After a busy christmas season with family, NYE rolled around. I was so fortunate to spend it with some of my auldest acquaintance, a couple of glasses of wine, lots of cheese and even more conversation.
When i went to bed (dog tired at 11pm) i realised the occasional dry cough that had been showing up in the previous days had shifted into something more sinister. Waking the next morning i knew I was not actually healthy any more, but recklessly rejoined my friends for a gentle and joyful new year’s morning swim, nibble and wild flower wander.
By the time i returned home in the early afternoon i was totally ready for bed and wiped all my plans of returning to the gym at first opportunity, as well as upcoming Reconciliation volunteer work in Brisbane. Urgh.
The next two days were pretty grim, in a mostly feel like i can’t eat, walk or breathe easily.
I did a lot of miserable sleeping.
What pulled me through it was the boring basics.
Work number one.
I washed up (would you believe?)
I had a long shower and washed my hair when i felt terrible.
I made plain porridge to eat when that was all i could face
I made tea and talked to my phone.
On the third day, I did a couple of loads of laundry.
These boring basics which i extolled last week are neither glorious nor glamorous but they are profoundly grounding. Very real and human.
They reassured me that i do what i can, and if today eating and showering is all i can do, it’s enough.
A lot can happen in a week. It’s a long time in politics as they say – and as the Venezuelan operation has demonstrated. WTF.
As the days passed, the crisis of illness is behind me, there are a few indicators that i’m on the mend still. Convalescent, to conjure a Victorian lady’s image:
The Convalescent,
a 19th-century coloured line engraving by C. Cousen after Myles Birket Foster
“In convalescence, then, the whole world is made strange. In this state even the most ordinary individual relates to life like a Romantic poet.”
Matthew Beaumont – Fevers of Curiosity
It is in this mood then that I am now beginning 2026 in earnest.
Which means I am finally taking the holiday break I didn’t even know I needed.
Before this illness happened, I was mentally all prepared to start back in all my training, to get right back on that treadmilll as soon as the doors opened again.
And I have to say, there was definitely a certain hubris in that plan.
Now i’m fallen, and it’s so much better on the ground.
I am taking slow beach walks and swims. I watched a terrible favourite movie (Peter Jackson’s Bad Taste).
And that’s just two days feeling extraordinarily luxurious.
I have this idea that i am good at resting and going slow and that I do it a lot.
This whole process has showed me that I need my own medicine and advice as much as anybody else.
The space has also enabled me to approach again my worst nightmare – decluttering.
I’ve already cleared out two cupboards.
That’s one each day. Hopefully I can keep that going for another couple of weeks at least until life starts up again. And remember the feeling of knowing I have space, even where it’s not visible, perhaps especially where it’s not visible. (ie inside a cupboard – or inside my head – then somehow that is really personal space, just for me, not for show.
Though here i am bragging.
Today in my daily tea time ramble, I named the new year energy I’m feeling at the moment, and that many of us may be caught up in in our own ways, “limerance” – that delightful, intoxicating feeling at the beginning of a new love affair, when anything wonderful seems possible.
If that’s not Romantic poet territory, what is?
The astrologers are telling us this is a shift year coming. The planets are moving. It’s a one year.
I try not to take any forecasts too seriously. I want the future to be undetermined until I get there.
And i agree with the energy.
And I’m loving it, more than usual.
Just now, it all looks rosy.
Enjoying that, while it lasts, sticking with my gentle habits to carry the feeling of space and hope and joy forward.
I would not wish illness on anybody – and when it inevitably shows up, i wish that you might remember the gentleness and space it is inviting in.
As usual, reminder that you don’t have to wait until you can’t do anything else to take a break – although clearly this is advice I personally find very hard to take.
Turns out
Breathing space
to clear your head and heart
is what I have to offer.
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