Ahead

Yet another day off work today. I knew that having worked nights it might be wise to be kind to myself and make sure I have as near to a weekend as possible. I didn’t find the night shifts anywhere near as difficult as I thought I would. I actually was on quite good form the whole time. I just decided that I’d eat at normal times, so I had dinner about 8 or 9pm and then didn’t eat again while I was working because I wouldn’t normally eat at 3am etc. I drank lots of water and had an occasional hit of caffeine and avoided chocolate because it gives me a high and then a real low energy-wise. This all seemed to get me through the shifts without too much pain. I actually finished earlier than expected yesterday morning so was in bed just before 4am. I had to get up at a reasonable time though so that I got to eat breakfast at the hotel. I can’t miss out on free food.

I was actually working near to where my sister lives and so went round to see her on the way home and there was actually a small party for my nephew as it is his birthday this week. My nephew was as cute as ever so it was nice that I got to see him. Then I trekked home and didn’t do a lot for the rest of the evening.

Last night whilst watching TV, prompted by some passing moment in a programme, I suddenly thought that one of the things that I miss is knowing that there is someone who it matters to whether I love them or not. I have no idea if that even makes sense to anyone else and there is actually an awful lot in that in that statement if you start to unpick it, but it was just one of those moments where it suddenly struck me that I’d understood something that is really important to me.

Recently I said that one of my problems in the whole relationships stuff is that I just don’t tend to fancy people, which is in part my way of avoiding disappointment. Anyway, after years of living my life by this philosophy I am trying to retrain my brain to think about what I can ‘appreciate’ about someone. Over the weekend I ended up working with various people who I didn’t really know and so I took that as an opportunity to test this out. So sometimes when I was chatting with someone, in my mind I would be thinking about what I could like about them. That sounds *really* shallow and I don’t mean it like that. It’s more that my normal mindset is not to bother to think about things like that because instead I think “well, they’d never feel the same way anyway” and so I give up at the first hurdle. So instead I would be looking for attractive qualities in people I was talking to and trying to appreciate those things. I think part of what I need to do is remind myself that the world is full of possibilities and sometimes you have to have an open mind in order to see them*.



*Whilst that can be good it is also helpful to remember ‘balance’ because at times there is a thin line between ‘available’ and coming across as desperate.