Not quite back in the zone

Did you know that we only live about 650,000 hours in total? And that’s if you manage to keep you and your wits together and go beyond our three score years and ten. Deduct the amount of time we spend sleeping (219,000) and the hours we spend as a minor being told what to do by our parents (93,440) and the time we spend at work (83,200) then that leaves us just 254,360 hours to do all the stuff we need to do that will allow us to reflect back, come the Day of Judgement (or whatever), and decide our life has indeed been more than just a minuscule and random blip in the history of the universe.

The last two weeks will not, in my case, significantly contribute to the overall legacy I hope to leave. I have gone to bed early, I have got up late and I have taken lunch-breaks. I have also spent more hours than I care to calculate on my knees in the garden attempting to coax/bully/manipulate my herbaceous borders back into something that resembles an English country garden rather than tropical rain forest. Until yesterday I did not appear to be winning the War of the Roses but this morning as I stood in my nightie looking out of my bedroom window surveying the garden from my superior vantage point (trying not to scare the neighbours in the process, I don’t want house prices to drop any more than they have already) I realised that all the physical damage I had sustained was indeed worth the effort. Though I am slightly embarrassed to go to the pool to train as I have so many scratches and cuts on my forearms I look like I’ve been self-harming. I also have a skip in my drive that is increasingly looking like it’s not up to the job.

I sat in my conservatory last night pondering on the stuff of life and trying to shake myself out of the lethargy that has overtaken me since I got back. My NeverTooLate list is beckoning and I need to pick back up with my swimming/flying/shooting/tennis but still I feel like some personal gravitational force is holding me down and so I am exploring the strange sensation of not doing anything for a little while. I don’t suppose this state will last – I like having a busy and interesting life – but in the meantime I will stay with it and even the state of my en-suite is not lifting me from the sofa.