Letter number 39: Upward

Dear Alexandra,

How’s it going? Yesterday was a really positive day! I woke up early and spent some time reading before heading off in the car to the wilds of Shropshire to meet K. for walk. I grabbed some breakfast en route and got to the car park we’d arrange to meet just on time, not like me to not be really early. To be fair it was a bit of a drive and there was some traffic.

We ended up quite near to where Farmer Phil’s festival is hosted — so lots of familiar bits of route. Bridgnorth is a really pretty little town, you’d have loved wandering around it, perhaps not in the weather we had though. It turns out when I plan to meet folk for walks it’s gonna rain! In fairness, it wasn’t as bad as the forecast implied — and I made sure I had waterproofs, decided that the trousers were probably overkill!

The walk was great, K.’s dog, Bracken, is a lovely little skittish collie with different coloured eyes. Bless her it wasn’t the best of walks for her, as it was mostly on roads but it saved us getting muddy at least! It was good to just walk and talk, a mixture of catching up with each other’s work lives since we last worked together, random stuff, more personal stuff too. It would’ve been nice to have the option to stop for a coffee but well, Covid! We did talk for ages in the car park before heading off.

We’ve agreed K. can decide the next time we meet up since my weather divination is so shocking, haha! It’ll be nice to get out in nicer weather and off road to give Bracken some off-lead time, though!

After the walk I headed to Solihull — N. and D. had invited me over for food, so I stopped at Waitrose to pick up a cheesecake, and some cheese-board ingredients. They’ve not long got a lovely new motorhome, D. was tinkering with fixing some bits when I got there, so I had a quick tour. It’s really nice! A bit dauntingly big to drive though, but once you’ve arrived in it you’d be incredibly comfortable straight away.

We spent the afternoon and evening just chatting, I haven’t told N. or D. any details — they didn’t ask, it was lovely just to natter more generally. I did talk about some of the things I’d been working on to help me recover, I’ve found it so much easier just to admit that I’ve been struggling, it’s amazing how many other people similarly suffer. I think it’s much more healthy to just have things like that in the open.

N. was busy prepping food whilst we talked — a lovely roast lamb dinner, it was delicious! We had the cheesecake after which was good too, then a Zoom call with M.,S.,M. and J. — great fun, at some point we broke out the cheese, olives, cooked meats etc. I decided not to worry too much about calorie counting so just had what I fancied. Why not?

Generally I must admit I was feeling much better about all the stuff. Definitely a ‘life goes on’ kind of day. I was a late home so did feel bad for Sonic who obviously didn’t really get any time out. But today I’ve played football and made sure he got plenty of fuss and out-time when I got back. Football was great, we got a comfortable win and I put some miles in and worked hard, definitely need to practice my shooting though I had some great chances and fluffed them!

I checked the parcel tracking and you signed for the stuff I sent you yesterday, it clearly didn’t prompt any contact. That’s okay, I didn’t really expect it to — I hope it didn’t feel negative for you getting it kind of unannounced. I took what was your dressing room mirror to football to give to R. to take to E., so that’s gone now which is one less reminder. I’m still waiting for the CD shelves to arrive which will eventually go where the dressing table is.

That will help declutter the spare room and my office where CDs are currently stored haphazardly. If I empty some space from the wardrobes both in my bedroom and the office then I’ll be able to store some of the other stuff that’s in there and get it set up as an actual spare bedroom. I’m not sure why that feels important, but well, it feels productive so why not? Once I have all that sorted I think I’ll get some quotes to get the garden sorted out too.

For the rest of today I’m planning on chilling out a little — Sonic is on a time out for getting a bit over-excited and biting, but I’ll release him again soon. I’ve got some laundry going, and I’ve got a HelloFresh meal to cook in a bit too — in the background I’ve got something mindless on TV, and I’m going to spend some time reading my book too. Tomorrow is a working at home day which is generally tougher, but some of my team are back from hols so I’m going to spend some time catching up with them and continuing to delegate things to them.

So yeah, I think I’m back on an upward curve for now. Sherlock Bert hasn’t really been up to much, I suppose he’s kind of leading the urge to do things like check the parcel I sent has been delivered and signed for, and he did have a crafty click on to your Facebook profile when somebody shared a memory we were both tagged in. You’ve been inactive on there. He’s not even vaguely hinted at the appeal of looking at other things though. That’s a good sign!

Tomorrow evening is the second CBT webinar session, they sent through a work book which I’ll take a look at later. The 1:1 therapy call I have is on Wednesday. I think that’s good timing, as I wonder how much work pressures (which aren’t awful, but I guess I’m working from a lower mental base than normal) are impacting my scores on the pre-therapy questionnaire that H. runs through at the start of the call.

I’m really hoping not. Whilst of course I’ll take any advice seriously I don’t want to feel like a burden or a weak link professionally. I know that I have support there, and that my boss is brilliantly understanding — but well, it’s a matter of personal pride I guess. But more than that I don’t want any more black-outs or issues — so I’ll be sensible. Progress is good, but I know I need to be patient.

I hope you’re doing okay, Bert