100 Seconds to Midnight

For someone who has spent the past eight weeks either wearing her incredibly loose fitting little black wool dress, or pyjamas, there is a danger in comfort eating that may only be discovered in March at the end of my dress challenge when I revert back to wearing my other clothes - many of which involve a waistband. Increasingly conscious of this fact, whilst at the same time consuming, what has felt like, my own body weight in chocolate, I was perhaps more surprised than I should have been to discover the parallels between my life and that of an 'emotional eater'. On the rather helpful  helpguide.org website that I happened upon, amongst the causes for emotional eating are stress, a numbing of emotions and boredom or feelings of emptiness. The reasoning behind which are all very straight forward.  Stress produces the hormone cortisol, cortisol triggers cravings for salty, sweet and fried food, eating said food may momentarily satisfy the craving (except unlike with actual ph...

Yesterday it snowed.  This is not always a given of our winter and the quantity that fell out of the sky was rarer still.  Crystal layered upon crystal it was the kind that creaked as you walked upon it, and is, without a question of a doubt, one of my favourite sounds, yet even then I both love and hate the snow. There is no denying that I've found this week difficult.  The rain, the mud, the news from the outside world...  it has all been a bit grim and engulfed me in feelings of overwhelm and futility.  I have at times been as flaky as the snow but with far less structure or beauty, my walk this morning unfolding like a metaphor for my life. I can't quite shift the feeling that I'm trudging through snow, every step more laboured and taking more effort than it normally would just to cover the same distance, and that when I finally hit a patch where the path has been cleared walking suddenly feels too easy and I am fearful of slipping on ice and the inevitable ...

On Christmas Day I completed my self-set challenge for 2020 - to both run and walk a minimum of 20km for 20 consecutive weeks.  Having previously fallen short of the mark at 19 weeks I am justifiably proud of this achievement. But around the same time as I was running those final miles, Strava (my fitness tracking app of choice) released an annual summary of my efforts and, skimming past the fact that I'd covered a combined total of over sixteen hundred miles, my entire focus fell on the fact that apparently I was active for 289 days.  All I could think was "What happened to the other 76?"  I remember sitting with my feet up for a few days having twisted my ankle, but 10 weeks of idleness across the year? This is not how I remember it!  There is a saying amongst the converted "If it's not on Strava, it didn't happen" except that I really think it did.  Which can only lead me to conclude that, heaven forbid, I went out on numerous occasions without track...