thoughtfortheday Anne Sumner thoughtfortheday Anne Sumner

First Quarter: Complete

Ten weeks ago (so not quite the start of the year, which started bumpily) I was feeling pretty low and when I realised it was ten weeks to the start of April and the Easter break, I committed to see what I could do to turn things around in that time. At the beginning, each week seemed to go so slowly, but the last three or four have just sped by. I didn’t really have much of a process or a vision for this, but I did everything I could to follow the positive vibes when and where they appeared and this resulted in an overhaul of my eating habits, meal planning, cooking, being much more organised at home, having better elements in my daily routine to choose from, being more productive creatively, sleeping a more regular schedule, and learning to connect spiritually in new ways.

Now the spring has well and truly come and those grim winter days are long gone (I don’t know about anyone else but I felt truly lost over the winter - ultimately in a helpful way but it wasn’t particularly fun!) and it seems with each day and hour even that I’m coming back to myself, stepping into my power and being more deliberate about what I want to make in the world.

So some questions for today as we embark on the next month and the next quarter and the happy run to midsummer’s day:

  • Who do you see yourself becoming by the end of June (or the solstice if that’s more meaningful to you)? How do you see your life changing?

  • What can you take from what you’ve learnt so far this year to embed in your daily life/routine as an improvement?

  • What’s driving you now? If it’s different from what was driving you at the start of the year then, how? What resources does this drive need?

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Lockdown Life Anne Sumner Lockdown Life Anne Sumner

Re-emergence

I’ve been contemplating a return to blogging for a couple of months and finally I’m here! with lots to say on various topics; I have a Hundred Helpful Thoughts project I’m working on, and various thoughts about lockdown life which we’re still one-foot-in here. Like most people, it’s been a year since I was office-bound, socialising and travelling as a norm and I am trying to separate the ways that year has shaped me for the future into distinct threads - which I think writing will help with.

I live alone and lockdown has been a combination of getting insanely comfortable within my four-wall-fortress, and confronting the internal landscape of my mind. This mental world expanded to fill the space left by events, socialising, roaming, exploring, commuting, and all the outside-home things we’ve no longer been able to do - even when I’ve been outside walking I’ve been further into my head having conversations about what’s happening (or not). There has been nowhere to hide from parts of my own persona that I’d previously tried to muffle with my busy life, and like it or not I have had to face down discomforting trains of thought and self-conceptualisation that have dogged me most of my life. Regardless of how lonely and unforgiving that’s felt at times, I feel much stronger in terms of not hiding from myself (and no longer needing to), having a good think about how I want to combine what I’ve got inside and honour what I am with the life that I’m living, and settling on some pretty big changes in what I’m actually doing with my time. I would sum this up as a massive formative process and a shift in fundamental values and it turns out that what’s important to me is different from what was important when I was engaged in this cover-up web of a lifestyle. Many things have become vastly clearer.

My biggest takeaways have been:

  • Values-wise, my priority is freedom, especially the freedom to live each day as it comes, let it unfold as it will and embrace the unexpected.

  • Ironically, social distancing has given me back the power to determine how I choose to interact with the world and those around me.

  • I have to take responsibility for myself, and I’ve learnt that I can trust myself to do the things that matter - this is a huge relief. Independence and freedom go hand in hand and I’m less anxious the less reliant I need to be on others.

Overall I see this as a tale of empowerment.

Things I’m still working on:

  • Courage

  • Self-expression

  • Contributing, sense of purpose

  • Balance

  • If my driving force is no longer (or decreasingly) fear and anxiety, what is my life built on now?

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