Slow down season

This summer appears to be holding on for dear life here in London.  We're heading fairly quickly into October now and today is cotton dress weather; hot as hell and barely Autumnal.

I'm doing a lot of walking at the moment, also running, yoga, making things with my hands.  I'm trying (and generally failing) to stay off the internet unless it involves writing - generally I'm just trying to retrieve myself in some way after a year of living in a bubble.

I enjoy what I do for a living and by all accounts I'm fairly good at it, but ultimately, even when it's good, I burn-out because I become so immersed in making it perfect that I can't switch it off.  I'm an all-or-nothing sort of person, I realise and I spent a long, long time living in a world of compromise, a sort of partial world where I was working 60 hour weeks and when I wasn't working, I was forcing myself to meet someone else's standards and parenting in between.  It was exhausting and unhealthy, because I was consistently trying to do it all, hating it and failing, miserably.

It turns out that hitting that level of burnout isn't something you can just spring back from.  I am permanently on edge and permanently 'on'.  Switching off is nearly impossible, my brain works a mile a minute, it over-thinks everything and is totally unable to relax.  I'm jumpy and I'm still not really sleeping and it's been nearly a year since I turned off all the really harmful things.

It's been exacerbated by my inability to stop taking on new things and filling my life and my calendar.  Recently, something which has taken a massive volume of my time and energy has come to an end and I can already feel myself surging to fill the empty space, because I am just unable to stop.

I am blessed with a large volume of friends, large enough that should I want to go out several times in a week, I can manage it easily.  And because my internal system is always racing a mile a minute, generally I accept every invitation I receive, which results in me continuing to do too many things, which exacerbates everything which is wrong with my head.

So.

It may take me a while, I may struggle, I may fail a lot, but I am going to try to do fewer things, to see fewer people, to spend more time with myself and my boy and make a point of calming my head.

I guess this remains to be seen.