Its the weekend!

Well we have been really busy so far doing loads of different things around the house. For once I find myself largely not stressed by this. I even found that I could be sympathetic to the sky engineer who came to install Sky+ only to get network errors.  He seemed upsrt about it whereas I was more relaxed about it which led him to comment that he wished more people were as understanding.

Calming and Spiritual Music

Wednesday at last , though time seems to have flown by this week. However I do feel quite upbeat this week so maybe that is the reason.

It was a nice calm church service at lunchtime and I was thinking about about what someone had said in a podcast where they described the homely and welcoming smell of a church. Something about the carpets or the books that generally made it feel at peace which is something I do get from being in church and a oneness with everything.

Because the podcast was on the Scotland Outdoors series I started looking for some Gaelic music to match my mood. I do like to hear Gaelic singing and as the Gaelic Psalm singers of Lewis were included I started listening to them. To my eternal sadness I only understand a few words of Gaelic but here is a link to a program about it.

http://youtu.be/w62TN2iCP1g

I also liked the song "An Innis Aigh" recorded on the Chieftains album - here is a link to the Youtube version

An Innis Aigh

And if you really get into it you can listen to the "Waulking Songs" sung by the people of Harris when they were "Waulking" the cloth which are really something that you can just listen to again and again

Try these

Waulking Songs

Wednesday calm

After a break of a number of months mainly due to work commitments I managed to make it to the Wednesday Eucharist at the parish church in town.
And I have to say I had forgotten what a moment of calm it can be during a busy week / life. It is nice to be able to take about an hout just to contemplate on a few things that have very little in common with the work I do.
This may sound selfish in some ways but having felt so down on and off for so long I will take any chance of a lift in my spirits.

Strange Day

Well not too sure about today - I felt rather weird I must have been stressed because my heart rate while exercising on the stationary bike was way above where it should normally be which is a bit concerning but still managed 18.2k in 35 minutes so that was a positive.

I also had an one to one with my boss which I think also contributed to the stress. I really dislike this sort of thing -even though I am told I do well - still the person I need to convince is me not other people and this I find hard if not soul destroying. I think this self doubt is in part what leads to my problems with depression. I have to admit it did feel good to get a few things that have been nagging at me off my chest - maybe what I need to do is have more regular one to ones which would stop things building up to the point where I can't cope.

Band practice was good - the music seems clearer now I have the new contact lens in the left so hopefully there won't be as many accidentals in the wrong place from now on. Still think the 1812 is a bit of a bogey piece for us but we certainly have a better chance now of making a go of it.

Results

Slightly surprised today when got the results of a programming language test series and came out above average on Visual Basic which I find somewhat disturbing as I am not a fan!
However that apart today was a good day,  I managed to do some jogging at the gym and did 2k in 15 minutes which was good. Also managed some additional exercises whuch lifted my spirits for the day.
Maybe the greeks were right about a healthy body makes a healthy mind. On that basis I need to do a lot of exercise to keep myself sane not necessarily a bad thing.
I was also interested to heae an article on the radio about slowing down on my way home. This broyght to mind my favourite book on the subject by Stephen Cotterell which I have mentioned in a previous post- I will have to sit down and re-read it

Xmas decorations down

Well that's it for another year with the Christmas decorations, the house now looks quite empty. I am always a bit ambivalent about Christmas as the true meaning seems to have been lost in the storm of commercialism that it entails. However this is the first time I have felt sad about taking the decorations down for a good number of years.

The commercialism bandwagon ploughs remorselessly onwards though to the next "occasion" in the calendar. I think I heard the first advert for valentines day on Thursday which I did find somewhat depressing. I believe that our ancestors would be astounded that the passing of the seasons and the festivals of the year are no longer marked by feasting and great high church days but by the jingling of the cash registers and the forcefed adverts of the 21st century.

How sad

Day one

Well day one of 2014 has not been too bad really although the dreary weather leaves a lot to be desired.

Finally decided to register my Itunes voucher that I got for Christmas. After a bit of thought had gone into it the first album I have bought is Jane Ira Bloom's new one "Sixteen Sunsets". Normally in the jazz world I prefer the sounds of Cannonball and Coltrane pretty much above anyone else, but JIB takes the soprano sax to places it does not normally go, so any new album has to be worth a listen it is downloading as we speak and should be good to go shortly.

I am not a great one for new year's resolutions so all I can say that I have resolved to do is try! Try to do all the things I normally do better and to try to be true to myself and try to be a bit better person all around. That is if the depressive moods that I am a bit prone to permit. Just have to try and maybe with a little bit of faith I will succeed.

Happy New Year