Nangle Natters: Hit ‘pause’

Stop. No, stop that other thing you’re doing at the same time as reading this. You know, checking Facebook, reading emails, planning the logistics for travel this Christmas in your head – all of it. Stop, and give yourself a break. Can you remember the last time you had one?

In this world of hubbub and multi-tasking I am as guilty as anyone of never sitting still. Even my downtime has to be scheduled as a yoga class, and still I absentmindedly start planning the week’s meal menus at the same time (an elaborate way of saying which day has pizza and which one has fish fingers for dinner).

When I watch TV on a quiet night in I’ve now downsized my fidgeting so that I look at my phone, its games and messages, less if I knit a blanket at the same time. Keeps the hands busy and away from tiny screens, but it’s still doing more than one thing. And as much as they’re all small things, sometimes it does a brain good just to stop and breath.

Even my downtime has to be scheduled as yoga

I find this to be especially the case as the evenings start to draw in. I was in bed by 7.30pm the other night. I don’t know about you, but I know I’m tired when I’m voluntarily curled up under a duvet at a time my nine-year-old niece would deem too early.

This is also a time when so much happens in the social calendar of the year. Halloween parties start to be planned, those friends I said I’d meet up with back in May start reminding me that it would be a shame to wait another year to catch up (they’re right!), and – I’m saying it – Christmas starts to pull on my mental strings reminding me of all the prep to be geared up for.

So I’m stopping. And I advise you do the same. Just for a bit. A readjustment period for the evergreens. And breath.