’s hard to publish a recipe in a post that’s 101 words or less.
But if you would like a recipe for everyday cake, I’d try Stacy’s recipes here and here.
And whatever recipe you try, I hope that baking and eating the end-result will console you as I have found it consoles me…

Kinship

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Other people’s words about … headaches

One of the things I love about reading is the sense of kinship
you can find in another person’s words.
Sometimes, the smallest phrases from a book sing true.

Since he left, a headache had followed Laura, the kind like a bird that settles and soars.

from ‘Questions of Travel’
by Michelle de Kretser

(p. 177)

Sometimes I, like Laura, get headaches that come over me, varying in intensity —
for a few hours, or days, or weeks.
Medication doesn’t help:
and I’ve learned just to sit the headache out.

… she could feel a headache coming on, the close-fitting, all-over kind like a swimming cap made of lead.

(p. 498)

So I find solace and companionship in these words of Michelle de Kretser.
I may never meet her.
But I know how her world is coloured,
and I know that she is kin.

Self-transcendence

Posted in anxiety, favourite quotes, nature, on writing, reading, Running, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged , , 2 Comments

If you are ever in need of an answer or feel a little lost in this great big world, go out there and hit the trails. Leave the Garmin at home and just get out there and be. Connect with nature. Listen to the whispers of breeze in the trees or the ramblings of the nearby stream. Eventually, you will find what you are looking for and perhaps, in time, you will find yourself as well.

 

The words I’ve quoted above come from the blog So what? I run.
(Read the whole post here.)
For me, they apply whether I’m walking or running.

Through the gate …

Because of my knee injury, it’s all about walking for me right now.
And I’m okay with that.

Past the vineyards …

It’s all about the connection with the world around me:
it’s vital.
It’s healing.

Past the reeds swaying in the wind …

And in the spirit of the quote above,
I’m posting today some photos from one of my favourite walks.

Past the hanging tyre …

You don’t need phones or apps or pedometers or fitbits.
You just need time to look,
to listen,
to breathe.

My hourglass

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Slowly, it started to feel as if I had clawed my way back to something resembling a life. It was such a relief to know that I hadn’t finished changing — I wasn’t an hourglass that had timed out, all the grains fallen through. I wasn’t stuck, too soon the best I could ever be.

from ‘Inbetween Days’
by Vikki Wakefield*

Have you ever wondered if you’ve already achieved the best you can?
Have you ever thought that it’s all downhill from here?
If so, perhaps — like me — you will find these words comforting.
I like to think of the grains in my hourglass still trickling through slowly …
… not quite timing out.

*Note:
Vikki is a good friend of mine and fellow writer. Check out her website for more information.

Happy/sad

Posted in a thought, anxiety, books, favourite quotes, life, reading, solace, staying humble, staying trueTagged 4 Comments

So, this is my life. And I want you to know that I am both happy and sad and I’m still trying to figure out how that could be.

From ‘The Perks of Being a Wallflower‘
By Stephen Chbosky

Have you read The Perks of Being a Wallflower?
I came to it a few years ago — later than most people, long after the film was released. I think I thought (cynically) that it was a kind of super-cool rewrite of The Catcher in the Rye. And I don’t like super-cool books.
But it isn’t.
I like Charlie’s voice. The narrative is simple and poignant, and gets at the heart of the loneliness of being an adolescent.
Happy/sad.
That’s not just adolescence, though, is it?

PS Happy birthday to my mother for today! ❤

Coming up roses

Posted in anxiety, gratitude, moments of beauty, solace, spring, staying humble, staying true, What I love about ...Tagged , , 1 Comment

Since my last post on roses,
I’ve started glimpsing them wherever I go.

Outside the entrance to my office, there’s a bed of low-lying roses.
They catch my eye as I walk through the automatic glass doors on my way in to work.
So I sneak down to soak up their beauty again in my morning tea-break.

After rain, the petals and leaves hang heavy, glistening.
And it feels to me like a moment of stolen beauty.

Coming alive for the first time to the beauty of something
that has always been around you
is one of life’s greatest joys.

On running

Posted in a thought, anxiety, favourite quotes, health, life, rituals, solace, staying humble, staying true, the beach, What I love about ...Tagged , 3 Comments

Finally, after a summer of heartache followed by almost crippling depression, came the walking phase. After a hectic routine of lying under my coffee table weeping, I had reached a point where I had to get outside and see daylight. I wanted to feel the breath of warm air on my skin; I yearned to feel the blood circulate around my body again … Half-deranged by weeks of erratic sleeping — nights spent enervated and panicky followed by sluggish, heavy-limbed days — I decided in desperation that physically exhausting myself might make the nights seem a little more welcoming. I longed to yearn to lie down at the end of the day, legs aching from use rather than the anxious jiggling they did under my desk for hours on end.

from ‘Running like a girl‘
by Alexandra Heminsley

When I was twenty-five, I took up running to cure my own case of heartbreak. I lived by the beach (a different one then), and so I picked out my four-kilometre course, from one jetty to the next and back; and then I ran.
And the heartbreak lifted. Running brought me the simplest joy I’ve ever known, in fact — until I developed runner’s knee.
Twenty years later, I’ve started running again.
The joy’s still there …
… but so is the runner’s knee.
I won’t give up hope, though: running is the best salve I know.
Cross your fingers for me?

When all is said and done

Posted in a thought, anxiety, favourite quotes, solace, staying humble, staying true, Uncategorized, What I love about ...Tagged , , Leave a comment

Other people’s words about … staying still

Do you ever have the urge to just move?
Metaphorically, I mean — not physically. That feeling inside — that longing not to feel stuck anymore.
I do. (Midlife crisis, anybody?!)
I don’t think there are any answers to this longing. I think the more we try to move — to push on, to change — the more we forget the grace there is in surrender.
In simply staying still.
Maybe you’re not an ABBA-tragic like me (I know! I know!). But today I give you a song that helps me with this.
Have a listen.
See what you think.

Listen to the song: ‘When all is said and done’, by ABBA*

* Note:
Click on the orange ‘play’ button at the top of the page in this link to listen to the song. It’s one of my favourites. The song is about the end of a relationship … but I think it works equally well if you think of it as talking about the end of a phase in your life. (Bear with me here. I know ABBA aren’t known for the literary nature of their lyrics! I did warn you I was an ABBA-tragic … )

Me and Mrs Jones: Telling it like it is

Posted in a thought, anxiety, favourite quotes, health, solace, staying humble, staying true, UncategorizedTagged , 1 Comment

Other people’s words about … social media

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t do Facebook or Instagram .
(Or Pinterest … Or Snapchat.) And I never, ever take selfies.
Blogging is as far as I go.
One of the reasons is this:
It’s a bright, shiny world out there on social media.
Everything is beautiful in Insta-World.
But that’s not real life.
Life is a series of moments — some of them beautiful, some of them not —
and social media doesn’t capture that.
Here’s what lovely blogger Sheena has to say on the subject:

Social media is great, right? It’s the perfect way for me to stay connected to friends, see the world from different points of view, I can use it to work from home, and let’s all agree….it’s fun! It’s also the WORST….we all paint this picture of the perfect little world we live in–only showing our best of the best moments….it’s not at ALL a real representation of life. And I think sometimes it’s too easy to get caught up in that, don’t you think?

You’ve heard the term “Keeping up with the Joneses”, right? Did you know the phrase dates back to the early 1900s? I mean really, what was it that Jones Family was doing that was worth keeping up with–growing better potatoes? Riding a faster horse? Now, with social media, we know every little detail of the Joneses life. Where they are going and who they are with and how they got there! What they are eating and when they are eating it! What their perfect house looks like, what their perfect kids look like, and what their perfect face looks like, because now the Joneses share lots of pictures of their outstretched arms and close-up faces. They definitely didn’t have to worry about selfies back in 1913.

Those Joneses are BUSY, and they are everywhere. Doing everything. And rubbing it in your face.

Behind the square (1 October 2015)
from the little red house

My take?
Life isn’t picture-perfect.
And that’s —
just —
fine.