Category: Health
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On Journaling
I wrote this a week ago.
My last journal was over a week ago, last Saturday.
I’ve had a week off work with a really bad cough, wheezing, shortness of breath. Generally feeling better these last couple of days, but also still coughing. Last two days I had coughing fits in the afternoons leaving me dizzy, and exhausted. I haven’t slept well some nights either, due to coughing, wheezing and breathlessness.
But sitting here right now, I feel as good as I have done in two weeks or more.
Time off from work has allowed me to go through 90 days of journal entries to categorise and summarise them, and then outline or tease out the key themes or ideas in each area of interest. Why? Well, 1) what are all these journal entries for? I mean, I get the process, but am I missing out on something greater? 2) Lots of people publish weekly summaries and some people like reading them. But why?
I think I get it now. Doing this work has made sense of a lot of daily, weekly and monthly events, habits, routines, scenarios, relationships, that otherwise would have remained loosely connected, strung together like the Christmas lights every year when you take them out of the box you left them in in January. In a mess, tangled up, half working. Better than nothing, but a lot of stress.
And another surprising fact. While I started - and soon stopped - journaling in March, then restarted in August, I had wondered if spending the time to write in a private journal would take away from writing for my blog? Actually (and unsurprisingly, really) the opposite has occurred. I have written more than ever, privately and publicly.
I’ve also generally felt better in myself, although I’ve still had my usual ups and downs, and I’m still quite easily uplifted and dragged down.
It’s also made me realise I do a lot more things than I imagined, and do them OK.
It’s helped me to better understand some of my relationships, particularly with family.
I’m reading more, and listening to music more.
It would be useful (although perhaps less fun)to do the same exercise with my work journal. (41 pages, 46 days).
244 pages over 90 days for my personal journal.
Unfortunately, I haven’t journaled since.
Living and breathing
I have vague memories of seeing Florence + The Machine on the BBC at Glastonbury, possibly in 2009. She was the big new thing, breathlessly jumping around all over the place, climbing up the gantry, as she showcased her debut album Lungs.
Lungs album cover photoshoot stills - Tom Beard 2009
Or maybe it was 2015. Ship To Wreck sounds so familiar and like it would have caught my ear.
All very dramatic, elemental, and possibly not quite my thing more generally at those particular times. I didn’t pay much attention then or since.
By then, I’d fallen out of love with life, not just music. In recent years, I’ve rediscovered music, and life, and this week Florence + The Machine.
My little kid is 4 ½ years old. He’s obsessed with space at the moment. When he was younger, and still napping in the day, we found that he enjoyed falling asleep to a variety of music videos on YouTube. Mostly videos of music I liked. I don’t know how that happened!
At one time he really enjoyed some of the NPR Tiny Desk concerts - bands playing stripped down acoustic or semi-acoustic fifteen minute sets on a tiny office stage in front of a small audience.
Two he really liked were Alicia Keys and Jon Batiste - which weren’t my choices (well, they were my choices, but now I had permission to choose them), but I grew to love them, too. It’s hard not love such amazing musicianship, singing and songs, all performed with unconfined joy in the moment. My son got it. So did I.
One he wasn’t so keen on, but I enjoyed, was Florence + The Machine’s Tiny Desk performance. Usually so full of bombast, almost over-produced, and perfect for rocking out stadium tours, this was vulnerable and exposed. Two voices, a harp, acoustic guitar and keyboard. Three perfect songs.
I really tried to listen to more, the album versions, but I still couldn’t get into them.
This week, with my focus on my own personal breathlessness and lung history, and still thinking about another Machine entirely, I tried again. I still couldn’t do it, not fully. I now liked the album versions of the Tiny Desk songs, but the rest washed over me. I read more about the band, the albums, reviews, trying to understand why people like them so much.
Then last night, I finally got it. I cant explain why, exactly. Maybe it’s just familiarity. Probably it’s paying attention. As with many things in life, you sometimes have to make an effort to learn to appreciate things and develop a taste (or ear) for them.
Each breath screaming / ‘We are all too young to die,’” Welch sings in the chorus of “Between Two Lungs"
I do wonder also, though, if sometimes songs speak to me even when I’m not actively listening? I’ve always been useless at remembering lyrics. Not great for singing songs in a band. But the songs I love for the music, the energy, the tunes… When I do pay attention to the words, sometimes years later, they do carry meaning for me (even if that’s not necessarily what the song is actually about). They just needed to be heard. That’s the beauty of it.
No more gasping for a breath
The air has filled me head-to-toe
And I can see the ground far below
I have this breath and I hold it tight
And I keep it in my chest with all my might
I pray to god this breath will last
I recently read: How to Write One Song by Jeff Tweedy (of the band Wilco) 📚.
It’s full of practical if fairly obvious tips on how to write and get your creative muscles going.
Here’s a poem I wrote based on two books I regularly read to my little kid at bedtime.
Three days of feeling relatively well. Today I’m coughing, wheezing, short of breath again. Feel shot.
Wife reckons she has kidney failure due to her high blood pressure. She says her kidneys are due to expire in 2074.
Now they want me to have a blood test (routine annual test for diabetes).
I hate blood tests, though, and occasionally pass out. I missed last year’s.
Damn. Felt much better yesterday since starting antibiotics on Monday evening, no coughing and a decent sleep last night.
This morning I’m coughing again, though. Maybe triggered by the cold air on the school run?