Facing Friday – Self-Kindness

It has come to my attention that, over this past week, I have been being unkind to myself. On Monday, despite being omgreallygoodIwenttothegymFOURTIMES I stayed the same weight as the week before – a week I had used to consume everything I could get my grubby mitts on. On Tuesday I got up for yoga at 5:30am, ate for dinner a carrot and a packet of smoked salmon, and then went to a poetry night and drank lots of wine. On Wednesday I woke up hungover, didn’t do nearly as much writing as I wanted, drank way too much gin with a friend and ended up picking up a Papa John’s and a bag of chocolate buttons on the way home.

This is a spiral, people, and its root cause is SELF-MEANNESS. I am very unwilling to accept anything less than perfection from myself, sowhen the slightest thing goes “wrong” I decide everything is totally fucked and I go into this cycle of punishing myself for not being disciplined enough, and then “treating” myself with food/booze to “make me feel better” except it doesn’t make me feel better, it makes me feel worse, so maybe that is another, more subtle kind of punishment – like, I don’t deserve to feel good about myself, so I make sure I don’t.

But. I have caught it! Look at me, noticing when I am repeating bad patterns. So, I think over the next couple of days I’m going to cut myeslf a bit of a break. I cancelled daybreak yoga today. I had a cheese sandwich for lunch. I think these are both reasonable acts. And next week I will plan my meals properly, and focus on what I need rather than what I can’t have, and get enough sleep, and do all the things I know help me to write, and also tell you about my amazing self-care theory I have been batting about in my head for a while.

I read

I finished the weightloss blog book aka The Amazing Adventures Of Dietgirl. It’s good! An apealing, fun read, but I would probably only recommend it to you if I knew you were on your own “weight loss journey” – I don’t think it holds its own if you’re not.

I am also still gleefully riffling through the joyfully silly Little Beach Street Bakery. It is so charming! I notice there are a couple of sequels, which I think I will buy in advance and save for holidays/hard times.

I watched

House of Cards. Tell me NOTHING, I’m only on the first series. I don’t know why I’ve been resisting it all these years – Kevin Spacey breaks the fourth wall while slithering around the devious world of politics? Exactly my kind of thing.

Five Star Babies – Inside the Portland Hospital. I love fluffy documentaries about babies a LOT and Paul has been away this week for work so I have been able to indulge. It’s sad though. A lot of the Mum’s seem to choose to ship their babies upstairs to Pat, a redoubtable saint of a woman, to be cared for and only really brought down for feeds and photos. I have never had a child, but I feel like I’d want them with me.

I wrote

Despite this weeks self pity-party vis a vis writing, the novel is really coming along. I have written two scenes I’m really pleased with, and feel optimistic about the way the book is reshaping itself. It will not be finished in 2 weeks though but I am not going to be a prat about that because I am Being Kind To Myself (see above).

I performed at the always-entertaining Poetry On The Spot on Tuesday. The concept is, you get a prompt, then 20 minutes to write it, and then you perform it to the audience, gogogo. Fun, huh? I wrote something I actually liked as well, which is remarkable.

Vaguely related, I let a message from the inland revenue hang, unread, over my head for an entire 48 hours before summoning up the courage to open it and discovering… it was a promise to pay me £100. REMEMBER THIS INCIDENT, future Lucy!!

My body

Comprehensively discussed above.

My face