~ Napoleon Hill
I had a really interesting conversation today with a lady called Karen who I was stationed to work alongside. I've chatted to her previously but today we got into a deep philosophical conversation and we shared some life stories.
It turns out that we've been experiencing so many parallels over the last couple of years and I found it quite comforting in a sort of communal kind of way.
She's slightly older than me although she looks much younger and she has quite a jolly way about her, a very genuine, authentic kind of person. We spoke for a long time and I didn't even realise that it had reached our end of day when it came around, the time just seemed to fly by me.
She asked me how my last year had been and when I told her some of the things I've experienced she looked at me incredulously and couldn't believe that I was so grounded about it especially seeing as she had experienced some of the same.
I enjoyed chatting with her and got some great insight into her life and how she handles the times when things go pear-shaped. We joked and laughed together, we shared bits of our conversation with other people and it just felt very open, liberating and authentic. It was a time warping kind of day passed with good comradery and a healthy chunk of music to boot.
When I arrived home I have to admit I was feeling very tired and drained. I don't quite know if it's because I've been having busy days jam packed or if I was just low on energy, but I couldn't bring myself to do much. I did a little bit of trading and then I curled up on the couch and slept for well on four hours. I hardly ever do this.
I think that we sometimes go through phases where we struggle to keep our energy levels up. I've been making a concerted effort to put on a sunny disposition, stay focused on what needs to be achieved and get things done in a timely manner, but today I simply couldn't bring myself to do anything productive. I'm not even sure what I had lined up for today and I'm strangely okay with that because I needed some down time.
The last few days I've experienced quite a number of setbacks and I think that they've made me feel somewhat discouraged. Apart from that and general day to day stress, I've been ok - I've been sleeping soundly and wake up feeling rested, but today I just couldn't get into a busy frame of mind. Perhaps it has something to do with current events or the shape of the world at the moment, the energy in the collective? I'm not quite sure.
The current world stage is full of conflicting views and there's a lot of garbage out there that you need to sift through, but beyond that one thing that everyone can agree on is that there's a very tense atmosphere hanging in the air. I don't particularly like it and while I'd love to be able to say that it doesn't affect me, it affects every single one of us, immaterial of location, age, gender, social status or financial standing.
I mean we've been on the precipice like this before and it wasn't particularly nice to navigate, but we got through it, some were more severely affected by it than others, but the collective feeling about it was generally the same and it was pretty sombre.
So even though each morning when I wake up, I treat each day as a completely new slate, I do feel that perhaps the next few weeks, possibly even months will have a different feeling stamped on them. We can't avoid it and to ignore it would be foolish, but we can navigate around and through it and simply try to still put our best version forward and keep marching on - that's really all we can hope to achieve. Even when the energy around us seems stifling, we still need to show up in life, so let's make it worthwhile. Practice some self care and show those around us a little more compassion and understanding while we are all feeling the heaviness in the air. This too shall pass.
