Still Our Day?

I returned from Kent on Sunday under leaden skies, steely grey with rain and menace. But it didn't fall. That return journey still featured streaming cold although not as bad as it had been and a sore shoulder. Ahead lay another week. I should have stayed home longer but there was simply too much to do. Yesterday's comment was "you look like shit", today's "you're looking frazzled". We are only two days in and I'm struggling.

Once upon a time I would have been celebrating on this day. For it is World Mental Health Day. I wonder now how healthy it is to identify as being mentally ill? It was an epitaph I gave myself for over a quarter of a century. It was a day I celebrated with my peers to acknowledge we have something to offer the world rather than the burden some see us to be. But what of now? Since moving to the University every year I have felt hugely pressured to do some great event in which we all come together. At the start of my 11th year we have only managed something once. Today it was only mentioned in passing. No one on the network of advisors had anything to say.

Having been accused relatively recently of changing sides and betraying what I wrote about us and them in Charon's Ferry I have more ammunition to deem myself a failure than a success. At the end of day on which I saw no one but couldn't get anywhere near completing what I needed to do the temptation was to eat shit, watch shit and drink shit. Oh how take away ribs with extra chilli might have lulled me into comfort feeling. Or several beers? And watching nothing in particular. But I didn't succumb.

Instead I did some lovely clams that tasted of the sea, had a chilled glass of Italian white wine and realised that to survive I must let go and stop attacking me. Harder to do when in pain and feeling pretty ropy but I will not last long if I give in when all seems lost and I am defeated.

The inbox will be there tomorrow. Despite my doubts I will do some good. And as Peter and Kym remind me it is only a job.

Take care out there wherever you are. There's a long way until the holidays so take it a day at a time and a task at a time.

I Heard a Voice.

PS Incidentally, Charon's Ferry came out in paperback on this day in 2013.