SUNDAY 31ST JULY 2022
I woke up this Sunday morning in a friend’s house in London after a busy week, a long drive and a late night. So, so glad not to be feeling even a tiny bit rough in someone else’s house. This week has been a revelation…..
MY WHY
I’ve read a lot these past 2 years about how alcohol does not relieve stress but this week, I have lived it. It has been a massively busy week on several accounts:
- Trying to get as up-to-date as possible at work, knowing I won’t be there next week
- Trying to get my house as clean and tidy as possible in preparation for other people moving in to dog-sit while we’re away.
- Trying to get the never-ending laundry up-to-date so we all have the clothes we want to take with us and not have much left in the basket, knowing that it will be overflowing again as soon as we empty our bags on our return.
- Throwing a barbecue for 12 people to coincide with visiting relatives (okay, so I wasn’t doing the cooking but having people around is always a major stressor for me).
All of this, and yet I’ve felt surprisingly calm all week. I admit there were a couple of occasions when I felt my stress levels on the increase but I managed to keep them in check. Normally, I’d have been “rewarding” myself with alcohol at the end of each busy day, knowing that I’d be drinking every day on holiday anyway. I now have the insight to realise that I would’ve been starting every day on the back foot, feeling below par due to the after effects of the alcohol and thereby adding fresh stress to each new day. I was already fully aligned to the notion that alcohol doesn’t relieve stress and, since I took my previous big break, I don’t think I’ve given in to the temptation of that mid-week G&T after a particularly hard day more than a couple of times, because I now know that it just isn’t worth it. If life is stressing me out, why would I want to make it even more stressful but trying to deal with it while I’ve got even the vaguest of hangovers and that low-level depression that always seems to come with it these days? It’s just a no-brainer! This week, however, has taken my understanding of this point to a whole new level and I’ve been really aware of the largely-calm bubble I’ve been in as I’ve ploughed through everything that needed to be done. Then, there was the long journey yesterday….. Normally, by the time the car is packed up and we’re heading off, my husband and I will have been bickering constantly and we’ll be setting off in an air of grumpiness which will last for the first leg of the journey. Yesterday morning went so smoothly. Some credit is definitely due to his daily meditation practice and that, combined with my alcohol-free state just made for a far more pleasant experience all round. Happy days! 😊
Theme Tune: Under Pressure by Queen & David Bowie