2021 Lockdown – Day 21

I’m feeling tired and I know an early night isn’t going to fix it. I need a regime with a schedule including exercise. I’m getting flabby and I need the discipline to stick to a low carb diet. I need to start reading A Tale of Two Cities, the book I’ve been meaning to read since Christmas 2019. I feel I’m at a tipping point where I either yank the wheel and take the diversion or get stuck in the traffic.

Dramatic changes very rarely happen instantly or even rapidly. When they do they either lose whatever is attached to them or become isolated while fellow travellers adjust. Most movements of any significance are slow burners up until visible change happens. Overnight success is almost never overnight and when it is, it tends to be more of a roman candle than a neon light. Success climbs on a saw tooth trajectory and is the exception rather than the rule. However even slow burners begin at a particular point with a definite resolve.

Is that where I’m at? Is this my point of resolution? Will I resolve to take the steep climb or amble down the winding path? Tomorrow always looks to be the day to enact changes, especially on the short days with long nights. Tomorrow’s canvas always looks more expansive because it’s easy to count the hours from 7 till 8 when, in the day, by 4 it feels like it’s time to draw the day down. Today is the time for opportunity but there are too many choices and by tomorrow they will have been made. There’s too much pressure to get it right.

We really should see yesterday as an archive to draw from, today as the day of beginnings and tomorrow as a day of opportunities. Today is the postbox, tonight the sorting office and tomorrow the letterbox. Opportunities posted in the morning always arrive a day late — the day after tomorrow, the day after the day they should have been opened. I could finish this piece in the morning but that will eat into the opportunities I promise myself for the day after. I have one other thing I can do now that I could easily put off but that’s me double accounting again. We fool ourselves so easily.

It’s little wonder we love our beds so much. Sleep is the most productive time we have. Our subconscious mind works far faster than our conscious mind and in sleep its unencumbered by the processing of stimuli that takes so much energy. It’s a truly private world that even we are not always privy to. We should protect it and not take for granted it’s rejuvenating powers. It’s both the garbage disposal for our disappointments and the clearing house for our hopes and resolutions. It’s not phased by the shit we throw at it so long as it can distinguish our hopes from our fears and that’s not always so straightforard a task.

So I’ll complete this and my other small task and resolve to begin tomorrow with a brisk walk. Strangely, as I anticipate finishing my day and taking to my bed, the tiredness has receded. Maybe I’m on to something.