Have you ever felt like something is off? I don’t mean illness or anything medical like that, just that something is off balance. I’ve been feeling like that this year so far, and maybe it was the winter. It was a very wet, cold winter. It didn’t let up – pretty much gales or rain every day. And some days it was gales and rain together! There weren’t any of those brisk, dry winter days with brilliant sunshine.
But, I’m not one to get sad over winter. I don’t get into the doldrums when the seasons change as I am a gardener at heart, and I love to see the different things happening outdoors with the plant life every day – even in the height of winter.
Now, there’s a part of gardening I don’t necessarily love – the digging part! But, as I try to explain to people, for me it’s like re-decorating the house. I don’t like painting (at all!) but it’s a relatively inexpensive way to start creating a new look and feel in a room. I don’t like the action of painting walls, the way it makes me ache from squatting and then standing, squatting and standing (repeatedly); and I really don’t like that usually more than one coat of paint is necessary. But, I LOVE the transformation afterwards and the feeling of accomplishment!
I like decorating and not painting, but I do the painting because the whole thing comes together. In the same way, I like gardening and don’t necessarily like digging and prepping flowerbeds (for example digging up turf, laying out the shape, hoeing the bed, removing all stones and rocks, edging for drainage etc.). But, after the horrific prep work is done, the beautifying part of thinking about which flowers will grow nicely next to which, their heights and blooming season and growing pattern, are things that I really like.
But even so, I have this feeling that something is off and I’m not feeling quite satisfied. It’s a feeling hard to identify and even harder to put into words. It’s a little bit like when you’re hungry and you think you should eat, but you’re not feeling overwhelmingly like eating. You go ahead and eat something and feel quite blah afterwards because that thing that you ate didn’t excite your taste buds, and didn’t satisfy some inner craving that you didn’t even know you were experiencing. My feeling is kind of like that.
So the other day I sat down and I thought about it, and I thought about the actions I did generally… taking care of the house, working from home, working in the garden, my surroundings and taking walks and the fact that I feel better outside. Then it occurred to me that I was lacking a dimension in my everyday activities. I hadn’t read in a while (and I’m usually a prolific reader – but I go through phases). So, I made a concerted effort to resume reading.
I didn’t start off with anything too in-depth. I just went for a type of book I like when I need to run away for a bit. That can be fantasy books (fairies, elves and magic) or sometimes it’s historical fiction (going back to the pioneering days when in America people were homesteading for example). So I chose one of these kinds of books, by an author I’d read before so I knew the writing would be decent and I knew the plot (no matter how light the topic may be) would be well thought out and that the grammar would be good.
And I read. And I felt much better for reading.
And I slept very, very well that night.
So I thought I’d tell you. I wonder if you ever have days like this?
