Every year, we attend the Woodford Folk Festival where for seven days we immerse ourselves in music, workshops, and presentations about a whole range of topical issues. This year, we attended a talk by Brisbane’s first Green party councillor Jonathan Sriranganath entitled, The Radical Potential of Local Councils. I learnt so much and realised that we do have agency and can have a big local impact if we are engaged and become involved in what is happening in our community. You don’t have to be a supporter of any political party to get a lot out of his talk. You will learn about the enormous leverage we have as individuals to make significant changes. Make yourself a cuppa, sit back and listen to how you can change your world for the better.
If you haven’t already signed up to the Not Quite Right podcast, do yourself a favour. For conversations about media, culture, and the art of writing, it is a very entertaining and informative series of podcasts that recently celebrated their first birthday. And they do run writing competitions as well with the option of purchasing feedback. By the time my newsletter lands in your inbox, their January challenge will be over, but if you are signed up, you will not only be the first to hear about any future challenges but will join a vibrant group of writers from around the world.
And last but definitely not least, my novel The Truth about My Daughter is edging closer to publication. I have sent in my dedication, bio and acknowledgments and am basking in a review sent in by an early reader. Let me share it with you to whet your appetite.
A heart-warming and heart-wrenching journey of family, romance, and parenthood, The Truth About My Daughter explores what it means to protect your loved ones, claw for motherhood, and stare the harsh realities of life right in the face. A wonderfully compelling and consuming read with a message that lingers in your gut.
Thanks so much Olivia for your kind words. A review like this means the world.
Running
For those of you who have read my earlier newsletters, you will recall that I completed my goal of running sixty marathons in November last year. It was both exhilarating and left me with a feeling of ‘what now?’ This has brought me full circle as to why I run. After longer than a three-decade habit of regular running, I had to remind myself that dragging myself out of bed and lacing up is about so much more than training for events.
There are two types of runs – Doing and Being runs. They are both mindful but with the focus on different things. Both are valuable and have important lessons that can be translated into everyday life.
I have two different kinds of Doing runs. There are the ones that precede an event like a marathon. Preparation for a distance event requires me to cover a certain distance per week and may include very specific routes. If I am training for a trail run, I need to include at least one hilly run and add in a shorter, faster run to ensure I have fuel in the tank for the final stretch of my LSD (long slow distance) runs. I mix things up to challenge my body in different ways.
The other Doing runs involve me disappearing into my thoughts while my legs do the hard yards. It is usually when I am working on a story and am stuck or have received feedback that means I have to rethink a novel. Sometimes I have been asked to write a specific non-fiction piece for a magazine and have a twenty-four-hour deadline and a workday ahead of me. A Doing run is a perfect uninterrupted space to sketch the outline in my head, making it easy to get the words down later in the day. Sometimes I get so absorbed in my thoughts, that I find myself on a different route to the one I planned to run.
Being runs are just that. The essence of mindfulness. I let my feet find their happy pace and focus on the moment. The temperature on my skin, the sunrise, the way my feet land on the pavement or grass. I absorb the sounds, the scents and taste the humidity in the air. It is a five-senses run, a meditation, a head clearing. I feel my breath enter and leave my lungs. I slow down, allow my mind to rest and let thoughts disperse.
It is said there is a time and a place for everything and that applies to running too. Sometimes I need a Doing run to nut things out and other times I need a Being run to find my equilibrium after a tough week. They are both valuable and have their place. They remind me that life is about balance. Work and play. Busy periods followed by rest. Grief and joy. Time for mindful activity and time for mindfulness. Doing and Being.
Writing Pearl Number Six
Staying Healthy and Fit While Writing.
The bad news about writing is that it is sedentary and to be successful you need to spend a lot of time with your backside in a chair. The temptation when you are up to your eyeballs in a novel or have a deadline for that non-fiction essay looming is that when you do schedule breaks, you wander to the kettle and detour via the fridge. After all, we all need to fuel that creativity and inspiration pouring out onto the page.
And this is the trap. I remember when I started running, I was very unfit and the effort of dragging myself out for a twenty-minute jog felt so momentous that I believed I had earned the right to eat whatever I liked. As a medical student on a very tight budget, it was not unusual for me to eat a packet of shapes for dinner, washed down with copious instant coffee. That way, I didn’t even have to pause while trying to commit a textbook of physiology or anatomy to memory. The truth is to function at peak creativity, whether it is committing physiology and anatomy to memory or writing a bestseller, our bodies need to move and require the right fuel to function well.
Now I know this section of the newsletter is about writing advice, but remember I translated the pearls I gained from a chi running programme to my writing, so bear with me. For readers of my earlier newsletters, you will recall I suggested ways to include regular activity into your life. I subsequently tackled healthy eating using our biological clock as a guide.
When a great deal of your life is spent in front of a screen writing, this advice is essential. Before typing a single word, take time at the beginning of the week to jot out a rough schedule that includes exercise that is easy to incorporate into your day. On my workdays, I get up early, make myself a cuppa then write for ninety minutes before having breakfast (rolled oats soaked overnight in milk then eaten with fruit and yoghurt for those interested). I then walk to work to incorporate a bit of activity into an otherwise totally sedentary day. If I walk to and from work three times a week it adds 9K to my weekly tally. The importance of such incidental activity is underestimated and can make all the difference when you spend most of your day sitting.
It is hard to get away from the truth that fuelling your body with nourishing food is important.
The writer and activist Michael Pollan put it so succinctly, ‘Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.’
Now I reiterate, I am not talking about diets and restriction, but if you make eighty-five percent of what you eat healthy and reserve the extras for the final fifteen percent, you will not only feel better and look better, but your productivity will also improve. Give some thought to what you eat. Make gradual changes like eating a nourishing breakfast every day for the first month or cutting out the snacks between meals.
Writing is an endurance sport. If you regard it that way, you will follow in the footsteps of our athletes and regard your body and its needs for movement and fuel with a new reverence. I guarantee your body will thank you, your mind will be sharper and creative work will reflect your efforts.
GP Wisdom - Getting a Good Night’s Sleep
Readers of my earlier newsletters will recall I promised to discuss some non-pharmaceutical ways to optimise mental and physical health. I did say in my introduction that I am not one for new year resolutions, but I do regularly promise myself to get more sleep, yet never seem to sustain that personal goal. I regularly squeeze just one or two more tasks into a day and invariably encroach into my should-be-asleep time.
Insomnia, defined as difficulty in falling or staying a sleep with resulting daytime impairments, has such enormous social and economic as well as health costs that the government held a parliamentary inquiry into sleep. And if you do require some bedtime reading, its findings can be downloaded by clicking the above link.
It is impossible to do justice to a topic as complex as sleep in a few paragraphs, so instead I want to introduce a novel technique designed to realign your sleep patterns with your body’s natural diurnal rhythms or body clock. If you read my last newsletter, you will recall I mentioned the discovery of a gene in the hypothalamus that regulates the circadian rhythms found inside every single cell of our body. The impact of consistently ignoring our body clock has only recently been understood and is now recognised as having detrimental consequences that are long term, predisposing us to chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, and cardiovascular disease.
There are many aspects of modern lifestyle that predispose us to insomnia.
- Shift work
- Caffeine, alcohol, eating late
- Screen devices
- International travel
- Medications
- Irregular sleep habits
- Parenthood (new parents lose between 400 and 750 hours of sleep during the first year of their child’s life) Having had three children between 2003 to 2006, I suspect I still have a lingering sleep debt.
There are four principals to follow when treating insomnia
- Consolidate sleep by restricting the time you spend in bed – use a sleep diary or a wearable device to see how much time you are actually asleep. If you are awake for over an hour, then shift your bedtime to an hour later, but still get up at your usual time. You will feel tired as your body adjusts. Don’t restrict your time in bed to less than six hours. As your body adjusts, you will be able to increase your time in bed again.
- Get up at the same time each day even if you slept poorly. When you sleep in, you disrupt your biological body clock. By setting a regular bedtime and wake time you realign yourself to your natural rhythms.
- Avoid going to bed if you are not tired to avoid lying there for long periods while you are awake. This is tricky as you need to distinguish between genuine sleepiness and physical and/or mental exhaustion. (These may indicate mental health or other issues and need further investigation if they persist)
- If you do not fall asleep within 20 minutes, get up and go to another room and read or listen to music. No screens or activities that increase your alertness. And do just keep your bed for sleep, reading or sex. Keep your devices outside the bedroom.
There is an excellent insomnia course that you can access for free online. Designed by psychiatrists and psychologists, This Way Up has a range of other courses covering topics like anxiety and depression and stress. If symptoms persist or you think you may have a sleep disorder like snoring or sleep apnoea, do make an appointment to see your own GP who will be able to arrange the appropriate assessments.
Snoring is a whole other issue not only impacting the individual who may have undiagnosed medical issues but their partner. There are a range of medical problems that can have a negative impact on sleep, and I will sometimes encourage couples to consider sleeping apart to improve the quality of sleep for both parties.
