It's hard to settle

I'm finding it hard to settle down to work today. Something that seems to be plaguing my days more often than usual. And I suspect I'm not the only person. 

This morning I had a message from a long-ago friend from the US saying she remembered something I'd written on here many years ago about how I'm both an extrovert and introvert (aka ambivert), in that I get both energised and exhausted by time with people. She's finding that, as an extrovert, she's struggling without non-family people contact at the moment, that it's leaving her drained and without the energy to do what she has to do.

As an ambivert who usually works from home, I'm doing fairly well. But probably I'm neither getting enough contact with different people (the men in my house cannot cope with the number of words I have) nor enough alone time (I miss having my house during school hours).

The "hard to settle" feeling may partly come from the above, but also probably a delayed stress and grief reaction to this ongoing season. Everyone feels it: this is dragging on much longer than we want it to. It stresses me that there is no definitive end in sight. 

Trying to stay healthy and engaged is hard. Unlike some people, my work has not changed much, which is both good and bad. It's good because I've not had big changes to adapt to. I've already got a well-organised, permanent work station with an ergonomic chair at home. I'm not grieving the loss of daily contact with workmates or the loss of the familiar routine of commuting. But it's bad because I've still got approximately the same amount of work to do regardless of how I feel or who is in my workspace (although I have, thankfully, struck a slightly slower patch in my work flow).

My work station, right next to the dining room table and a large
glass behind me out to our tiny backyard.

I'm very thankful that we have such a plethora of ways to easily and rather cheaply stay in contact with people; that is helping us a lot. That would have been very different if this had happened 20 years ago!

I'm also thankful for a bit more wriggle room to do some things that I ordinarily would have had to say no to. For example: joining a book club. I'm participating in a Facebook bookclub for a book that I had on my shelf, My Seventh Monsoon by Naomi Reed. It's not a fancy set up, so we're probably not getting as much out of it as we would if there were more connection and interaction between those involved. But it has been an interesting time of short reflection in my days. It's something to look forward to and has been a point of interaction with two other friends who are doing it also. And having something to look forward to each day is something that is definitely worthwhile building into your schedule if you can. Even if it is something silly or sounds rather simple, it can help.

And then there's the spontaneous connections with various people, like the friend I haven't seen for 12 years who contacted me this morning. Some of these connections wouldn't have happened in the pre-COVID-19 world when we were busier and more locally focused.

As I wrote in this blog post a couple of weeks ago, now is a time to get creative. How can we creatively help ourselves? And even more importantly, help one another? 

This is the snail mail I received with a gorgeous card and two recipes.
My postcards are very different, but I'd love to send you one.

A couple of weeks ago also I shared on Facebook that two creative colleagues in the US (they're on my magazine editing team) decided at this time to send snail mail to people who asked for it. They volunteered to send things such as a book recommendation, a recipe or two, a story, a poem, creative writing prompts, music playlist etc. I got a lovely letter in the mail with a couple of recipes to try. So I decided to do my own: send a postcard from Japan to anyone who wanted one. So far I've sent four. Would you like one? Let me know (email: wendy.marshall04 at gmail.com).

How are you? Is there something I can do for you? Maybe you've got a topic you'd like me to write about on this blog? Shoot it on over.

Meanwhile, I've got to get back to editing some articles about "men in Japan" and "ministry through education", oh, and there's that article I'm writing for OMF's social media about the current "work at home" difficulties that Japan is experiencing (if you have a personal story about the latter, I'd love to hear from you). So, plenty to do . . . must get back to work . . . but perhaps a coffee first!

Care package for Australia

I'm still struggling with my cold, complicated, as always, by asthma. However this afternoon if I sit quietly in my "relaxing chair", I feel pretty close to normal. In fact I've gotten through a fair bit of computer-based work in between resting over these last couple of days. I'm very thankful that this was going to be a quiet week anyway (it's incredibly rare that I have almost no meetings or appointments scheduled for an entire week, but that's what this week looked like). I'm trying to be patient with my body and thankful for the time to rest.

After yesterday's depressing post I wanted to write something a little more upbeat today. Not much has been going on that's worthy to write about this week. It's Thursday and I've left home just once since Sunday morning!

Here's my meagre offering:

We've gone the full circle. When we arrived in Japan over 17 years ago my mum sent us care packages (she still occasionally does, but usually around birthdays and Christmases). Now we're about to send our first care package to our son in Australia! I was surprised that it was pretty hard to find stuff to send. Perhaps we're not Japanese enough? 

But really, we don't eat a lot of packaged stuff, and that's all one can send to Australia. He'd love us to send onigiri or curry rice or yakisoba, (rice ball or Japanese curry or Japanese stir fried noodles) but these would never make it through customs. I wish I could send him some homemade biscuits!

One day soon I'll get back on my bike and get this to the post office!

Mail's not coming?

I was waiting for the post, but the postman flew straight past. They've been holding our mail for two weeks, maybe it was too interesting to let us have? Perhaps they'll pay the bills too. The main thing I'm looking for is evidence of what people have been saying - that I'm in print again!