As the days get shorter and the weather gets harsher, you may find yourself more easily prone to sequestering yourself inside
As the days get shorter and the weather gets harsher, you may find yourself more easily prone to sequestering yourself inside for longer periods of time. Picture it now: your legs safely ensconced in a big down blanket, as you keep wondrously warm by the roaring fireplace. That sounds perfectly utopic, right? If you don’t have an actual fireplace, you can always turn your TV onto that unfailingly reliable “Fireplace Channel”, where an indistinguishable figure continually supplies new logs to keep the flames going.
I hope that person’s doing okay.
Treating yourself is key to avoiding burnout. And yet, you can’t exactly just sit around and do nothing else the next few months. Everything must be done in moderation. In a world with now over eight billion
(yes, that’s billion with a ‘b’), we all experienced the exact same pandemic together. We really had to pull ourselves up by our collective boot straps and work together to get through it. Many of us did, but sadly not everyone. Lockdown really showed us who we truly are. We’re not quite out of the woods just yet, but we’re seemingly in spitting distance of putting that all in the proverbial rear-view. Knock on wood. Better make said wood that of a muscular oak tree.
Hopefully your winter is free of struggle and strife and full of laughter and merriment instead. While being “stuck inside for the winter”, it can be frighteningly easy to fall back into those old, familiar and sometimes even scary patterns. For sections of us, it’s possible that staying inside could potentially trigger those similar feelings of what lockdown was once like. In many ways it was very hard to be stuck in the exact same space, with the exact same people, every single day. For some, there was a whole other set of challenges by having to weather the storm of isolation entirely by themselves. With only their racing thoughts and flights of fancy to keep them company.
Do your best to pick up a new skill for the end of the year. Perhaps you’re feeling in a culinary sort of mood and are looking for a certain type of adventurous recipe to try in your kitchen. Perchance, you’ve always wanted to learn how to play the guitar or knit a wonderful new fuzzy scarf for a loved one. Do you find yourself continually buying new books to read, while not even cracking open any of the old ones from ages past? I myself am very guilty of that particular sin.
Keeping busy with a flurry of different activities is a great way to maintain a consistent occupation of the mind. If you haven’t heard from a family member or dear friend in an age or two, reaching out will hopefully be appreciated. Even though we’re all spread out across every corner of the globe, we’re all still in this together.
Mary-Jane