My Soul is Scottish

Sometimes trying to put feelings into words is like trying to nail jelly to the wall; difficult and more than a little bit messy.

Looking back over the week and taking stock over my 4 rooms, the score card looks a bit like this:

Emotional room: Train wreck

Physical: Quite a bit better initially. I started off great for 4 days then derailed for the end of the week.

Mental: Exhausted

Spiritual: Neglected.

Let’s start with the top of the pile, shall we?

Tuesday was an actual train wreck that ended with a body under the train during the commute home. Sitting on a train for a few hours thinking about the life that ended under it definitely gives a person pause for thought.

Wednesday was dinner with the folks and a hard goodbye. I never realised how much it meant seeing them regularly until I waved goodbye and they weren’t there for dinner on Friday. The house that’s been my 2nd home since I arrived here is now someone else’s home.

My brother and his family have taken over the house and while it looks mostly the same, it feels different. It’s their space now and the freedom to come and go through that space is no longer there for me. Something as simple as the sofa being pushed all the way against the wall has left me feeling unsettled because it’s clearly no longer my parents’ home. It’s not my safety net. That has left me feeling strangely devastated.

Physically I made better choices regarding my diet this week. Well, let me clarify that; I did until Thursday. Thursday, Friday and today were less planned and as a result, definitely unhealthier.

Not having made time last weekend to properly stock up my fridge for the week ahead got me through to Wednesday but derailed me for the rest of the week. Putting non-essential shit too high up on the priority list left the last half of the week in a mess. The first order of business in the morning is to restock my fridge with the things I’ll need to eat right for a week. Sanctuary would be better sought in my spiritual room rather than in beer and Scotch.

Mentally I’m fried. Work is taking too high a toll on my sanity at the moment and Wednesday had me at the end of a very short rope. If I’d had my passport in my bag my commute home might have taken me to O’Hare airport. Finding a handle on work is going to take some creative problem-solving on my part and to be honest, I can’t be arsed.

The urge to go back to Scotland is drowning out my will to do anything else other than count down the days until I can send in my visa application. Please can I just go home to my mountains…? My Falcon’s Eye is still next to my heart every day, reminding me to go home.

The spiritual room didn’t even get a second glance this week.

Life is starting to feel decidedly like one of those hidden object games where you need to find a specific item in one place to use in another place, which unlocks the thing holding the clue you need to solve a problem somewhere else.

Maybe the solution to the mental & emotional upheaval is in the room I didn’t go into this week.

Time to log off from the endless Netflix reruns, put on some soothing tunes, light some incense and get under my blankie with a book.

Tomorrow is another clean slate so draw a line under today, leave the failings at the door and get some rest.

Every Tuesday & Friday I have dinner with my family. When I was religiously logging my foods on Myfitnesspal, Tuesdays were always a gamble calorie-wise. As a result, I nicknamed it Trainwreck Tuesdays. Could be a good day, could be a train wreck.

Today Trainwreck Tuesday turned into an actual thing. Yesterday was a late one and I missed 3 trains home so to make up for it I decided to miss 3 trains in to work but I still left on time. The 3:18 train out of Union Station.

Our train hit a pedestrian about 10 minutes outside of Chicago. It was a fatal accident and we spent 3 + hours sitting on the tracks while the Fire Department and police did their thing. The evidence technician had to do his thing; the engineer was relieved and a replacement engineer brought in; the train had to be inspected to ensure it could continue safely.

I didn’t realise at first that it was our train that was involved as all trains were stopped but as other trains started passing us after a while, it was clear we were the ‘incident.’

Thankfully the passengers in our car were reasonable but passengers in other cars were losing it and cussing the conductors. Yeah, we all have somewhere to be but for the love of God, there’s a body under the train.

Yes, we’re hungry, we need to pee *I used the loo….. dear Lord, it was a biohazard zone*, we all have somewhere we need to be. As the one conductor calmly pointed out: we all get to go home. Slower than planned, but we get to go home.

Perspective.

Sitting on the tracks was frustrating initially but the sun eventually set and it was a beautiful sunset. The man under the train never realised yesterday was the last sunset he’d ever have the chance to see. He’ll not see another one.

While people are losing their shit with the conductor, there’s a family somewhere getting a phone call that someone they love won’t be coming home. Someone’s life just got shattered while we sat there counting down until we could move again.

This was the first time I’ve been in a train that hit someone. It wasn’t how I imagined it. There wasn’t an impact and a sudden screeching to a halt. The train just slowed down and stopped. When we did, I knew there’d been an accident because that wasn’t a place we normally stopped. I didn’t know it was us. It’s hard to explain how you feel a life ending without tangible evidence of it; their energy merely departing. Maybe I’m just funny that way. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Tonight was someone’s first death. There are 2 more awaiting him in the distant future.

RIP man on the tracks. It was not your time.

The change of the seasons brings the predictable gift of allergies and general germ infestations. *that’s a technical term for colds and flu.

My London buddy has been plagued with flu for the better part of 2 weeks and is still feeling like shit on a stick *his words. Because of the way his company works, each employee is awarded some arbitrary score based on number of sick days blah blah.

So is he currently in bed, looking after himself and giving his body what it needs to recover? No. Of course not. There’s a penalty if he does, so instead he’s dragging his germ-infested arse into the office and spreading the love, never giving his body the rest it desperately needs to recover.

When did that become the norm? When did self-care get shelved for profitability? Our value has been downgraded to the point where we are cogs in the profit machine and work we will! No matter what. You feel like shit? Too bad Honey, you’re on duty making money for the machine. Get to it!

I’m generally very good about making sure I leave work on time. I work 7 am to 2:45 pm; those are the boundaries I set from the start and for the most part they are respected. The past few weeks those boundaries have been more of a suggestion and I’m feeling the effects of it.

Coming home too late too cook anything meaningful so I resort to quick and easy. Yeah well, quick and easy comes with consequences and my body feels sluggish and mentally exhausted.

That we constantly sacrifice our self-care at the altar of someone else’s profit is something that seriously needs to change. This just isn’t cricket. My life doesn’t have a dollar value thank you very much!

It’s enough. Our collective sanity has gone down the crapper and for what? How productive can you be when you feel like you’ve been hit by a truck? It winds me up sitting on the train sandwiched between people sniffling and hacking up a lung. Why do the rest of us have to be covered in germs because your boss is a dick?! GO HOME AND REST FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!

I came across this quote today and it sums it up pretty neatly:

“The Self Care Formula is simple. It is NITO(5R)…that is Nutrients In and Toxins Out in the 5 Realms the body works in (Mental, Emotional, Physical, Environmental and Spiritual). Unfortunately, we are doing TINO(5R) that is toxins in and nutrients out.”
― Nina Leavins

This ties in quite neatly with the 4 rooms philosophy I’m testing in my life. Nina adds in a 5th element which is crucial: Environment. The 4 rooms exist within the 5th so it makes sense that it all needs to be viewed holistically. Attempting to balance 4 rooms within an unbalanced Environment isn’t going to have optimum results.

Take an inventory of what environment you’re trying to balance yourself in because at the moment my environment is going a long way to throwing my 4 rooms out of whack in spectacular fashion. There was time to meditate tonight which is something I never do. It was definitely a much needed deposit into my spiritual room and it needs to become more regular.

This is going to be trial and error but it’s a start. At least the errors mean we’ve tried for something.

In the words of my old boss, ‘We’re going to eat this elephant one bite at a time.’

It was definitely my Monday mantra today in between the madness and mayhem. Some days all you can do is one thing at a time.

My mental room felt like an F2 tornado did a number on it and on the train ride home I decided it wasn’t worth the headache. If ever there was a good time to start making sanity a priority, it’s now.

Today step 1 was putting a time limit on the mental room. The madness doesn’t need to catch the train home at the end of each day. 7 hours is more than enough time to be spinning around like a Whirling Dervish. Work stayed at work and the train ride home was spent on a good book.

Step 2 was making time for the physical room: time to pack a breakfast and lunch for work; time to walk, even if it was only 10 minutes at a time every other hour; time for self-care.

For step 3 I’m going to use that slice of time I spend tossing and turning trying to fall asleep to be still and reflect; a bit like a mini-meditation. I don’t think my brain would hack a significant period of time meditating just yet. Baby steps here!

Time to switch off the devices, hydrate and hit the sack with a good book. Just once in my life I’d like to master the art of zen.

Rumer Godden once said: ‘There is an Indian proverb that says that everyone is a house with four rooms; a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but unless we go into every room every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.’

True story.

This quote made an appearance in my life a few years back then fell out of my memory only to resurface 2 years ago. It fell off my radar again and has recently resurfaced. Some lessons just keep reappearing until you learn them.

Cliches aren’t the only hidden cache of wisdom; proverbs rank up there in terms of overlooked wisdom but we’re all too busy to bother looking.

The past week has been draining mentally and emotionally. My priorities shifted from finding balance to wasting focus on external things that cannot be controlled and drama that wasn’t of my own making; the drain of other people’s expectations.

The past few weeks have seen me holed up in the mental room with enough snacks to feed a village for a month; neglecting the physical room to my detriment; God knows where the key to the spiritual room is and the only time the door to the emotional room was opened was to toss a whole pile of mayhem into it then slam the door shut quick fast and in a hurry.

Which room occupies the majority of your life? Are there some rooms you’ve never visited?

There was a time living in England when my spiritual room was in order. Religion and spirituality are not the same thing in my mind but that’s personal to each person. No judgements.

The physical room has left me depleted and depressed lately. Surgery has left a lingering presence which is not entirely unexpected but I’ve chosen to ignore that until now. Being up and about doesn’t necessarily mean the healing is complete and I’ve not allowed myself to accept that.

It turns out my body will have the last laugh in that conversation because it will do what it needs to do regardless of my opinion on the matter. There was a significant period of inactivity during recovery and that’s left its mark. It’s not irreparable but it’s not going to be a 5 minute job either. Listening to what my body needs hasn’t been a priority and it should have been.

My physical room is that barricaded door at the end of the cobwebbed hallway. It hasn’t seen the light of day in too long. The sheer volume of crap that’s been thrown into it is staggering. Nothing is as it should be. The interior is cluttered and grimy and it’s time for a serious renovation!

It turns out my sister had the spare key to my spiritual room; the door was cracked open a little yesterday. We spent the day together, catching up and reconnecting. I’ve pushed her away lately because I refuse to accept that she’s struggling with my move to Scotland. Instead of appreciating that it’s because my family love me that they will miss me, I’ve taken it as them not being supportive so I’ve distanced myself from them for self-preservation.

This during possibly the worst few work weeks in years. A time when having my family around me is necessary for my sanity, I’ve pushed them away. We had a good day reconnecting and talking about where we’re all coming from. She really is my rock and having a good cry on each other’s shoulders was cathartic. We found our link again and went and stocked up on some good vibes at a crystal shop in Geneva. The mental clarity from spending a few hours surrounded by crystals and good energy made a huge difference.

Yes, I know it sounds a bit new agey to some but crystals each have their own properties. Some things are true whether you believe in them or not. The stones I was drawn to all turned out to be things I need in my life right now. Clarity. Focus. Help with memory and repelling negative energy. Moving forward in life. Removing obstacles. Enhancing creativity.

Making time to meditate and be in my spiritual room will pull me out of the mental room that is currently the Black Hole in my universe. Hopefully the key to the physical room is in there somewhere.

As any good DIY-er knows, when tackling a major renovation you should focus on one room at a time. Renovating an entire house at once isn’t possible unless you have somewhere else to live during the chaos.

There’s no option to leave my body during this renovation so it will have to be one room at a time for a while.

Pick a room that would benefit you and spend more time in it. Don’t neglect the others but for now, we’re just airing those out. They will have their turn for a major renovation soon enough.

The physical room is the most terrifying at this point so while motivation is high and the urge is there, it will be the starting point. How, I don’t know but finding balance is part of why I started writing this blog. To find my way home. It turns out home isn’t just in Scotland; my body is also home.

The spirit within will show itself when you let it. If anyone has the instruction manual on how to do that, I’m all ears!

 

It’s taken a while to understand the meaning behind this and wrap my head around the implications of it.

Society teaches us that if there’s something you don’t like, you need to fight against it. Fight obesity; fight disease; fight war *oh the irony.*

Conversely, the Law of Attraction states that energy goes where attention flows. In a nutshell, if you’re focusing on fighting something out of existence, you are in fact bringing it into existence and it persists.

Seems fairly straight forward, right?

Over the past few weeks work has been crazy. One issue in particular is a query that needs data going back more than a decade. In an avalanche of numbers, figures, formulas and equations it’s been challenging finding a starting point, never mind a solution.

To attempt to solve this, I did what any logical human does; I went to the boss. He’s been doing this for years and rather than reinvent the wheel on my own it seemed reasonable to get his input on how to get moving on this mountain.

Simple. ‘Follow the money.’

Fast forward to today. In recent weeks I’ve rediscovered how much I enjoy cooking. The flip side is physically I haven’t been feeling great for a few months. Between the bloating and general poofiness it feels like I’ve gained 20 lbs even though the scale doesn’t seem to think so.

It’s difficult to find pleasure in cooking food from scratch when my body feels like I should be stapling my lips shut instead of feeding it anything.

With the new found interest in cooking I’ve been inhaling food shows on Netflix. Today’s choice was a documentary called ‘Fed Up.’

It addresses childhood obesity and the general dietary mayhem that makes up American culture. It’s a fascinating view; I’d recommend taking the time to watch it if you can as it definitely sheds a lot of light on obesity in general; not just from a child’s perspective.

Scarily we are sicker and fatter than ever before and it boils down to one simple fact: follow the money.

2 completely unrelated dots connected in my head; the circuit is complete and the light bulb just went on.

To solve the problem, we need to follow the money.

The tragedy is that there is no profit in health. The real money is in all the industries that feed us; advertise to us; ‘heal’ us; insure us; peddle solutions to us for all the problems that spring up around us. The weight loss industry is worth billions alone, never mind Big Pharma and the rest of it. If we all became healthy entire industries would go bankrupt.

We’re fighting obesity by dieting, exercising and ‘eating healthier’ when in reality we’ve solved nothing. The deck is not stacked in our favour. Advertising sabotages us around every corner. Health foods are laden with ingredients we don’t understand so in reality, we could be eating anything and how would we know?

With enough money scientific studies can be shushed and the studies that do make it into the mainstream are in fact funded by the industries they’re studying. Co-incidence much? Didn’t think so.

Any sensible gambler knows: if the deck is consistently stacked against you, you fold your hand and play a new game.

Remind me again why we aren’t doing that?! Probably because we have no clue that we were never meant to win the war.

One random fact that came out of the documentary made me laugh out loud at the sheer devious genius behind it.

When they ‘discovered’ that fats were responsible for heart diseases and cancers, blah blah, the industry moved to reducing fat in a bunch of stuff. One of those things was milk. Skimmed and fat-free milk became a thing and people were buying it by the tanker load.

Excellent. The fat that was extracted from the milk went where? Into cheese.

Cheese production went up by a ridiculous amount and suddenly, cheese everywhere. Burgers and cheese; pizza with more cheese; cheese-stuffed crusts; double cheese, MORE  CHEESE; the possibilities skyrocketed and America started inhaling cheese on everything while buying tankers of skimmed milk for the health benefits. KACHING!

We have been royally screwed guys. If we’re collectively going to solve excess weight in our own lives we’re going to need to go renegade and fix it ourselves.

Diets and fads aren’t going to right this ship. Following the money and realising who is profiting at your expense will change your choices at the store. If you care enough to realise you’re being scammed by every teaspoon of sugar that you eat maybe you’ll walk away from the game and make a different choice.

Sugar is more addictive than cocaine. Ever notice how vitamins and macros on nutrition labels all list % of daily allowance? Notice how sugar has no % next to it? Because if it did it would be 200+% of daily allowance on some servings and you might think twice. It’s conveniently excluded so you can go on blissfully unaware that you’re knocking another nail in your health coffin while the health/insurance/food industries are rubbing their hands in glee at some more guaranteed income on the balance sheet.

I have no interest in living a life of deprivation where every edible pleasure is forever stricken from my life. What I AM interested in is not feeling like a sack of poo tied with string because on paper I’m eating ‘health foods’ only to find out the damage is just being packaged differently.

My challenge to you is the next time you go to the store, shop around the edges only. The outer perimeter of the grocery stores are fresh produce, dairy, fresh meat & fresh bread. None of the packaged stuff that lives down the aisles with a shelf life that could rival the lifespan of a bowhead whale. No venturing down the aisles….. except maybe the spice aisle. *No MSG ALLOWED*

Instead of fighting weight gain and obesity maybe try pro-health. Plan A didn’t work so giving Plan B a go couldn’t hurt.

The Shepherd’s pie was delicious. Unfortunately it didn’t occur to me to take a picture of it because I was distracted with spending time with my friend so I promise to make it again soon and give you the recipe and pictures.

Lately I’ve been finding comfort in cooking up recipes from home. It’s kind of ironic given I’ve never really felt at home in the places I’ve lived. I’m either arriving, unpacking, packing or leaving. Maybe that’s what life is. Flavours from all the places you’ve been mashed up into something that makes you feel happy.

Each place I’ve been has contributed something to the tapestry of my life; some bright colours and other things are the snagged stitches that drive me crazy.

Emigrating is no small task by any stretch of the imagination. There’s a seemingly endless list of things to think about and lately it’s been overwhelming me. The fact that this has all happened before on 2 separate occasions is irrelevant. Each time is a new set of circumstances and a new destination so it’s not a one-size-fits-all approach.

The same major variables are present: job, accommodation, visas, tying up loose ends where you are now and figuring out how to navigate the challenges of the new destination. The big things are a given. You know your circle of friends, job, home and surroundings are going to change so when they do it’s hardly a surprise.

It’s the little things that end up sinking your boat. Simple things like not knowing where to go to buy a saucepan or where the nearest pharmacy is in relation to where you are. New road signs and the fact that a brinjal is called an aubergine in one place and an eggplant somewhere else.

There’s a very vivid memory of sitting on a pavement in Islington in London having a wobbly with my bestie because all we wanted was a bloody frying pan and couldn’t find one for love or money because we had NO clue on which stores sold them.

Not knowing how a simple ingredient is packaged. At home it came in an orange box. Is it now in a can, a packet, a box?! What is the brand name? Stupid little things like wanting to buy a loaf of bread only to be confronted with an entire aisle of options when previously your options were white/brown/sliced/unsliced.

Now it’s suddenly white/wheat/rye/multi-grain/gluten-free/wholemeal/round/square/sliced/unsliced/sesame-seed/poppy seed/pita pockets/round buns/long buns/ciabatta buns/croissants/muffins/87 types of bagels and your brain shuts down because all you want is a goddamn loaf of bread.

Things…….

One bite at a time. As my boss in SA frequently told us: we’re going to eat this elephant one bite at a time.

The man made a lot of sense.

This morning’s elephant was reading about the UK holding a referendum on June 23rd about whether or not to stay in the EU. The result of that referendum will have long lasting consequences, the least of which will be immigration.

Should the UK leave the EU, there’s a possibility Scotland will vote again on whether or not to be independent. That’s a whole other set of consequences.

Needless to say my brain started melting contemplating how this will affect my plan to relocate. After having a complete wobbly about it, it boiled down to one bite at a time.

What can I do today to make progress on my goal? Pick up the phone and call our UK office and simply ask if there’s an option to take a job from one office and work it remotely from where I want to be.

I should hear back in a few days. However small your step, just take it. Pick one small thing you can do and do it. Yes, it’s going to be uncomfortable and yes, it may give you an answer you don’t want but until you do it, the not knowing will steal your peace. To make an informed decision, you need information. Get it. Seriously. Find the information you need even if it’s not what you want to hear because until you know, there’s exactly nothing you can do to make progress.

Pick a direction and take a step that way. Promise me. One small step. That’s all we need to do today. Tomorrow we’ll take another one and eventually we’ll find the way.