You Can Call Me El

That's right, this week is Mental Health Awareness Week! Look at their website: the theme is kindness . It’s really nice that this exists, especially at the moment. I encourage you to dive in. I didn’t know what I wanted to write about this week. Mental Health Awareness was a ready-made theme, but… I’m tired. It’s obvious that Mental Health Awareness Week is good, CLEARLY. It’s fab that we have it, and that we have World Mental Health Day (on 10 October). But I’m just… so aware already, you know? Thinking about mental health is crucially important and it’s also BORING and I do it ALL THE TIME. I’m sick of it!!!! So I came into this feeling vaguely annoyed, and then I spent some time on the campaign’s website and felt guilty, because honestly they’re doing great work. Of course we should be focusing on kindness, the most important character trait anyone can have, and of course we should be trying to spread it. It’s reassuring that there are compassionate, diligent people w...

There’s an interesting tension between the wish to do something and the wish to do nothing. I’ve been thinking a lot about how appealing it is, when you’re busy and stressed, to dream of a time when you have nothing to do. Thinking about finally putting your feet up, watching endless TV or films, the trashy kind you’ve seen before, playing computer games, lying around. I think lying around is the main thing, really. It’s the main component part to chilling . But… is the dreaming about it nicer than the doing it? I have a guilty secret, which is that I was glad to be put on furlough. I felt close to burning out in January and February, and I wanted to do something about it but didn’t. I’d just started a new job and was worried about asking to take time off and I didn’t know if I’d have the confidence. And then I was furloughed, and I was handed the time and space I needed to rest and think and recover. Or this is how it might have felt, if it hadn’t been prompted by a pandemi...