10-day Challenge: Day #1

Because I find myself sinking into a funk; because I look at how infrequently I've been blogging this year; because I need a focus; because the world is full of depressing crap...

I'm going to try an experiment.

A few years ago, I undertook a Facebook challenge of posting something positive every day for 100 days. Prior to that, as I emerged from post-natal depression, I had my Happy Book, and I wrote in it every evening before bed, but only allowed myself to write about the good things from the day. I made myself acknowledge, and remember, and enjoy the good moments with my BabyBear, rather than think only of the tears, or the frustrations, or the fatigue.

I'm sure that every self-respecting therapist will be totally unsurprised to discover that both these processes genuinely helped me feel more positive. If you dwell on the negative it feeds into a negative spiral; but if you focus on the positive, you can improve your own state of mind. 

Given my current apathy and propensity for a negative outlook, I don't feel quite up to committing to writing something positive every day for a hundred days. That in itself is quite telling, and possibly a sign that it's time I found a way to focus on the positives. But I really can't face setting myself another goal that I'm going to fail at. At the moment, writing ten, short, positive posts in ten days seems like a big enough challenge.  

So, I shall start with today.

Today I took a morning off work, and I had my hair cut, in a well-organised, well-ventilated, covid-secure salon, by my lovely hairdresser with whom I can have an intelligent, well-informed chat about politics, society, covid, children and all manner of other topics. 

It was only the second "non-essential" commercial outing I've been on (I'm counting having to buy a car when mine died mid-lockdown, and having to replace LittleBear's too-small, disintegrating shoes as "essential", along with the more normal grocery shopping expeditions). It was odd to be out doing something so normal, and yet at the same time so un-normal, with the masks, and sanitiser stations, and scant handful of people in a huge room, and locked door but open windows. It was refreshing to talk to someone from outside my usual social and professional circle, and to find my views, my fears and my hopes are not strange outliers. And she's a fantastic hairdresser.

So now I feel uplifted about humanity and considerably less bedraggled.