And Start Again at Your Beginnings – Behind the Mask Series

Gaaah!  I am SO frustrated. So many things I want to do and I am stuck in bed with barely an ounce of energy to do any of them.  My blog is usually a chirpy enlivening thing, but today I am feeling heavy.  I don’t know where I’m going to go with this today.

It has been years since I regularly wrote.  I last published on August 19^th 2012, after a break of some time, and then I broke off entirely. Regular readers will know that I mostly published on a Wednesday, come hell or high water. My work was about the inspiration I found in life around me, sent out on the wing, in the hope that readers would thus be more inclined to find inspiration in their own lives, having accompanied me on my own meanderings round Tesco, childrearing, working on my goals etc

But then I separated from my husband of 8 years and two years later we got divorced.  I had to stop writing, because everything I wrote was related to observations of the little world around me, and the things that moved me.  I just didn’t want to hang my dying marital knickers out in public.  Whilst it would have made good sensationalist tabloid style reading, I’m just not THAT kind of reality star …  what happened during those times shall remain forever locked in the black box that accompanied that particular craft to it’s death – at least as far as this blog goes.

Now you know why I vanished.  Over the years I have many a time been tempted by world events to jump start the blog again, get back on my soap box and let the world know what I think about some burning topic or another, but of course these grand thoughts would come to me in the shower, and as soon as I was out, life took over, and who has time to write?  As a single mother I now had full financial responsibility for my household and that meant working harder and longer hours.  Increasingly over the last few years I have barely had time to turn around, never mind sit, contemplate and share.

So, whence this return to the keyboard?   Well guess what? In the midst of all the Jewish festivals which this year straddled September and October, events which I thoroughly enjoy and really got stuck into, I got the flu. Not some two-bit sniffly sniffly flu, but the real thing, complete with full body shaking, roaring temperatures, aching everything and complete and utter exhaustion. After two weeks it had abated somewhat but I still wasn’t better, so off I toddled for a check-up, and then another and then another … long story short I apparently have Post Viral Fatigue.  This is when you come out of a virus (cold, flu, it can be anything) and for some reason it leaves you utterly and totally wiped out, in such a manner that you can barely get out of bed.  Sometimes it lasts a few weeks, or it can take months.  If it takes longer than that, and if my understanding is correct, they get all fancy and call it Chronic Fatigue. With all this sitting about in bed, there’s finally time for writing! So now you know why I returned.

So I’m currently knocked out, spend most of my time in bed apart from getting my children up dressed and to the school coach in the morning and then feeding them when they come home, and getting them to sleep.  As to what the prognosis is, who knows?

On contemplation (if there’s one massive benefit about all this, it’s finally having time to think) I think I have been operating under exhaustion, maybe even mild CF for years.  And my body has finally said STOP.  I was going to crash out sooner or later, it was just a question of how.  I’ve been running around for years, and serving everybody’s goals but my own (worthwhile goals, true, but not my own), just exchanging hours for money (which if you’ve read anything on finances you’ll know is a recipe for never financially succeeding).  Also lately I’ve been getting further and further from my own long-term goals.  I’ve been in a position of having to work harder and harder to bring about one goal after another, all the while getting torn up inside because everything I achieved just took me further from what I actually want to do.

What do I want to do now?  Write to change lives, and take telephone and skype life coaching clients.  There’s more to it than that of course, but those two things would definitely align with my big dream, and they’re both things that the life I’ve been leading would never have allowed me to do.

So I suppose (and there always is a silver lining – the fact that I can usually see it is part of what makes me a life coach I guess) having crashed out like this has done me a big favour.  It’s taken me off the treadmill, out of the rat run.  It’s giving me a chance to reinvent myself.  Will I ever climb a mountain again? Go camping again? Gosh even play football with my son again? I don’t know.  I’d like to think so.  I’d like to think I will be back to rights quickly, that perhaps this was just a warning shot across the bows to force me to take care of myself.  I do believe I will get better faster once I know that everything I now do is aligned with my long term goals.  We will have to see on this one – I am just going to have to get comfortable and cosy with not knowing.

Why call the series ‘behind the mask’?  Well you know, I’m sick and tired of squashing myself, squashing my feelings, being something that I’m not. Even working to be perfect so that I can be a chirpy and happy life coach inside and out.  I think my life in recent years has made me grittier, more realistic, more honest.  I am still annoyingly happy and optimistic a lot of the time, but sometimes I’m not.  Today is one of those days.  I’m working for more integrity in my own life, and that means having the courage to be real and express what I really feel, what I really think.  Yes with dignity, yes with courage, yes with respect for others – always.  It’s ok to be honest.  You might have grown up with this hardwired into your life, but I didn’t, so it’s not easy for me.  I grew up to suppress everything.  I’m undoing it now – I’m slowly taking off the mask.

I’m still very much a life coach, and I can help you change your life.  I’m just changing my approach.  I’m going to be more real.  I challenge you to do the same.

It’s nice to be back home readers, let’s see how this gig goes.

Rivka