The Curate's Egg

This has been the longest gap between posts since I started my blog. The gap has not been particularly deliberate but, positively, I have been busy trying to keep 'pushing the bar up'.

My experiences of returning to work, albeit, part-time have been very positive. Many people with whom I normally work have been quite clearly aware of my illness and yet I have not received one single word of criticism neither encountered even a modicum of hostility. Even better, and refreshingly so, I have not been treated with 'kid gloves' either. I am only working part-time and even this I find exhausting. However, the exhaustion is a satisfying one. Further, I am not afraid now to say 'that's enough' and stop when necessary.

My level of physical fitness continues to improve and has seen me raise this 'bar' to a very satisfying level running between four and five miles every week day. This is both satisfying and painful!

Despite all of this, there is something of the curate's egg about my continuing (recovery) experience. One of the most significant features has seen, at least for the time being, my normal (financial) anxieties ease considerably. However, there has been a price to pay - irony intended! These quite specific, and erstwhile crippling levels of anxiety have eased as, with the help of therapy and my own honest appraisals of my life I have 'peeled back the layers' and identified some deep seated and longstanding causes to my illness. Simply put, these 'causes' have been there for a long time. The financial anxieties, as my medical team have been predicting for many weeks, appear to have been significantly, if not entirely, symptomatic. I hope regular followers of this blog will forgive me for not going into any more detail at this stage - my thinking is still in its infancy and I am genuinely trying to keep an open mind.

However, as I am learning, an 'open mind' is almost as troubling as a disturbed one, but I was warned a full recovery would take a long time and recent developments have seen the veracity of that prophecy.