making cecily happy

I don't know if you noticed, but I'm we're (because it's more than just me) more than half way through NaBloPoMo. So far so good. I haven't missed a day yet.

When I began 17 days ago, I was in the depths of despair, scraping the bottom of the barrel and resorting to self diagnosis. Now might be a good time to check in with a little progress report.

On one level I'm doing well. I haven't walked every day (yesterday I wussed out in the rain and... well... aren't weekends for sleeping in?), but most week days I'm getting up at six and walking. I've noticed I'm a lot more motivated and my mood has really lifted. (I've even noticed a bit of the silver lining the last few days!)

Take a deeper look and things aren't much changed. The contributing factors remain the same, and I'm sure there's still quite a bit of sadness in there. Life has picked up its pace the last few weeks too, and I haven't made space to look inside much... besides, the sadness is not oozing out at unexpected moments so I'm not going to push things. I feel OK and that's enough for now.

ABC started a series called 'Making Australia Happy' on Monday night. Eight people completed a Happy 100 Index to determine their level of happiness, then they were put through their happiness paces, a series of activities designed to increase their happiness. They completed another Happy 100 Index questionnaire to see how these activities had affected their happiness levels.

What really caught my ear was the observation by Dr Tony Grant that scientists now believe 50% of our happiness is genetically determined, 10% relates to life circumstances and 40% has to do with how well we look after ourselves.

Thinking back over the last two weeks, I can attest to that. My circumstances have barely changed, yet I am feeling better. Not where I want to be yet, but certainly moving in the right direction. What has helped with that? Journalling, exercise, spiritual reflection, allowing myself to feel my full range of emotions. I'm pleased that my pro-activity is making a difference... and I'm going to stick with it.

Especially since I just took the test and discovered my Happy 100 Index is only 54 - barely on the positive side of things! I can't compare this to a score at the beginning of the month, but I'm sure this is an improvement on what it would have been back then.

For now, I must to bed... sleep is important to happiness too you know! And I won't be able to drag myself out to walk in the morning if I don't!

G'night.

i thought you might like to know...

... the clouds are amazing lately. All kind of fluffy and gold tipped and blue grey.

Beautiful.

life is like a magic bean

I have some amazing beans growing in my garden. Called 'Purple King', they produce a beautiful, deep purple bean that can grow to nearly twenty centimetres in length. In the pot, the beans cook into the soft green colour one expects of a bean. I toyed with the idea of eating them in all their purple rawness (they looked so delicious and tempting), until I discovered raw beans contain compounds found to be poisonous to humans. So we're eating green beans the traditional way and they taste good.

There's something in heat induced transmutation I think: poisonous purple beans become green and edible, gold becomes pure gold, and summer transforms inside and out. Lackadaisical as this summer is proving to be, each laid back, sun kissed moment leaves behind a warm deposit.

I was in the kitchen cooking up a mini storm this afternoon (Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake) when I noticed a lightness that has been absent for some time. I breathed deeply of the kitchen aromas (heaven must surely smell of Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake), turned my face to the sunlight that streamed in the window and disbelievingly felt around the outer reaches of my heart, as if testing my legs with ginger steps after a heavy fall. There's ragged edges there for sure, but I'm still intact. Healing even.

The sun is shining, the clouds are fluffy, the beans are purple, the cake divine, the chickens dandy (the one that still lives anyway), the house clean. Everything just feels brighter, which is nice.

in search of treasure

It could be a touch of post-holiday blues, sliding down off the high of sun and surf and sleeping late into wind and cold and schedules. It was just the break we needed, but it was over too soon and isn't that enough to make any normal person feel somewhat miserable?

Personally I don't think it is post-holiday blues. More a touch of mild depression. For some time I have felt detached from events going on around me, a puppet on strings woodenly observing everyone else living life. My internal mood gauge is flashing its own warning sign - the clouds are devoid of beauty. When I am happy and engaged and enthusiastic about life, clouds never fail to capture my attention. Be they dark and threatening, scudding in fast motion past azure blue, billowing upwards in sun tipped splendour or making faces, I notice and drink in their beauty. Not now though. Now they seem all grey. The sky is grey, the flowers are grey, life stands out in monochrome.

I've been here before, in this greyness. Same story, different stressors: too much emotion leaking from numerous small wounds, too little restocking with love and light and life. God is love. Jesus is the light of the world. The Holy Spirit breathes life. I missed them. Forgot them in the midst of the wounding and now I am depleted, reduced, a shadow.

The trouble with depression is that it draws me so fully into its misery. The sky is not grey, nor are the flowers, and life beckons me in full colour, yet depression dulls my senses, shutters my eyes and the truth dances past unnoticed.

I was depressed once before and it was worse. My good friend contracted me to call her if I thought I might kill myself. I never really contemplated ending my own life, there was no plan. I only wished someone else would end it all for me, that I might not wake up and have to face another day. No, it's not that bad this time and I'm imbibing St John's Wort, Berocca and endorphins in an effort to prevent any further progression in that direction.

Something else I remember from previous blue days was the turning point. I know depression is more than the result of negative thinking, but when you're miserable the mind tends to misery. Negative thoughts crowd in unbeckoned. There is a temptation to wallow: woe is me, for I am undone. I remember deciding then enough was enough. I had sat in the pit for long enough and it was time to look up. In the end I came out of that depression in a matter of days, although I had been down there for a few months.

With previous experience in mind, I'm trying to cultivate positive thinking. The world is not playing out its life in black and white, so every day I look for a flash of colour and cling to it. Today it was the sense of community at the homespun market I stumbled across, chatting casually with people I knew, barely knew or had never met before in my life. Yesterday it was the moon shining it's pure white light onto a world already tipped with pink from the setting sun. Like extra lighting in a photograph that cancels out lines and wrinkles, the moon cast a soft, perfecting glow over our very ordinary street. On holidays I was fascinated by the sand balls produced by tiny crabs.

Natural artistry that delighted me no end.

I call them my treasures, those daily flashes of brightness in the midst of the grey. God's gifts breathing love and light and life back into the dark recesses of my mind. Each day I find one and hold it in my hand, gazing upon it, letting healing and hope flow. Day by day colour creeps past the shutters of my mind.

I am restored one treasure at a time.