Relaxing

I've been enjoying a supremely lazy weekend.  I tend to find these quite hard, because I'm so used to running round all the time, and feeling like I'm not living my life unless it's filled to the gunnels with stuff to do, that it takes a really conscious effort to sit back and say "I'm doing nothing and that's fine.  In fact, it's good for me".

I've been making more of an effort to do these recently, as you may have noticed.  It's not because I don't have things I could be doing, and people I could be seeing, but because I came to the conclusion that being on the move all the time wasn't necessarily the healthiest choice for me.  I never got enough sleep.  I never just stopped and relaxed.  I forgot how to - how to spend time with myself, just chilling out.  The constant social whirl also leads to spending too much money, drinking too much and eating too much.  Not good.

A lot of the need to keep myself occupied comes from the need to distract myself, I think.  It's like another form of emotional eating - something I do to mask whatever I don't want to be feeling.  So what am I so scared of?  Loneliness?  Feelings of inadequacy?  Feeling less of a person because I'm not doing something "cool" with friends.  I need to learn to recognise the difference between choosing to time out for a while, and it happening because I have no-one else around.  This is me choosing it, and it's ok to take time for me - watch a bit of tv, tidy the flat (it needs it).  And finding free stuff to do locally - exploring where I live.

My ankle's looking a little better today - it doesn't look or feel quite as tight and swollen as yesterday.  There's so shape re-emerging in it, rather than the skin looking like it's stretched so tight it might burst.  I still don't want to run on it, or even walk too much though.  I do however quite fancy leaving the flat today, so I'm wondering whether a gentle bike ride won't aggravate it too much.  I thought maybe I could just pootle along exploring one of the National Cycle Network routes that radiate out from Bristol.  Just a couple of hours - maybe bike out for an hour or so, see how far I get, then head back.

I enjoyed a very tasty takeaway last night, which used up the last of my weekly flex points.  It felt thoroughly decadent to be eating Chinese and not feeling guilty about it - I probably ate far more than I needed but it was all accounted for on my tracker, so it's looking all set to be another pretty good week on plan.

I'm going to finish the last couple of chapters of my book now, then re-assess the weather and biking possibilities. 

Enjoy yoour Sundays!