Thinking Week

I gave myself a rather boomtastic headache yesterday.
So boomtastic I had to be tucked up in bed at nine o’clock with a cup of hot chocolate and a Night Nurse because I had convinced myself that a sniffly nose and a headache equals the kind of flu Finn’s Dad was spreading to all and sundry this week and only Night Nurse could tackle such a crisis.
In truth I had over-thunk. You see in my silly head, September represents the opportunity to re-set my life and yesterday I tried to re-set everything from my child’s future, to the state of the nation, my fridge, my attitude to Christmas, my relationship with money, cake and Ste, every commitment I have got between now and New Years Day, my health, my fat bottom and much more besides. I worked myself into a positive frenzy. My back seized up from hunching over my computer typing lists, I forgot to eat until a plate of my favorite teeny brown shrimp was delivered to me and I decided I was Wonder Woman and tried to fit three months business planning into the one hour I usually dedicate to soap opera.
I am not Wonder Woman. She isn’t that stupid.
So yes: the result was a boomtastic headache that got between me and clarity and encouraged the kind of muddy thought that had me sniping at anyone who tried to stand in-between me and the mission I had set myself – namely the re-invention of who I am in a single day. A ludicrous, not to mention impossible mission for any good woman, let alone one whose muddy thinking really rather defines her.
Allow me then to declare, not one day dedicated to thunking. But a whole week. A thinking week! From Monday to Sunday next week I will be shifting the Seasonal Scrub I had pencilled in to the following week, and instead using the spare hours between the obligations required by parenting, partnership and personhood, to have a good think.
You see I do believe I don’t think enough. Granted I spend a lot of time talking about the thoughts dashing about my head. In fact the woman who talks more than me is surely a rare creature indeed. But I do not dedicate sufficient time to untangling the spaghetti in my brain so all too frequently thunks about what we are eating for the next week are busy doing battle with thinks about whether I fancy Tommy from Power (or find him utterly repulsive), and sadly are given about the same weight in relevance to the progression of my life.
This clearly will not do. So a thinking week I shall have. I will choose a journal from the many I cannot help but keep on acquiring and brain spill until I have scraped the very bottom of the brainy barrel. I will get it all down on paper, every last worry, plan and mad idea and then I will dissect it all until I feel wholly better.
Whenever there is a gap in my day I will pour a cup of tea and sit down with my journal all over again, and poke at what is left in my head. I will note both trivia and grandiose ideas. Minutiae and madness. I shall rationalise and rant. There will be no censor. I will allow my self to scream on paper. To weep. And to laugh. And when I am done, I will have in my hands all the thoughts that have been so much gravy, and I will be able to see again. A big list of to-do’s ( I LOVE to-do’s) and hopefully the kind of clarity and optimism that only a blank slate like September can truly offer.
Yes. A thinking week I shall have. A quarterly treat I will book into my calendar hereafter and remind myself to encourage you to do the same.
For our plates as terribly old-fashioned, thoroughly modern women are spilling over onto the table mats and I do believe it would help to sit down and have a good stare at what is troubling us, exciting us and inspiring us and take from those very emotions a new plan for a new season.
I do hope you will join me. We could have a good thunk together and finally decide whether Tommy Egan is a brute or an Adonis.