Thanks pinn, really value you stopping by and commenting.
It's weird isn't it, suddenly understanding and knowing where that feeling of non connection comes from. I've found t's explained so much and it's also been kinda liberating, tbh. I don't know how it is for you?
I've had another peaceful day today. I'm staying at my Wonderful Man's house this week. He stays in a small village a coulee of hours drive away from me. I've been working on my own stuff quite hard this past week while he's been out at work (he leaves at 6.00am and comes back at 6.00pm), and feel good about it.
I've finally signed a contract for a big chunk of work in December, which helps keep me going through January and February, so I feel *very* relieved about that. I'm also in the middle of negotiating with a couple of my own clients for quite a lot of work from each of them. And I have a couple of business things for next year that I'm working on as well.
I need to do my accounts, and I've been getting the paperwork in order for that as well.
So, all in all, it's very good. Life is peaceful in a way that I didn't even know existed while I was M. There was always so much drama, and I never knew where, when or how it would unfold.
And life is also exciting in a way that I didn't even imagine either. It's not the excitement of the adrenaline-fuelled rush of the endless roller-coaster of drama. It's a very different kind of excitement, much calmer and more private, more focussed, maybe even constructive...I don't know. But yeah, things are very, very good at the moment...
Went out together and did some shopping for food (there are some pretty fantastic butchers and bakers in the very small place where WM lives). The pace of life here is very slow, everyone says hello to you the street when you pass them and everyone in a shop has time for a nice chat too.
Anyway, something I never did before was experiment with recipes and cooking. I started doing it just after we met. So last night we made a Moroccan type lamb dish together. It was really tasty, but I could sense there were other things I would maybe have added if I made it again. So there's something changing in my palate as well, and in the way I sense things and imagine things.
We also went out for a walk in the countryside nearby. It was a cloud-covered gloomy dusk when we set off, cold and windy, and gradually became darker until it was night and we were still walking. A really interesting experience. We've done this a couple of times before, once on my first winter, snowy mountain climb (about a year ago now). It was dark when we got back down, but still had a good few miles to walk thought countryside to back to get to the car.
I find that sometimes I am pushed to the limits of what I am capable of doing physically and mentally, but he's always there, right beside me, looking after me, which feels incredible. I never feel alone or left behind in any way. He's very good at going at my pace, whatever that is, and maybe pushing me slightly too.
He's one of these super fit people. He was asked by the SAS when he was in the army in his early 20s, if he could take part in some of their special training in the Arctic Circle. The SAS are the ones that do covert reconnaissance, counter-terrorism, direct action and hostage rescue. Most of their recruits come from the Commados. Anyway, they were dropped somewhere in the very north of Norway, in the Arctic Circle, to see if they could survive one night. They were given sleeping bags, but told that they were only to use them in an extreme emergency. I think they also had a lighter and some frozen fish...
I honestly never knew people with his level of physical fitness and capability for endurance existed. He isn't intimidated by any sort of physical challenge whatsoever - that's really exciting. AndI love the possibility of exploring that side of things but always knowing that I'm in super safe hands.
I don't think I ever let myself be vulnerable in my M. And I certainly would never have shown myself to be so. I think I would have absolutely hated it. But I'm really enjoying exploring this side of myself.
On the flip side of things, he's really exploring his creative side and been enjoying that enormously. He's never really done that, or had a chance of doing that so far, both through life circumstances (hard to find the time when you're bringing up two children) or through being with someone who actively encourages that. He's got a totally instinctive feel for a lot of things, and is really making me feel like I want to try some different things too. Both of us work with our hands, and I'm kind of thinking I might really like trying something like book binding together one time.
Anyway, that's my update for now. I hope everyone is having a good weekend.
Well, Monday morning and I need to head back to my home town this morning. I have lots of work to do this week there.
We've been together, pretty much 24/7, since a week past Friday...so 10 days in all. We've both had such a wonderful time, mostly just hanging out and doing everyday stuff together. Things are very, very relaxed and easy between us, very peaceful, gentle and loving. I never really knew that such gentleness existed in life...it's beautiful.
He's very interested in discovering some new things we can try out together, so I looked up two things we could do in the new year. December is one of my busiest work months. I only have Mondays off and Christmas day off in December. This year Christmas is a Tuesday, so we'll be working Christmas eve on Monday and have Tuesday off. Back to work on the 26 December. Anyway...
I found two things for us to try, one his suggestion and one mine (pottery and bookbinding). Lovely.
Aw man, two weird dreams in succession, in one night. They're so transparent, it's almost comical.
** First dream **
I was still M to my XH. He had done some sort of performance (music, I think), had left the performance space, and I was backstage helping to clear up what he'd left behind (bit like a roadie). There were some other people there helping as well, but they were a bit in the distance and everyone was doing their own bit of tidying.
State: slightly anxious.
I was helping clear/move some cardboard boxes that I thought contained some of his stuff. One box was was quite flat and very long - a bit like what you might be able to fit an electric guitar into.
The box was quite tattered. The lid came off, and I realised it was empty. Just some dust inside and a few bits of balled up gaffer tape.
I remember feeling confused, and then angry - why was I spending my time doing this?
** Second dream **
I was walking through the basement of a building. It was quite a large basement, a bit like you might see in a film, with big rooms and strip lights above. I somehow knew that it was an old, well built, substantial and solid building above me.
I was following someone else (no idea who, and I couldn't quite see them as they were a bit ahead of me).
State: quite calm, and just following the person in front.
I was looking from side to side as I was walking along, and realised there were boxes round about me. They did't have lids, so I could see what was inside them quite easily. And they weren't obstructing my path or anything, they were quite neatly organised, and I could walk very easily along where I was going. Just that when I looked inside one as I was passing, it seemed to be full of useless stuff. Not old, or dusty, or junk. Just useless, half used stuff. And I remember thinking 'why would anyone want to keep any of this?' and feeling confused. I didn't feel anxious or stressed - a little detached, if anything. And genuinely confused.
****
Now, I've dreamt about boxes before. About 23 years ago, after I'd fallen out with my dad and stopped talking to him (haven't talked him since), I remember dreaming I was in a house, in a room. It wasn't a basement, but higher up, maybe the first or second floor.
The room was quite old and a little dusty. The shutters were half closed/half open and you could see the dust hanging in the air from sunlight that was coming through. The room felt quite calm and still and wasn't cold. I knew the sunlight outside was warming the room to a normal temperature.
There was a very elaborately carved chest in very dark wood, right in the middle of the room. The carvings were all very, very dusty, with years and years and years of accumulated dust. It looked strange and like a foreign object, I somehow knew it wasn't my chest - that it didn't belong to me.
I knew I was curious and wanted to open it to look inside. I thought it would be very difficult to open because it was so old and had obviously not been moved or disturbed for many years. But when I tried it, it just seemed to open very easily, like the hinge on the lid was very well oiled, and it just fell open. That surprised me.
When I looked inside I realised that it was crammed full of junk and broken, unless stuff. And I was disappointed.
I've been feeling tired and struggling with my levels of motivation recently. I think I'm just tired from the whole year, and worrying about work after the start I had to the year, and the months it's taken for me to get my contract for December.
Anyway, it was starting to affect my sleep and my feelings. I'd slipped back into my sleeping 4 hours a night old insomnia pattern, felt too tired to go to the gym, and so on.
I made myself go to the gym las night. While I was there I plugged myself into a dance mix on YouTube and cycled hard for 45 minutes. My legs were all wobbly afterwards and I couldn't stand up for a few minutes when I first stepped off the cycle...lol! But man, did I sleep soundly last night and feel much better this morning.
How on earth did I get myself into such positive frame of mind in the period of time after BD and before I started exercising? It's so much easier with exercise.
My mum commented that I am physically and mentally much stronger than before. I'm still loving my journey.
I'm slowly starting to work on my tax return for this past year (deadline for submission: 31 January 2019). So, we'll see how my earnings compare to previous years. My gut feeling is that all the hassle I had at the start of the year has affected my income for the year. But my goal was also to try and earn more evenly throughout the year. So, earnings could be down on the previous year, but I could have actually achieved my goal. We'll see.
I also went back to BD in my email inbox and cleared away/filed some emails away. It was pretty painful, I have to admit. I couldn't read them. There weren't any from XH, just my mum. Maybe January when it's quiet, I'll go back to the previous year as well, and file/delete some of those emails as well. I can do a few at a time. They're small, quiet jobs, that keep things moving forwards in my life.
As some of you know I'm self employed. It's a bit of a plate spinning act.
I have a couple of zero hours jobs in an area of work that I love working in. I have a ton of experience in this and have also worked freelance in this field for nationally/internationally recognised companies. This is the same field that XH works in - though not the same job. I juggle them all so that I can work on my own creative work as well.
The zero hours jobs work for me on the premise that I have so much experience, I don't have to think too hard when I'm doing them - I'm really on autopilot. So that gives me a whole lot of energy to devote to my own creative work.
This past year, one of those zero hour jobs has gone into free fall (through their company circumstance, not through any fault of my own). I've lost a lot of my income and had to devote a lot of time an energy to looking for something to fill the gap it left. I didn't manage to find one single thing, but what I did find was more a patchwork of things in different/related areas to try and fill the gap. It's been very time consuming, tiring and a little bit stressful too. On the plus side, it's really expanded my CV.
Over the past couple of months it looked like this zero hours job might be getting back on track again. And I was delighted by that, as I really love it and was half considering waiting around for things to even out again with them so things could go back to the way they have been. Anyway, there have been more than a couple of mishaps on their side over the past couple of months - ones that have ended up costing me money. The most recent one being that half my work for this coming week with them was cancelled yesterday through their error. I don't get any compensation from them for this and it's too late for me to find anything else (my shifts were Monday and Tuesday).
In my past life I think I would have somehow just accepted this and waited for them to offer me more work. Or I might have replied with something short and curt that made it obvious that I was pretty angry.
Now, I just found another very similar position to apply for. It's the same type of zero hours job, but for a bigger company. I sent in my application yesterday.
I would have been really happy staying where I was, and they could have gotten someone who was really good at their job wit more experience than anyone else working there. Instead, time to move on and find somewhere that's going to suit me, and let me concentrate a little more on my own creative work. And I've not burnt any bridges in the process, like I might have done in the past.
I've decided to commit myself to another business event. It's another big one, in a nearby city - one that my work has always gone down very well in.
It's an expense, for sure, but I feel ready for it, in business terms and psychologically.
Before I'd made a decision about it, I was chatting it over with my Wonderful Man. Straight away he suggested helping me out afterwards, at the very end of the event. Because of the practicalities of it, it's a very kind thing for him to offer. I couldn't believe it, seriously. I almost started crying.
One of the things I remember from the last year of my M, was XH refusing outright to help me with something similar (just in my home town, so not that involved for him).
I had hurt my back very seriously about six weeks previously (split a disk in my spine). I had been on major prescription painkillers. Doctor had told me it would be 3 months before I would start to feel a bit better, and six months before the pain would be totally gone. I was under strict instructions to stay off work for at least three months and not lift anything heavier than a handbag.
So, there I was, six weeks into my injury (still in a lot of pain and unable to sleep for more than a few hours a night) and risking losing the money I had paid out for my business for taking part in this event, and risking losing any potential sales I might have had from it. XH refused to help me get there. He told me he was going out drinking the night before.
And just didn't turn up afterwards to pick me up. So I was stood outside, in the cold and dark, unable to get hold of him on his mobile - it was going straight to voicemail. By that point I was in tears through pain, the January winter cold and through total exhaustion. I waited an hour and a half for him before he finally turned up.
So that my partner would not just support me in this step up for my business, but also offer to help me out...it's just lovely.
