Christmas time

I've settled down again after my last post and something interesting happened. I went from being frustrated and bored to being content again. I think the whole college term ending had something to do with it as well as the relationship stuff and the stuff with my friend who is angry with me.

I've decided that I'm not going to do the voluntary work at the cat rehoming centre. After pondering it for a few days I realised that I would just be frustrated doing that. I don't want to clean out cat litter trays and play with cute kittens, I want to take more constructive steps to getting back to work. It has to be work that I feel some sort of connection with, not just work to keep me occupied. I thought it would be OK to do that, but my bodymind sent me a 'felt sense' message about it to tell me that it was not OK. Whenever I thought about working at the cats home, I felt an uneasy feeling in my body, a kind of dissappointment. I've decided to take another route instead.

I have a friend who knows a professional photographer who has said it would be OK for me to do some work experience with his company. Now this is more like it! He wants me to be flexible as work is a bit ad hoc, so that sounds perfect. When I think about this, I get a nervous, excited feeling and a sense of moving forward. Even if this placement doesn't come off, I now know that I need to do some work/placement with a photography company as that is what I want to do professionally when I am well enough.

I've had a bit of fatigue in the last week. I went to visit a friend on the Isle of Wight who I went to visit earlier in the year without any fatigue. The day before the journey I was a bit tired and probably wouldn't have got up early the next day had I no train to catch. On the day of the journey I set the alarm and woke up feeling tired. On the way, the train was very cold because the heating was not on. Everyone in the carriage was sat there with their coats and scarfs on. I don't cope with getting cold. I managed to keep most of me warm apart from my legs which got really cold. When I was sitting there, I kept feeling like getting up and going to see if the next carriage had heating on (bodymind at a really fundamental level). Instead I sat there for the 2 hours the journey took with cold legs not even getting up at all. I was tired when I arrived at my friends, but not too bad. The next day I had fatigue and the day after that the fatigue was worse.

In RT terms the things that I think caused the fatigue were getting up early when I would have liked to sleep longer and not acting on the cold situation on the train. I wonder if I could have changed the outcome of that if I had booked a later train and also when I was on the cold train, got up and checked the train for a warmer carriage. In RT even if there had not been a warmer carriage, the 'acting' on it might have reassured my bodymind that I was listening, but I just sat there, in effect telling my bodymind that I was ignoring it.

My bodymind does not like getting up before it is ready to do so (ie with an alarm). I'm going to have to work on this if I'm going start doing some kind of work. Not sure how to approach it though.

I am finding that my fatigue kicks in for smaller and smaller reasons, like it's tweaking things. I'm getting more fatigue now than I got after a month or two of RT. It feels llike I'm a puppet with strings that go down from the top of my head into my body, along my shoulders, arms and legs and when I'm fatigued it's like a giant someone putting their hand round my head and pulling all the strings tight up through the top of my head. It's horrible, I feel really tense and my brain stops working properly, BUT I can still do stuff and it is getting less intense over time.

Anyway, the fatigue lifted after a couple of days. I've had a busy christmas time with my boyfriend and spent the day with my dad walking along the river Avon today, so I'm still doing well.