What is today, like the 97th of January? It’s been a long month right? I mean, January is usually my least favourite month of the year anyway, but add to that the whole country being in lockdown, it’s been a particularly boring one this year. I struggled a lot late last when the weather got dark and cold. Come the new year, although the news about vaccines is incredible and much needed good news, I wasn’t naïve enough to think that life would go back to normal instantly and we’d all suddenly be able to lick each other (again!). And low and behold come the 1st week of January and straight back into lockdown we went
I was determined in 2021 and more months of winter, not to get as down as I did in October. So I started making a note of little wellness activities to do when I felt myself feeling a little blue.
Routine, routine, routine
As someone extremely prone to high bouts of anxiety and depression, I am an utterly hopeless human being when I’m not in a steady routine, some would even argue I become lawless. Yes, routine can also equal monotony but without it I literally do nothing, and then end up being sad at the end of the day for having completely and utterly wasted it. Nice as Christmas was, I was in a routine of doing nothing, which meant when it came to all the lovely festive walks I promised myself I would do, I couldn’t be bothered to do them. So I sat around eating Lindor all day instead, which, nice as it is, didn’t make me feel great. Hard as it was getting back into the swing of things work wise, it has helped me refocus much more, gives me a reason to get up in the morning and has forced me into a healthier routine again. So, regular bedtimes, regular alarms, regular fruit and veg and regular exercise.
Fresh air
For year and years I equated exercise with heavy cardio sessions in the gym or a long run. The older I get though, and the worse my hips are, the more I get value from a long walk or bike ride. In fact it doesn’t even need to be long, half an hour of fresh air with my favourite 80s spotify playlist blasting does me the world of good. Especially working from home, and since the temperature hasn’t reached above 1 degree for the whole of January, that flushed face feeling you get from having the central heating on all day does you no favours. Plus you appreciate the indoors more after you’ve spent half an hour out doors in the baltic north east, believe me.
Cleaning
Don’t worry, that sound you just heard was my mum and husband simultaneously fainting at the shock of me writing this. When I’m feeling particularly hungover lethargic and not really feeling the exercise, cleaning the bathroom or my home office really makes me feel better. It’s also known that having a tidy bedroom helps you sleep better because you’re not sleeping in a chaotic environment (or maybe that’s just something I reckon, but it definitely works for me). Plus I’m a little bit obsessed with Aldi’s Fabulosa which makes the bathroom smell incredible!
Comfort TV
Between Christmas and New Year I pretty much power watched every episode of Dawson’s Creek, which of course I loved as a teenager and I really loved indulging in some comfort TV. I’m one of those people who doesn’t have the patience to stick with TV shows. If I’m not invested by the end of the first episode then I’m not carrying on with it. Dawson’s Creek, One Tree Hill and now, Schitts Creek are all wonderfully binge worthy and real easy watch comfort shows. My current project is watching all series of MTV’s the Real World and The Challenge concurrently and in chronological order. It’s absolutely made my rainy lockdown Sunday afternoons recently.
Talking
It took me a long time to learn to talk to people when I’m feeling blue and it’s certainly something I try and work on because I tend to assume I’m bothering people when I text them in need of cheering up. But at the end of the day, your friends are your friends, and they’re in lockdown too, so every now and again when I’m feeling in a bit of a funk, i’ll text a friend saying just that ‘I’m feeling in a bit of a funk and need a bit of cheering up’. The result can sometime be either a really long, deep text chat, or sometimes just a video of a cat scratching it’s bum on a carpet. But either way, it always cheers me right up As as for thinking that you’re bothering people, would you feel that if one of your friends texted you that they needed cheering up? Probably not.
