Tag: Prompt

I’m not sure I do?

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Dazed and confused…?

How do you practice self-care?

I had to look it up.

“Self-care has been defined as the process of establishing behaviors to ensure holistic well-being of oneself, to promote health, and actively manage illness when it occurs. Individuals engage in some form of self-care daily with food choices, exercise, sleep, reading and dental care. Wikipedia“

It’s all very well having a definition, but do you keep to it? I for instance, try and do certain activities that help me, but not every day. Sometimes I remember, other times? I’m too engrossed in whatever crisis I’m dealing with to even remember to take care of myself.

I have responsibility for caring for others, I also have people who need my help. If I don’t help I feel guilty, and that’s not easy to put to one side.

So what things do I do? A little bit of chair yoga because I cannot get up and down off the floor. Choir twice a week for my mental health. And a gratitudes diary that I try and write three short things in that have happened in the day. They are usually minor, but it helps train your mind towards a more positive track… (gratitudes can include traffic lights on green for instance, or a favourite film coming on the TV).

Now I’ve read the definition I might just try a bit harder…

Singing

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What are you passionate about?

When I was a child I would make up songs to send myself to sleep. I can remember lying under the covers and singing lullabies. I must have sung quietly as I shared bedroom with my sister!

As I got older I sang with the school choir, but my voice was untrained and would flip between higher and lower registers. I think they liked me in the school choir for the volume I could create.

As I got older I would go to parties and burst into song, usually something like “Swing Low” which has a lower tune that I could hit (I found out I’m a contralto I think). Finally I decided to try and control my voice because I went to a Christmas Carol concert and my voice was up high and down low, hitting notes an octave apart.

I started singing lessons and did the basic grade exam, I was learning once a fortnight because I couldn’t afford more frequent lessons. It was expensive and then my teacher decided to move away. Thankfully my best friend at the time had persuaded me to join a choir on the weeks I wasn’t at singing lessons. Now 20 years later I’m singing in that choir and another one, I’m confident enough to perform in public and I’ve realised how it helps my mental health. Singing relieves anxiety, it’s like art, it takes your mind off things for that brief time when you are creating musical sounds. It is a true passion of mine.

The vote

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What’s the one luxury you can’t live without?

It’s only about a century since women were given the vote in the UK. You might query why I would choose it, but it’s so important. How can I, as a woman, have any influence on the people that rule us? By voting.

A million votes can sway big corporations to bring in holidays for their workers. Votes can decide the outcome of an environmental protest. Votes are not just used to choose politicians, but to decide on whether someone should get an important job, or if affordable housing is built or not.

Votes are democracy in action. Instead of top down politics it can change how people live from the ground up. It can support fair shares of food, water, housing, health support and other important decisions

Voting is not a perfect solution, but it has to be better than living under a dictatorship. It can reduce the oppression of men women and children. It is a luxury I would not be without and I vote at every election.

Honestly? Honesty

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What quality do you value most in a friend?

I almost said loyalty, but if I do something wrong I hope a friend would let me know. I do think that’s really important. I guess I need to think about it though. One person’s honesty might be someone else’s severe criticism. I would prefer to know what a friend honestly thought without it breaking our friendship.

What that means is that we could mutually agree to disagree if politics or some other belief was coming between us. For instance having mutual respect if you followed different religions. I can’t see why that would end a friendship. Unless of course one of you had inhumane ideas. In which case I don’t think we could be friends in the first place.

By the way I apologise for pontificating in these prompt posts. But they make me think about things, and they are here to be answered….

Why not loyalty? Because that might mean the friend backs you up even if you’ve done something wrong. I’d prefer them to nudge me and say they think I’ve made a mistake. OK I’d prefer constructive criticism in that case (what a polite world I want to live in)! Sometimes though I honestly need a serious criticism. Nobody is perfect after all…..

It depends how cold!

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How do you feel about cold weather?

Britain is a temperate but also a maritime country. It sits in a position where winds come from all directions and can get hot but also quite cold. That variation in weather means the British are always talking about the it!

As the world warms up we are getting less cold weather, but we don’t always have warm temperatures. Some years ago the country was covered in snow for a few weeks. Satellite pictures showed a totally white surface of the country, which was brilliant white with snow and ice.

So how do I feel about the cold? I have not really experienced very cold weather. But I have lived in cold houses. Huddling around a coal fire when I was a student, with not enough money to burn coal! I remember one day chopping up an old chair to keep warm. That was the year a crank on my then boyfriends bike snapped because it was so cold.

On another occasion we went cycle camping one Easter. The weather was fine on our travel to the camp site, then it snowed. We set up camp then found places in the town to keep warm. We sat in a warm pub till closing time, then had to go back. You know its cold when you put on two pairs of trousers and four tops to go to sleep in a sleeping bag inside a tent!

So on the whole I can cope with the cold. I don’t like not being able to heat our house as I get older, but I can put on more jumpers and a coat.

What I hate is too much heat….

Sacrifice?

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What sacrifices have you made in life?

There are small and large sacrifices you make when you live with or marry someone. The marriage ceremony says a lot, in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer…

After 40 or more years together you forget a lot of the sacrifices, you just have to try and get along, you do so much together. Things do spring to mind, but now they feel trivial. He had an offer to do a masters degree, I had an offer to move away and get a job in a distant city. What stopped us? Money mainly. We couldn’t afford to give up our jobs. We had to stick with what we were doing.

Life has its way of getting in the way of things. It’s not planned, it’s not a story with a happy ending (unless you are very lucky). It’s a series of compromises and accidents. Time can sometimes smooth things out, but not always.

Then as you get older you make more sacrifices. You can be selfish and decide you want everything your way, or just go along with the flow, become indifferent to your partner. Hopefully you find a way through and stick together. I don’t pretend to have answers, but you cope. I’d maybe have done more with my life, but I’m OK with what I am now and what I’ve got. Life is a path through the trees, you can’t see your destination. You just have to stay hopeful.