Frustration and rage.
I was going to write about historical pandemics in this blog, having spent quite some time researching stuff, but it’s going to have to wait because right I now need to write about rage. Frustration and rage to be precise. Two things that occasionally fill me to the brim and I have to let it out.
I know exactly the time that frustration and rage become a problem for me because of how they affect my dreams and sleeping. The last 3 nights I have woken up in 2-hourly intervals, mid-dream with my teeth clenched. I have a sleep app on my phone that records my sleep habits and having checked it each morning over the last few days, my REM sleep is very disturbed and I’ve been waking up feeling shattered.
The photo below on the left shows one of my rare 100% sleep charts from February this year. A good sleep result will show the wavy line going from awake (top) to sleep (middle) to deep sleep (bottom). It then goes back up to sleep and down again to deep sleep, and so on, throughout the night. If you achieve 3-5 of these waves, you should feel well rested. The middle sleep or REM sleep is hugely important because that is when you dream. Dreams unconsciously try to make sense of your problems while deep sleep fixes you physically. The photo on the right is from last night showing 65%. It may look similar but you can very clearly see that I become fully conscious 3 times, which means my dreams are essentially waking me up.
These dreams are vivid and I can remember every detail. I am in various situations where I cannot be heard, I am misunderstood, I am ignored or I am not allowed to speak. People are mean and abusive to me. The colours are dark or muted and I am often in hiding or looking in from the outside. I wake up feeling incredibly frustrated and my chest feels tight. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I am not speaking up in my day to day life about things that are really bothering me. I don’t know what to say about certain situations for fear of saying the wrong thing, so instead I am saying nothing.
So here goes, I’m just going to say it. This is my opinion and you can take it or leave it. If I offend you I’m sorry, but better out than in.
1. Donald Trump
Without questions, this pathetic excuse for a man has made me shout more at the TV and radio than anyone else in my entire life. I find him narcissistic, vulgar, patronising, rude, uninformed, misogynistic and racist. I actually can’t find the exact vocabulary to describe my utter revulsion for him. My biggest problem with him at the moment is his inability to show any kind of empathy. He is dividing a nation every single day, when they really need and want someone to bring them together. As well as the US having the highest death rate in the world from COVID-19, protests have now consumed its cities after the death of George Floyd. His death, at the hands of a policeman, has been the tipping point for an already exhausted, racially divided nation, plunging it into chaos. And while Trump hides in his bunker or behind his chain-link fence, the people outside want justice. They want equality and fairness. They want to be understood. Instead of showing respect and empathy, Trump grabs the limelight for his own photo opportunities, makes incendiary remarks, threatens, belittles and then changes the subject back to him. The final straw for me was hearing Trump say, “Hopefully George will be looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. A great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody”, when talking about the rate of employment increasing. It’s wrong on so many levels. It’s despicable.
2. The UK Government
I’m realising there’s a pattern here. I never thought I was that political before I wrote this but I guess when stupid decisions affect me and my loved ones, then that makes me mad. Ok, there are way too many things to write down here and I haven’t got enough time or patience, so I will simply make some statements.
• Back in April we were told that face-covering were ineffective and we didn’t have to wear them in public. Last week we were told they would be mandatory on public transport, two weeks after people had already started going back to work and were packed like sardines onto buses, trains and tubes.
• One rule for them and one rule for us. Dominic Cummings. Enough said.
• The PPE fiasco. By not making sure there was enough equipment for our frontline workers, you put our most important people in danger. We lost too many.
• Closing our borders too late and opening them too early. Allowing people to fly into the UK and really believing that they will quarantine for 14 days? And even if they do follow the rules, they are still allowed to stay with friends, go to the shops and travel on public transport. It’s absurd.
• You can be near hundreds of strangers in a public park, beach or a supermarket but you still can’t have more than a few people you know, socially distancing in your garden. It doesn’t make any sense.
3. Zoom and skype meetings
Yes, these have saved my life, in terms of both social interactions and work, but don’t people realise that it’s still impossible to hear anyone when they are talking over each other, even online? The normal rules of conversation seem to have gone out of the window – so why not try waiting for someone to stop talking before you start! People forgetting to turn their microphones on is equally as irritating, watching them opening and closing their muted mouths like idiot fish. It also seems unbelievable that we can send two men up in a rocket to the ISS, yet we still can’t get good internet picture quality, with the majority of attendees pixelated or freezing at some point.
4. Noise
Ok, this is not news. Everyone knows I have a high intolerance to noise and I have gone on and on about it previously. The trouble is, when everyday noise has been so quiet during lockdown, and then it returns, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. The big quarry lorries rattling past as 3am, the irritating whiny mopeds racing up and down the road, the groups of loud gossiping mums taking their kids to kindergarten using my lane as a short cut, teenagers wandering around smoking and drinking late at night, endless DIY power-tools early in the mornings, my neighbour starting his throaty diesel van at 6am every morning and sitting there with the engine idling for 10 minutes, and lastly, my neighbour’s son being given a paddling pool, a snorkel and a harmonica for his birthday. Yes, it seems you can use them all at the same time.
Writing it down is good but not having a physical outlet is hard. What with lockdown and social distancing, I haven’t had the usual bunch of friends and family around who I can have a good old rant with. Exercise helps though. Last year I started swimming – four times a week for an hour and a half each time – and the monotonous rhythm of breathing and moving through water would clear any negative thoughts I had. But since the pandemic, swimming is impossible, so I now walk instead.
Walking lifts my spirits in a different way. I see beauty and hear nature; the spring flowers, the infinite hues of green, the wind rustling through leaves, the enigmatic cuckoo, cows mooing and horses neighing in the distance. Walking in deserted woods also allows me to talk to myself, and I’ve been having lovely long conversations about all sorts of things (yes, I know!). As well as my own rambling chitchat, I’ve also been testing out my theory of better out than in, by shouting my grievances out loud as I walk. I’ve screamed “Arsehole” when I think about Trump, “Stupid bastards” when I think about Boris and the UK government, and all sorts of other obscenities aimed at a variety of people and things. It’s amazingly cathartic... until a few days ago. I was alone in the woods, so I thought, and I shouted out quite a lowly swear word aimed at (yes you guessed it) Trump, and realised a large family were walking up the path towards me. As they swerved passed, giving me an incredibly wide berth and frowning with disapproval, the little girl said, “Mummy, that lady said a rude word”.
Yes I did honey, and proud of it.
I know exactly the time that frustration and rage become a problem for me because of how they affect my dreams and sleeping. The last 3 nights I have woken up in 2-hourly intervals, mid-dream with my teeth clenched. I have a sleep app on my phone that records my sleep habits and having checked it each morning over the last few days, my REM sleep is very disturbed and I’ve been waking up feeling shattered.
The photo below on the left shows one of my rare 100% sleep charts from February this year. A good sleep result will show the wavy line going from awake (top) to sleep (middle) to deep sleep (bottom). It then goes back up to sleep and down again to deep sleep, and so on, throughout the night. If you achieve 3-5 of these waves, you should feel well rested. The middle sleep or REM sleep is hugely important because that is when you dream. Dreams unconsciously try to make sense of your problems while deep sleep fixes you physically. The photo on the right is from last night showing 65%. It may look similar but you can very clearly see that I become fully conscious 3 times, which means my dreams are essentially waking me up.
These dreams are vivid and I can remember every detail. I am in various situations where I cannot be heard, I am misunderstood, I am ignored or I am not allowed to speak. People are mean and abusive to me. The colours are dark or muted and I am often in hiding or looking in from the outside. I wake up feeling incredibly frustrated and my chest feels tight. It doesn’t take a genius to put two and two together. I am not speaking up in my day to day life about things that are really bothering me. I don’t know what to say about certain situations for fear of saying the wrong thing, so instead I am saying nothing.
So here goes, I’m just going to say it. This is my opinion and you can take it or leave it. If I offend you I’m sorry, but better out than in.
1. Donald Trump
Without questions, this pathetic excuse for a man has made me shout more at the TV and radio than anyone else in my entire life. I find him narcissistic, vulgar, patronising, rude, uninformed, misogynistic and racist. I actually can’t find the exact vocabulary to describe my utter revulsion for him. My biggest problem with him at the moment is his inability to show any kind of empathy. He is dividing a nation every single day, when they really need and want someone to bring them together. As well as the US having the highest death rate in the world from COVID-19, protests have now consumed its cities after the death of George Floyd. His death, at the hands of a policeman, has been the tipping point for an already exhausted, racially divided nation, plunging it into chaos. And while Trump hides in his bunker or behind his chain-link fence, the people outside want justice. They want equality and fairness. They want to be understood. Instead of showing respect and empathy, Trump grabs the limelight for his own photo opportunities, makes incendiary remarks, threatens, belittles and then changes the subject back to him. The final straw for me was hearing Trump say, “Hopefully George will be looking down and saying this is a great thing that’s happening for our country. A great day for him. It’s a great day for everybody”, when talking about the rate of employment increasing. It’s wrong on so many levels. It’s despicable.
2. The UK Government
I’m realising there’s a pattern here. I never thought I was that political before I wrote this but I guess when stupid decisions affect me and my loved ones, then that makes me mad. Ok, there are way too many things to write down here and I haven’t got enough time or patience, so I will simply make some statements.
• Back in April we were told that face-covering were ineffective and we didn’t have to wear them in public. Last week we were told they would be mandatory on public transport, two weeks after people had already started going back to work and were packed like sardines onto buses, trains and tubes.
• One rule for them and one rule for us. Dominic Cummings. Enough said.
• The PPE fiasco. By not making sure there was enough equipment for our frontline workers, you put our most important people in danger. We lost too many.
• Closing our borders too late and opening them too early. Allowing people to fly into the UK and really believing that they will quarantine for 14 days? And even if they do follow the rules, they are still allowed to stay with friends, go to the shops and travel on public transport. It’s absurd.
• You can be near hundreds of strangers in a public park, beach or a supermarket but you still can’t have more than a few people you know, socially distancing in your garden. It doesn’t make any sense.
3. Zoom and skype meetings
Yes, these have saved my life, in terms of both social interactions and work, but don’t people realise that it’s still impossible to hear anyone when they are talking over each other, even online? The normal rules of conversation seem to have gone out of the window – so why not try waiting for someone to stop talking before you start! People forgetting to turn their microphones on is equally as irritating, watching them opening and closing their muted mouths like idiot fish. It also seems unbelievable that we can send two men up in a rocket to the ISS, yet we still can’t get good internet picture quality, with the majority of attendees pixelated or freezing at some point.
4. Noise
Ok, this is not news. Everyone knows I have a high intolerance to noise and I have gone on and on about it previously. The trouble is, when everyday noise has been so quiet during lockdown, and then it returns, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. The big quarry lorries rattling past as 3am, the irritating whiny mopeds racing up and down the road, the groups of loud gossiping mums taking their kids to kindergarten using my lane as a short cut, teenagers wandering around smoking and drinking late at night, endless DIY power-tools early in the mornings, my neighbour starting his throaty diesel van at 6am every morning and sitting there with the engine idling for 10 minutes, and lastly, my neighbour’s son being given a paddling pool, a snorkel and a harmonica for his birthday. Yes, it seems you can use them all at the same time.
Writing it down is good but not having a physical outlet is hard. What with lockdown and social distancing, I haven’t had the usual bunch of friends and family around who I can have a good old rant with. Exercise helps though. Last year I started swimming – four times a week for an hour and a half each time – and the monotonous rhythm of breathing and moving through water would clear any negative thoughts I had. But since the pandemic, swimming is impossible, so I now walk instead.
Walking lifts my spirits in a different way. I see beauty and hear nature; the spring flowers, the infinite hues of green, the wind rustling through leaves, the enigmatic cuckoo, cows mooing and horses neighing in the distance. Walking in deserted woods also allows me to talk to myself, and I’ve been having lovely long conversations about all sorts of things (yes, I know!). As well as my own rambling chitchat, I’ve also been testing out my theory of better out than in, by shouting my grievances out loud as I walk. I’ve screamed “Arsehole” when I think about Trump, “Stupid bastards” when I think about Boris and the UK government, and all sorts of other obscenities aimed at a variety of people and things. It’s amazingly cathartic... until a few days ago. I was alone in the woods, so I thought, and I shouted out quite a lowly swear word aimed at (yes you guessed it) Trump, and realised a large family were walking up the path towards me. As they swerved passed, giving me an incredibly wide berth and frowning with disapproval, the little girl said, “Mummy, that lady said a rude word”.
Yes I did honey, and proud of it.
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