charles barrow's writing

More than a week of January has passed already. It's usually such a long (seeming) month that it's a blessing that a quarter of it has passed before I really noticed. The weather has been continually wet since the new year began, and I've been feeling rather under par since Christmas, so what outdoor exercise I've managed to get between showers has been welcome but short lived. I have, however, very much enjoyed catching many signs of an emerging spring - emerald spears of the early daffodil, crocus and snowdrop. Songbirds singing to ward off trespassers in their territory, and nest building. Buds on the hydrangea. All of these things help to lift my spirits. My mental health has not been good recently, so I've actively been thinking about what does bring me joy, and what brings the dark clouds into my life. I'm making lists. It's difficult to find any consistency when it comes to self care, it has to be worked at. And life has a tendency to poke a stick in ...

Okay so the last couple of weeks have been tough ones for me - mental health wise. I was motoring along quite well, beforehand, and then I hit a brick wall. It's really not uncommon that this is the way it happens, which I suppose makes it a pattern for me. There was no particular big event, or inciting incident if you will, that tipped me over into depression, just a drip, drip of small things that added to the pool of worries and anxieties (if they aren't the same thing), and suddenly I can't get off the sofa. I'm single, so it's easy not to have to get up, get dressed, leave the flat. There is no-one to chivvy me along. I don't work at the moment so I have nowhere to get to by 9am, and no one to call me for missing my shift. And I recently moved to a town where almost no one knows me, just a couple of folk I say hello to in the communal hallways of the building where I live. So it's really easy for me to just not participate in the day. I'm in a kind ...

This is a marker post. A post that is just marking time until I can think of something useful to say. I'm struggling at the moment to achieve much of anything. The days and weeks have been rolling past and I don't have anything of value to show for them. There are legitimate excuses, of course. But they are only because of the same issues that are affecting everyone. Two year pandemic, slow recovery overtipped by rampant inflation and galloping fuel prices. In the doldrums as the job search falters, no responses, no luck, no glimmer of interest from any employer. I'm doing my best to find and stick to a routine that's a positive response to all this. I do write my journal every morning, and then I take a crack at the Wordle word of the day. And then I go walking because...well, just because. 

Back in February I wrote a post about preparing to move home, and making plans for the future. Well, what's that saying about God laughing while we make plans? As I was writing that, Covid-19 must have been in the news, albeit as a problem on a distant horizon, a problem that would surely never affect us here in England, but it clearly wasn't alarming enough for me to make mention of it, or think for one moment that it would affect the whole world to the degree that it has. I had no idea either, of course, that I'd lose my mum less than two months later. She was poorly, but she'd been poorly several times before and she'd pulled through. So circumstances change, and plans change with them. Back in Feb I was planning to find a new job, a new challenge to take my life in a different direction. Now I plan what I might have for lunch, what I could cook for dinner that would make a nice change. I plan to visit the supermarket, two days hence and remember the celery thi...

I love autumn. I know many people find it melancholic, marking the end of summer as it does, but I love its sights, colours, sounds, and smells. It always lifts my spirits. I've been having a hard time of it lately. I've been struggling with depression and anxiety, brought on by a torrid time at work.  My writing has fallen by the wayside over the last months, and I've not been able to summon the energy to do much about it.  But autumn has been working its magic and I find myself slowly resurfacing and feeling interest in my surroundings and with a sense of urgency about the future. Below are a few of the images that I've been posting to Twitter, on the theme of autumnal. I suppose taking these, and other, photos has been my creative outlet while I've been incapable of writing anything. Photos are the author's own.

I didn’t turn up here at all in July. I was absent from many things in July. The day job took a toll through June, and July saw the train come off the tracks. There was no multi-carriage pile up, thankfully, but many weeks have been spent in a siding while repair work has been carried out. But, enough of this train wreck analogy. My health took a nosedive. My physical health (a nasty chest infection) and my mental health too. Stress, anxiety, panic attacks. Not a good state of mind to take into a busy working environment, not that I had much choice in the matter, mind. So, I also took myself off to a doctor and asked to go back on medication, again. It’s been a few years since I had need to take anti-depressants and I seemed to be doing really well, but that’s the thing about mental health issues, they can ambush you at any time. It really doesn’t take much of a real-life issue to nudge you back over the line into illness. So I don’t suppose I’ll ever be able to say, ‘That’s me fixed,...