I’m sitting in the sun. Glorious. I don’t remember the last time I sat in the sun for no reason at all. I work hard at life ten out of ten times of the day.
It’s a big enclosed lush property, sounds of the Garden Route filtering through the air, a definite gentler pace to life settling in my bones and when you lean back slightly a contour line of the sunlit peaks of the Outeniqua mountain range comes into view.
I’ve been so busy running a shop that I’ve forgotten what life feels like on the outside. I love my shop but I also love the nomadic lifestyle I have cultivated over the years. The push pull of settling down and moving around ever present. I approach both with caution and reckless abandon totally dependent on how I feel and by now one should know that feelings in a depressed person isn’t so consistent.
I’ve tried to brave the topic of depression more often and have found a few close friends who struggle too. It has been quite a relief to be understood.
The sun burns my skin and I think, I didn’t bring sunblock for tomorrows day out in the mountains. It didn’t deter me from keeping on sitting there pondering about life though.
An ocean of non-belonging washes over me. These emotions come at the most unexpected times, shadowing your sunny moments. I want to say, that’s depression for you but its different for everyone I believe. There isn’t one sure way to be depressed, there aren’t five sure ways to spot a depressed person, there isn’t one sure way to fix it either. I find it interesting that alcohol is a welcome socially accepted deterrent for feelings but a depressed person makes everyone uncomfortable. Something to think about.
Over the past few months my excitement for packing and heading off on an adventure has dulled a bit and when I do pack and head off it feels sticky and tricky and filled with anxiety. The boards on the roof, blowing all over the place trying to tie them down in gale force wind with only one pair of hands. This the opportune time to have been an octopus. The gear for running, climbing, cycling and surfing that all has their own respective boxes that fit in the car like Tetris. All the orders that need to go out before I leave, making sure all my clients get a detailed message of how what when and where and then making sure they read it because woah uninformed clients are intense, the ones that don’t read so good are worse. Farm living also takes its toll. Having said all of that, I am well aware of having chosen my reality and my circumstances.
I’ve been running a lot. A friend suggested we celebrate turning forty by running an ultra. We entered and the journey to cover sixty kilometers on foot over the Outeniqua mountains at the end of May began. Right about the time training should have become a priority I got bored of the every day mundane and opened a shop in Scarborough. What can I say, boredom is a great instigator for making wildly reckless decisions. Up until now that strategy has luckily served me well. Training didn’t go according to plan, I was sick for a month and my calves weren’t keen on running for longer than twenty kilometers at a time. I called it and am now no longer running sixty kilometers but twenty five and hoping with everything inside of me that my calves feel like going on an adventure come tomorrow.
On the way up here driving always gives me much needed time to think. Generally I would plan an entire scenic route drive with mandatory coffee making stops near pretty places but I just didn’t feel like it. I am suffering from something I have named an intense case of life fatigue. Just no longer so into it.
I am really good at getting myself out of bed and to work, no one needs to force me to step out of the house and into the studio to create. I feel lucky in that way. I really love what I do. I love the way my life looks but what about the way it feels? I think I’m finally tired of working so hard to make life look so good.
Maybe its time to start feeling instead of doing.