Mind Full, or Mindful?

I wrote a blog post on Friday about the Grand National.  Nothing new about that, I write one every year.  The new thing was that I had not written prior to that for over six weeks.  I have only written nine this year.  This is not me.

I love to write.  I have fifty different opinions on various subjects every day.  I am not short of material.  When I wrote my Grand National post it felt like coming home.  Everything was the same, the planning, the writing; the ease of putting what is rolling around in my head on to the screen.

But there is a disconnect there that I cannot deny.  I think of blog posts that I want to write and they remain in my head, unwritten.  I see so many posts from the inspiring and wonderful bloggers I read and I think "This is what I think, I could have written this, why didn't you?"

In order to unpack my feelings about why I am not actively writing any more, I have to look inside.  I have had a fucking shitty last two years.  My step dad being in and out of hospital, his fall, his subsequent nine months in hospital and then a care home; his death.  The aftermath of that.  My beloved little pooch dying.  It has been utterly shit.  Coupled with the fact that I have my sneaking depression that usually likes to creep into me when I am having a good day.

I need a head clear out.

I read something the other day that struck a chord with me.  "Humans are unhappy because we spend our time and energy thinking about things that don't exist - the past and the future" - Oli Doyle.

It really made me think about how much time my head is in the past, or thinking about the future whilst the present is just passing me by.  The past does not affect this moment I am living in right now.   Each second that passes by I will never have again.  I want to make it count.

The quote I mentioned was from a book called Mindfulness for Life.  It is a six week course that gives you a challenge each day in order to make you live in the present.  Not letting the past affect you now, not worrying about the future.  Just living.

So I am going to try this out.  Will it work?  I don't know.  But I am going to document my journey here.  Living my life in the present, not in the story of me.