Well it was a good idea at the time

My plan to write more regularly has gone tits up already, it appears, in part because of point the first: ongoing bullshitty illness (we all seem to have been coughing since Christmas, or at least coughing in relay, like some new and unwanted addition to the Olympics) and the knock-on impact of this on plans and any sense of being in control of one’s own destiny (oh, how I laugh). This lack of progress is also aided and abetted by point the second: major lethargy (on which: probably related to point the first). Either way, I appear to have done fuck-all lately except… exist. Food is cooked (and I recently discovered a frankly life-savingly-brilliant recipe for a chocolate marmalade number, the only changes made being swapping the chocolate wafer for gingernuts in the base due to wtf even is a chocolate wafer in this context). The house is cleaned. Plants are watered (sometimes). Cats are fed. Children, too. But in creative terms, I have had to come to terms with the fact that this appears to be something of a fallow period.

New research mentioned in the Guardian recently suggests that humans may need more sleep in winter, it transpires (and thank you to @ali.m.atkinson (Insta) for flagging this). Now, naturally one’s first instinct on reading this might be to pass the researchers a well-deserved Stating The Bloody Obvious award, but for me this was a useful reminder that actually, we’ve moved so far away from listening to what our bodies want and our minds need at this time of year that it’s easy - for me at least - to fall into a trap of thinking we’re just a bit crap in the months following the celebrations of the winter solstice/Christmas/[insert winter festival of choice here]. I’ve been gently releasing myself from the hook of ‘but you should be walking more than 7000 steps every day! Failing to do so reveals you to be inherently unworthy!’ since about November, when my months-long push to spend more time outdoors and to shed some of the weight I’d put on during Covid times suddenly seemed to founder, leaving me berating myself for the intense urge to sit in a darkened room and do nothing, perhaps other than the occasional reach for something warm and chocolatey. Since going back to work in January, I’ve also been berating myself for failing to get a promotion application together, and procrastinating for England on nearly every task on my extensive list. So maybe this article was just the universe’s way of reminding me not to listen to my own bullshit about productivity, and also to acknowledge the progress I have made, and to think more kindly about myself. I’m very good at saying to colleagues, friends, students how important it is to speak to oneself as one would a friend - ‘you wouldn’t dream of being so unkind to someone else who related circumstances like these to you, now would you?’ I will cry - and yet when it comes to my own stuff it’s a big fat ‘physician heal thyself’ situation.

So I am not managing to write as much as I had hoped. And I am also not managing to exercise as much as I would like, particularly outside. And I am also eating a bit more cake than is indicated by my ostensible goal of weight loss rather than weight maintenance (although one might argue that I am in fact eating precisely the indicated cake amount for maintaining my sanity, and ditto my consumption of red wine). And that is OK. The wheel will turn; the weather will warm; the mornings will lighten.

And in the meantime, some bright shiny things that have caught my magpie eye this week:

• Jo’s Marmitey cards

• This marvellous track from French singer Henri Salvador:

• These wondrous stove-top goddesses from one of my favourite potters, Tati Dennehy.