You Are What You Think

This morning I posted a description of my ‘yesterday’ as I like to think about it. 

I’m writing this post sitting in the pool side lounge at my health club on my beloved laptop.  I’ve already published last nights blog post and spent an hour planning for my next challenge at work while at my favourite writing place, Caffe Nero.  After that I walked along the sunny prom and had breakfast and deep reading time at the Beach Terrace Cafe (that does the best fry up in St Annes). Now I’ve finished writing and I’m heading for a late swim which will be followed by lunch, a huge house salad bowl from M&S with added grapes and cheese.  I worked in my sunny conservatory office all afternoon, amongst other things watching the Citrix Synergy Keynote, and went out for dinner with my youngest daughters before watching the first episode of the new ‘24’ with Debbie, then reading in the bath.

In fact I often describe elements of my life on Twitter and this blog and it sounds pretty good to me, I’m incredibly grateful and work hard every day to keep my quality of life high.  Unfortunately there’s also another, equally valid, way to look at that day:

Body pain and a terrible itchy rash across my chest stopped me getting to sleep for at least 2 hours despite the sleeping tablets.  I woke at 5:50 but could hardly walk or think, so I went back to bed missing my early morning swim.  I finally forced myself to get up an hour later and did my stretches for 10 minutes, focussing on my inflamed Achilles tendons and knees (I will have to do these stretches 3 more times today). I took a handful of medications with a healthy (but horrible) shake.

I hobbled to Caffe Nero to write and then on to the Beach Terrace Cafe to read, Cafes are essential to my sanity as I feel too lonely working from home all day.  Then I did 30 painful lengths of the pool working hard on my shoulders and knees which hurt all day every day. 

My home office is a conservatory, it’s too hot today, but I don’t mind too much as my brain is so foggy all I’m fit for is watching conference keynotes lying on the sofa. By the time I got through with my working afternoon I have a migraine which I will have to live with all night as I’ve already used up my pain killer allowance (10 days a month). Then I received some bad news via email which spiked my stress levels (years of steroids mean my body handles stress badly). 

It’s my night to take the kids out for a meal, but my headache and stress make me grumpy. The rash is driving me crazy so I use my most powerful anti-itch cream (which is a sedative).  The combination of the sedative cream and my night time sedative pain killers almost puts me to sleep, even ‘24’ fails to keep me awake.  In the end I give in and take pain killers for my migraine, which means I will likely have a rebound migraine tomorrow.

I try to read in the bath but I’m too sleepy to get through more than a single short chapter. What’s left of the migraine and the damn rash (part of my illness) result in another bad nights sleep meaning I missed my early swim again this morning.

I never think of my life this way, in fact it was quite difficult to write the alternative view of yesterday.  I try and make the best of everyday, no mater how bad it is it’s usually possible to turn a grim view of my life into a wonderful one to be grateful for.  You really are what you think, so it’s essential to visualise your life as you want it to be.

The photo today is a publicity shot of the Beach Terrace Cafe one of the four cafes where I often eat breakfast.  It doesn’t really look much like this in reality, the photographer has added false colour everywhere.  It’s a kind of glossy version of a reality that’s quite good already.  Quite fitting for this post.