Hello constant companion

I am spending the next two weeks on holiday in London, at home, with small projects and goals and desires to sort and heal some things and clear out others. I've resisted the urge to call it a staycation, to feel guilty about not chasing the sun and take my bad habits on tour, to worry if I'm hiding away. I need to concentrate on making positive change in my life and to find a desire to create again. To feel each hour passing. To pay attention when anxieties and fears surface. To connect to more of live around me.

So here I am. Not entirely sure what to do with myself. Letting myself feel tired and worn down, but being aware of why and what I am doing knowing that good decisions will bring good changes - even despite the immediate discomfort they bring.

I asked to change medication yesterday. I never felt right on the sertaline. Less anxious, but not focused, balanced or happy. I forced myself to feel positive, but it was appearance and not real change.

Changing medications brings short-term side effects that aren't totally pleasant, anxiety and nausea. Restless, dream-filled sleep. Meditation helps some, but mostly the knowledge that it is temporary and that real comfort may be coming. Will be coming. Will make it a bit easier to change, more equipped to deal with the positives and negatives that life offers.

More equipped to connect and to create. That is my focus on this next period.

A therapist once told me that I live too much in my mind, so much so that I've let my body fall into disrepair. I'm now trying to focus on living in this body again. Repairing the damage. Meditation helps to place myself back into my body and I spent a good deal of time in the last few days in a body scan. The gym and Justin are a great help in that. Moving the body, making it contract and stretch and pull and push and do more than I think it should or can. At first the pain made me anxious, but I'm starting to sense the difference between good and bad pain.

Now, I concentrate on how I eat. Not necessarily what, but how. How mindlessly I feed it. How little aware of eating I was, waiting for feelings of happiness and euphoria to come. How able I was to turn off the feelings of discomfort that would follow. How little I tasted of the vast amounts of comfort I was eating. It is hard. I am not consistent. It is the single most important change I can make and therefore one that I'm most resistant to. The mind and emotion rally to act as they did before. To protect what they know. To give breadth and permission to the bad habits. I'm trying to re-wire the pattern. It is difficult. It requires finding satisfaction in other places.

How? How I connect and how I create. Connect and create. Simple and powerful, straightforward and complex words.