Middle-aged dread

Life is funny isn’t it? I seem to need to catch Covid-19 (fast becoming Covid 2022) or be in a lock down situation (because other people have it) to get a moment to stop & think. Long gone is my original plan to document a whole year in my life on here from New year to New Years Eve.

Work is bonkers with everyone having staycations rather than run the risk of getting stuck in another country with the horror stories of quarantine hotels or days & nights in airports, hospitality is busier than ever. Thank goodness for the industry & us personally. My husband & I are grateful for the work but kids, their various activities (Mum’s taxi) work & my Herbalife stuff ( business & health challenges underway at the moment) we get caught up in the day to day.

It’s so important to follow your bliss, even if you just stop & find joy in the moment. I’ve found an app called healthy minds, it’s great because you can learn meditation without the need to be still. Game changer for me, not just because I’m busy but because I find stillness difficult (ADHD).

I’ve also rediscovered audio books. Reading, whether it’s personal development, fiction, fantasy ot anything in between is a source of joy for me, being able to be read to while driving, cleaning or running is epic & multitasking at it’s best 👌

What do you do to find joy in the moment? Do you even bother to find the time? Have a great day A x

#positivelife #middleagedread #agewisely #followyourjoy

Well on Wed’s 20th (Oct) my older son (nearly 12) tested positive for Covid 19 on a lateral flow test before school.

The children routinely test (if consent is given by the parents) on a Weds & Sunday to try to stem the rising tide of infection in their age group. Fabulous idea you would think IF current legislation didn’t also state that asymptomatic double vaccinated people or under 18s didn’t need to isolate and are simply required to PCR test at day 2 & 8 from their close contact’s positive.

Fast forward to Fri his positive PCR is back confirming the positive lat flow & our tests arrive. My husband had only had 1 vaccination so had to isolate along with my son & because of said fundamentally flawed legislation I also kept my other 3 under 18s off school, 2 because they are nearly 7 & 9 and a 17 Yr old with only a single vaccination.

I was still able to shop, work & live as I pleased if I wanted to because I’m double vaccinated. I should point out when I work I’m alone and fortunately because I live in Wales UK not England, face masks are still mandatory in shops. I am still vigilant about hand sanitizer on the way in to shops and cleaning the handle of my shopping trolly or basket & fuel pumps etc probably more so because I knew it was in the house but yesterday the results of our PCR tests came back. Myself, my 17 yr old & my 7 year old tested positive. My husband and our other son (9) are negative so far. Today we have started to have symptoms!!

Let that sink in, I could have been wandering about contaminating people. My lateral flow tests were negative on the Wed’s, Fri & Sun!!! My children could have been to school. I chose to keep them off.

Absolute insanity 😳

Also I’m stuck in until 4th November, my daughter is 7 on Halloween, she’s stuck in too. I feel so sorry for her, it’s her birthday & Halloween is our favourite holiday.

I’m a runner fortunately I ran on Tues prior to test results, a remote undulating 13 + miles but 10 days oooh I pity my family when I’m not in bed chugging lemsip and throwing ibuprofen down my neck! 🤔😜 What happens with the other 2 remains to be seen. I have my fingers crossed they miss it but don’t hold out much hope. Stay safe folks

G’Nite A x

#covidsucks #staysafe #middleagedread

I’m having an interesting & thoughtful day. I figured I’d try to get a few things off my chest by writing them down, seeing as the only person reading my blog is someone critiquing my spelling and emailing me to that effect, I kid you not 🤦‍♀️

My page is a mess because I can’t for the life of me work out how to edit the themes or remove things I didn’t put there or simply don’t belong, I think it’s probably a fairly accurate representation of my life. The thought is there & the genuine attempt at creating something positive but inexperience in various areas cause it to be less than I imagine it could be if I was a little more skilled (or less socially inept)

The good lord knows I don’t like to critique his work so have to assume he know what he’s doing, Covid 19 has made some people at least reassess certain areas of their lives. I’ve mentioned the benefits to slowing down & reconnecting within my own family & even though things are all but back to normal with work & school I hope there’s been some residual closeness that wasn’t there before.

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m getting older but I’ve very little memory of great swathes of my life, if indeed life is measured in swathes! I like to imagine our memory is finite like a computer and as we’re bombarded with more and more information but we deem useless, like the name of our closest friend’s dog when we were 6 or the view from our grandparents allotment disappear to make room for recollection of seemingly more important events.

My friend took his life yesterday I’m not sure how to process that, I’m trying not to loose the memories I have of him in my memory dump

G’Nite Alley x

#bekind #middleagedread

What’s so amazing? If you slow things down & allow yourself to find real awareness, not worries, thoughts, plans for the future or dwell on the past but underneath the hubbub the senses tell you is the present, what do you notice?

I feel excited, joy & gratitude. I’m at peace with my life. At a smidgeon under half a century, the penny has dropped, my eyes are open & whatever other cheesy expressions you can think of (I draw the line at the woke 🤦‍♀️ it grates on me, like “moist” 🤢) In reality everything we ever are, do, feel or create is in this present moment. You can plan for the future of course but by the time your plans come to fruition or you take any action it’s already the present!

Blathering on about the past is an exercise in futility, it changes nothing unless of course you’re in the depths of therapy learning to desensitise to feelings associated with it that rob you of the joy of the present.

I’ve discovered active meditation, I’d always struggled with the seated deep breathing kind that might come to mind when you think of meditation, ADHD means to process I need silence (in my head not necessarily the outside environment) in order to quiet my mind I need activity of some sort so it’s been a game changer of sorts. It turns out a coping strategy I’ve used my entire life has a name. Mindfulness, apparently I’ve been using this to deal with my tumultuous emotional regulation for as long as I can remember. Centering or calming myself usually by focusing on physical feelings, sight or sound. It’s also helped me be aware just how much of the time I zone out completely, that’s alarming, I mean really. How much life do we waste in fruitless zone out 🤷‍♀️

When I was a child I used to imagine, all the time, plan, what if?!!! Now I’m learning more about the theory of power of attraction, I can see how powerful imagination is in the creation of belief & as the Bible says, all you have to do to receive is ask & believe with absolute faith. This isn’t always a good thing, worry is a kind of prayer too by focusing on something so hard you are in effect praying for that too! I can also see the evidence of this in so many situations over the course of my life it can’t possibly be coincidence. Science backing up my faith, I’ve said before I’m unashamedly God squad.

So why do I have an amazing life? because I realise the simple joy of existence in the moment, I hope you do too.

Have a wonderful day 💚

#middleagedread #joyofexistence #Godsquad #agewisely #bekind #powerofattraction #followyourjoy #herbalife4life #worryispointless

When you do something for someone else, whether it’s time consuming,financially costly or not how do you feel? I mean really.

I recently realised despite being the type to autonomously help, it’s not always the kind, altruistic action I would hope. I’m a busy person, I have a busy life, it’s an extremely happy one but it is filled to the brim. As long as I’m exercising & doing some form of centering like simply stopping in gratitude, yoga, meditation or ROMWOD to reign in my ADHD I can finely tune my life so it all fits in nicely and even cope with unexpected change with just a bit of a mind wiggle. Sometimes despite this, I help someone and resent the adjustment to my own plans, the lost run, the late dinner, or simply because the person wanting the help is perfectly capable of doing whatever it is themselves & frankly not as time poor. That’s not altruism, that’s sacrifice and there’s nothing particularly kind about doing something while resenting it.

They (whoever they are 🤷‍♀️) say if you want something doing you should ask the busiest person you know & it will get done, I think this is probably true. We’re used to fitting things in but where is the value to allowing yourself to be a doormat? You’re just teaching people to treat you badly. “Love you neighbour as yourself” isn’t just telling you to love your neighbour, you need to love yourself too & helping with resentment isn’t a feeling that inspires the love of self. Boundaries are important, I’m finally learning after nearly half a century. I will always help if I won’t resent the request or offer to help if I feel inspired to do so from a good feeling but I am finally allowing myself to be a priority in my own life & it feels good 🤩

Have a wonderful day, help when you can but don’t be a doormat 😉 A x

#middleagedread #bekind #helpwithoutresentment #dontbeadoormat #positivelife #followyourjoy

This is so apt, we’re all guilty of judging others at some point, if only to make us feel better about our own circumstances. We’re also all guilty of having had a victim mentality, real awareness is when you realise other people have been the victims of you too.

Personally I receive judgement from those who think cleaning is a job that’s beneath them, despite being a graduate, worse still when they hear I’m also a Herbalife nutrition distributor 😲 surely not that pyramid scheme!! 😉 I should point out my degree is in Sports Science & I have 2 years of nutrition as part of that degree. I have consistently used it for 6 years as a large part of my nutrition & training, I’m in the best shape of my life (when I slip in the diet department, despite the training element staying the same) I’m very definitely fluffier & yet they’d still rather believe some bloke in the gym 🤷‍♀️

Often our minds play tricks on us, someone doesn’t answer a text, so we run through all the scenarios as to why they haven’t answered; the scenarios often dependant on our mood… Good mood, maybe you assume your friend is busy or has started to answer then got side tracked (that might be more relevant to menopausal middle-aged women 😜) ..insecurity or negative mind set? Are they ignoring us, what could we have done to offend them & so on.. It’s often easier to believe the bad thoughts & then later on find out they were completely untrue. Why are negative things so readily accepted by the mind when positive energy has been proven to be many times stronger than negative, what are thoughts if not the energy given out by the host?!

There also appears to be an odd perception that disagreement (whatever the topic, politics, religion, climate change you name it) means you can’t be friends or you hate anyone with opposing views. I know people who delete people from social media because they have an opinion they disagree with. I understand the rationale of course but surely if we only interact with people with the same view point & there’s no one to challenge us & our views particularly if they’re biased, prejudiced or bigoted, then they become acceptable!!

Something to think about! Have a fabulous day A x

#middleagedread #herbalife4life #agewisely #bekind

I’ve been spaffing about with my theme & colour scheme because like my 6 year old granddaughter, I can’t help fiddling but now I can’t put it back, this is the new normal 🤷‍♀️

I’m from a dying breed: The pre technology generation! There was 1 computer at school, pretty much for the sole use of the 6th form boarders; “Word perfect” for word processing & some binary 0s & 1s made some wizardry happen long before Harry Potter & his pals.

A friend taught me a now long forgotten combination of said 0 & 1’s to make a name, usually yours or that of your crush, roll on the monitor screen, we’d spend our time setting all the monitors on the displays in electrical shops in Oxford.

Wearing lots of liquid eyeliner and black tassled skirts, we were the ‘Didi Goths’, we hung around in sullen looking groups. A decade later than punks & skin heads (although there were those that still adopted the fashion & hung around Bon Square) the Didi reference because we were 2 or 3 years younger than the original ‘Goths’ which at 14 is some considerable age, many of them the younger siblings of the real Goths, we had our own square, Goth square for the days, time has erased the memory of its actual name & The Radcliffe Camera for drunken nights before they fenced it off to stop drunken youngsters adorning and sometimes decorating their steps.

I have very fond memories of growing up in Oxford in the late 80s early 90s, I’d forgotten so much until recently having reconnected all be it via Facebook (other social media is available) with faces from my past.

I’m ashamed I haven’t made the effort to stay in touch with many people, I think the embarrassment & numbness of a few years of anorexic drug addiction made me reluctant to stay in touch with some people, couple that with the misery of that life, years passed, life went on, more years passed, even that time in my life is like a vaguely remembered novel I once read, the memories surreal.

I like to watch repeats of “Inspector Morse” & “Endeavour” to catch a glimpse of my old haunts. Reconnecting with people has bought memories rumbling to the surface with the anesthesia of time to situations that once caused pain or embarrassment, let’s face it, we all have those 🤦‍♀️.

My 17 year old daughter’s taste in music also sends my mind to places it hasn’t been in decades, she listens to all the music I did at her age, fabulous taste obviously, so here’s to reconnecting with old friends to make new memories. Enough if my ramblings for the day!

G’Nite folks A x

#memorylane #middleagedread #agewisely #reconnecting #herbalife4life

It’s said that a different version of you exists in the minds of everyone you ever met. This was highlighted to me again today when my husband told me I’m always angry lately!!

🤷‍♀️ Initially I was incredulous; I should probably point out I’m the happiest and most hopeful for a fabulous future for our family unit than I have ever been in my life. I have been actively trying to respond differently to him (& others) because the penny finally dropped after all the memes,self help pod casts & reading, “you cannot change another person or situation, only how you respond to them!” Fundamentally you are responsible for yourself and you alone!

Then it struck me, regardless of how I feel, I can’t deny him his opinion, his perception of me must be entirely valid because it’s his truth!.. life as he sees it.

I probably have been preoccupied with my thoughts, work, the kids, building the aforementioned future but where I believed I radiated positivity & love while doing it, he perceives anger, I’m at a bit of a loss 🤷‍♀️

I’m having a cut back/deload week in the exercise department, I often do less strength work when I’m training for longer runs or cut back the running when I’m looking to build strength but not usually both at once (unless I’m pregnant & there’s no chance of that ever again,my youngest is 7 on Halloween & I was pretty elderly to be having a baby even then 🤪) it’s possible I might be a little touchy but I honestly didn’t think I was & even patted myself on the back a bit learning to take time off 🤣

My oldest daughter C, much mentioned in previous blog posts I won’t bore you with the details believes I’m always positive, she rings me for perky pep talks, to talk her down or up from 1 dilemma or another.

El daughter no 2, says people ask her if she’s my daughter when she’s at work in a niche pub, they say we’re very alike both in looks & our neuro diversity (my husband says we’re nothing at all alike, another example of the perception thing I guess, though he and her father aren’t exactly friendly shall we say & he sees her as a tiny version of him.) And that I’m always rushing! This point I do agree with, so much to do, places to go, busy busy.

2 of my friends described me recently as amazing, which was lovely actually but it was hard to believe, why is it so difficult to believe the nice things people say? I was going to say it’s easier to believe the nasty but I wasn’t very ready to believe I was angry either so maybe it’s just hard to believe we don’t project what we’re feeling, we know how we feel so it should be obvious to others but why should it? I mean really, most of my children have some form of autism with or without ADD,ADHD or dyspraxia & you simple cannot fool them, it’s not like a baby or a pet, you can’t use a nice voice & say any old thing in that tone regardless of the words to get a positive response. They feel in their soul if you’re agitated, anxious, unhappy & are immediately uncomfortable no matter how placating the words coming out of your mouth, although they probably wouldn’t be able to differentiate between sadness, disappointment or anger, much like their father apparently, they feel the change in energy & fear it because it’s not their normal.

Enough of my ramblings for the day, I’m going to ponder how to radiate the joy of my wonderful life better & plan a decent run for Saturday to put the world to right!

G’nite folks A x

#positivelife #perceptioniseverything #middleagedread #agewisely #bekind #positivepantson #myamazingfuture

Newton’s third law of motion states “for every action there’s an equal & opposite reaction,” for almost 50 years I believed that basically meant push something it pushes back, gravity, forces & the like, I haven’t thought much about it since I left school if I’m honest. However lately I’ve been doing some reading, quantum physics, philosophy & a book called the secret by Rhonda Byrne which was recommended to me by a friend & it’s definitely piqued my interest!

Very basically the idea is thoughts are energy, energy is a force;…my mind immediately thought ok so for a positive thought somewhere there must be a negative one in equal measure🤷‍♀️ 🤔 but NO apparently it’s so much cooler than that!!

Anyone that knows the current version of me knows I’m an irritatingly positive soul, (yea if you knew me in my 20s when I once won an award for moaning it might seem far-reaching but it’s true 😄)

The theory is you reap what you sow, the feeling energy you give out you get back, if you go forward in life with joy,love,forgiveness and all the good feelings you get these things back from God, the universe or whatever your bag but here’s the rub, if you’re unkind, jealous bitter, or any of the lesser emotions you get these back too. You create your reality with your faith, your belief that it will be. As the Bible says ask, believe, receive!

There is so very much more to it than that obviously but this s*** is blowing my mind! Seriously the more I research, the more I believe it to be true, the more I fine comb my past the more I see the evidence of things I manifested good & bad.

I’ll continue with my journey, always improving, learning & following my joy 😀 I urge anyone & everyone to read ‘The Secret by Rhonda Byrne,’ hell watch the movie on Netflix, get the audio book on audible & just see how it makes you feel, where it can take your mind.

Have an amazing life A x

#thesecret #thepowerofattraction #herbalife4life #mindblowing #expandyourhorizons

On a whim ,during a late night messenger conversation with a friend, I’ve decided to run 50k on my birthday (New years eve) I’d like to say at the least there was some alcohol involved in the discussion but neither of us drink 🤣..Within 15 minutes, not only was it decided, we’d roped in at least 1 fellow runner for the full distance, several for 5 or 10k increments, roughed out a route, a pit crew to bring us water, (hydrate & cr7 from the Herbalife team) & decided to leave at 5am so we’ll be back by midday for food and a quick sleep and still be able to stay awake for the count down & fireworks 🎆

Wish me luck, I’ve no doubt regular updates will be forthcoming 🤣

September is storming along isn’t it!

#followyourjoy #notquiteultrarunner #herbalife4life