Ruled by Anxiety

This poem by my very clever dear friend Pooky popped up in my mailbox on the day when the demons were rampant in my head. She expresses exactly how I felt but in such a better way they I could tell you! Thank you Pooky!

Pooky's Poems

I can’t get a thought in edgeways
When my head is full of fear,
Anxiety wreaks havoc
And my other thoughts aren’t clear.
The part of me that’s strong and sane
Is sitting in a well,
It tries to shout advice to me
I think, it’s hard to tell
Because it sounds so distant
And its words are all obscured
By the nasty mumbo jumbo
That I’m trying to ignore.
Eventually I break and cave
And anxious thoughts run free.
And when they do,
For a short time
I wish I wasn’t me.

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Isn’t life strange?

Just over 2 years ago when I retired from headship, I gave a huge sigh of relief. Not for stopping a job that had been my passion for over 13 years; not for leaving behind all those little sponges that made upon the learning community of the school. The relief was from the end of the stress of spinning plates on very wobbly sticks!

Whether it was finance, health & safety, safeguarding, Ofsted, staff development or the curriculum, they all seemed to need my attention 24/7.

 So, I went off into the sunset with a bit of a plan. I would do some consultancy which would enable me to sharing the knowledge I had acquired, much of it at a cost to the taxpayer. I would get fit using our treadmill regularly. I would make a start reading all those classics that I had always promised myself I would read & of course I would do lunch(& coffee & afternoon tea!) with great panache!

The Demons

This post is for Writing Workshop at Sleep is for the Weak

I have chosen prompt 2 which is What does depression feel like to you?

I have tried to unpick what happens on some of the occasions the Demons visit.

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They creep in during the night when the peaceful sleep is momentarily interrupted. They start slowly concentrating on one issue. Questioning your actions – Should you have? Why did you? You should have known better! Useless! Rubbish! Fail, fail, fail! Gradually they up the anti & bring all sorts of things to the front of your mind. They have the pictures – it is so clear. They are SO right. Before you know where you are, your head is spinning.

You wake fully & try to go through the strategies that you have worked out for these times. Eyes close

Roller Coaster

  It’s Monday – Writing Workshop day.  I looked at the prompts & this one jumped out:  Pick an emotion that best represents your state of mind right now and write creatively on that theme.

How do I feel NOW? Rubbish of course- its Monday! I feel useless, sad, can’t see the point in anything, can’t be bothered – it’s MONDAY!

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you will know that Mondays have always been my bête noir.

Confessions of a Newbie!

There seems to have been lots of serious thinking over the past few days about blogging & what it means & involves. Paula’s post here  questions whether blogging is a selfish activity. She also considered her own authenticity here

Although this is not exactly navel gazing, it got me trying to clarify my thoughts about my blog & its purpose. I’m not really sure how it started. I’m an avid twitterer

Move Over Liberace!

 

I can’t remember when we got the piano. It was an old upright. The sort you might see in a pub back in the fifties. I’ve no idea where it came from either or why we got it. Mother had played as a child apparently but had never given me the impression that it was something that was missing in her life that needed replacing.