'Meh' Days

Today I decided was going to be a productive Sunday. I even had a 'to do' list with several things I was going to work on. These included:

1. Writing a post for this blog on my favourite skincare products of all time.
2. Reading a beauty book which was going to be inspiration for another book myself and a fellow journalist were planning to write.
3. Reading a few chapters of Peter Ackroyd's 'London - The Biography' which will hopefully make me more culturally aware of the city I live in and give me some inspiration for the Epic Novel I'm one day going to write.
4. Writing two short news pieces due in next week.
5. Starting some background reading for my MA course that I'm going to start in a few weeks' time.
6. Going to a Ballates class
7. Tidying my room and de-cluttering my shelves

Needless to say, I've done 0 of these proposed tasks. My actual day has consisted of:

1. Drinking tea
2. Watching the end of Eat, Pray, Love (not a great film, but the scenery/Javier Bardem is nice to look at)
3. Drinking more tea
4. Buying an overpriced aubergine salad
5. Eating nearly a whole packet of cheddar and pistachio biscuits from Ottolenghi
6. Reading all of two pages of Peter Ackroyd's 'London - The Biography' and falling asleep on the sofa.
7. Waking up and making some tea.

Sometimes you can start the day with the best of intentions, but have not one single ounce of motivation whatsoever. And then you spend the rest of the day beating yourself up about being a useless member of society. You desperately try to start tasks then get frustrated and not finish them, in a vain attempt to have done something productive come 9pm. Then you start spiralling into self-doubt 'well, I'm never going to succeed at anything if I don't push myself/spend my days faffing about like this etc, etc.'

This is what I found tricky about being a student, and later being a freelance journalist working from home. But sometimes it's just worth accepting that there will be days where your mind just wants to do naff all, and you'd rather loaf about than try and find a solution for world peace. Yes it's great to have those productive days where you wake up with the sun, head off to that spinning class, get home bright eyed and bushy tailed and spend the rest of the day at a high level of productivity, feeling on top of the world. But sometimes, complete lack of motivation is your mind and body's way of telling you that you need to chill the f*ck out.

You're not an automaton and you sometimes need the lazy, non-productive days to take stock and recharge your batteries. Also some of the best ideas can come about from lazing around - think of Isaac Newton chilling out under that tree and discovering gravity, after an apple hit him on the head... I'm not saying slobbing out on the sofa is going to win me a Nobel prize, but it's healthy to have days where you give your mind and body a break. I think living in a big city and not having children to look after makes you feel pressurised to spend your free time working towards something, or expanding your cultural horizons, or hitting the gym, or socialising.

But in a way, it's like when you can't get to sleep and start panicking about it - the best solution to just lie there/go and watch some dodgy foreign film on TV and not get worked up about it. In the same way, sometimes it's necessary to embrace one's inner slob, make yourself a cup of tea and not feel like a complete failure. Self-love and self-acceptance comes in many guises after all.

How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Gym

I know a lot of my posts so far make me sound like a smug, has-got-it-together type who - at the ripe old age of 29 - has managed to iron out every niggling neurosis and for whom life is plain sailing. Well, I may have less to moan about than I did ten years ago, but - surprise, surprise - I'm far from 'sorted'. I have those mornings like today, where I wake up and my brain decides to play a home-movie-style showreel of everyone who's f*cked me over in the past and every instance where I could have stood up for myself but didn't. Culminating in me thinking that I don't actually have any true friends because I don't have anything anybody wants, people are just going to walk all over me for the rest of my life and I'm going to live out my days as a sad, single lonely hermit.

Then I took myself to the gym and went spinning. And felt a million times better. The benefits of fitness on your mental health are seriously underrated. Why the government doesn't put more effort into promoting fitness for better psychological wellbeing in secondary schools (teenagers I think are especially vulnerable to mental health issues and depression) is beyond me. When I was at school, I saw P.E. as a weekly humiliation - completely pointless ('how does shooting a ball into a hoop get me a job?' etc.)

Plus, I wasn't the most sporty of children. I was part of what my teacher called the 'note brigade' - always having an excuse why I had to sit out of dance/swimming/hockey/netball. There was never any emphasis on how great exercise makes you feel, more about making it onto the school netball team and 'having a great body'.

Years later into my early twenties, my friends and I still used to snigger at the keen, sporty girls who went to the gym every night and sports clubs after work - dismissing them as ferociously competitive 'jolly hockey sticks' types. My friends and I used to join gyms together and then sneak off to the pub when 'gym time' came - laughing like a group of naughty school girls bunking off double maths. Later when I moved to North London, I had the same attitude towards the whippet thin 'yoga bunnies' I saw striding down Upper Street, yoga mat in one hand, soya latte in the other.

I came to the conclusion that I was just not a 'gym going' type - and styled myself in the manner of Bridget Jones (complete lack of self-discipline yet loveable for it etc.). Even when I joined my local Fitness First a few years ago,  with the intention of doing three 7am spinning classes a week, part of me remained unconvinced that I would stick at it.

Yet in the years that followed, it was my gym-routine that helped keep me sane when I broke up with my ex and lost my grandmother. So yes, this may have turned me into a fitness 'bore' I used to mock in my former days. No, I haven't morphed into Miranda Kerr - but I feel better and yes, a little trimmer than before. I love the appetite you work up in a spinning class, the energised feeling it leaves you with and the ability to de-stress after an hour of yoga. It's not about being thinner than my friends or having a 'holier than thou' attitude. It's about being more bodily aware and focusing on the present, rather than living in your head and being stuck in the past.

Rather than a new year's resolution or a passing phase, the gym has definitely become a big part in my life  - I couldn't imagine not going for a few weeks, I would really miss it.

But if the idea of a gym really isn't for you and you'd rather be in the great outdoors, running is a good alternative. I've also discovered Rooftop Yoga classes, led by the lovely Lucy Bannister which take place on top of a car park in Peckham and boasts one of the most beautiful views of the city. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday morning...