THE GREAT REBALANCING

I went and sat in the park today for the first time in ages. I thought it might do me some good.

It was freezing and everything was different. The dragon tree has lost most of its leaves; the others, who had happily rustled in the late September sun a few weeks ago, have now turned rusty and orange. Leaves blustered untidily over the short grass and the wind whipped through my hair with icy fingers.

I did sit there for a while though, trying to let the air blow away the stuffiness of the indoors. I spend a lot of time indoors at the moment.

I had a dizzy spell yesterday. My whole body felt like it was a hundred degrees - clammy, sweaty, overheating and unbearable. Then my vision started to swim, as though I was looking at the world through translucent circles, or a close-up of one of those colourblindness charts. I was scared for a while. Then I had some water (seemed like the right thing to do) and a sit down, and I was okay.

It's another reminder that I must sort out my diet, along with my work-life balance, my sleep-patterns and everything else. It's all part of The Great Rebalancing.

I got a nice email today from someone who knows a lady who's just joined the choir. She said this:

I just thought I would let you know that [she] really loved coming to choir last week! She came dashing over to me ... to tell me how much she has enjoyed it and how great she thought you were, she appreciated your musical talent!

Good job! 

Thanks for making her welcome too.

I like emails like that. Making people feel welcome is something I've spent a long time working out how to do and I'm not always that great at it, so it's really splendid when it works. And somehow, at choir, it's kind of easy; it just feels natural and comfortable. Oh how in the world can I give that up?

Yet here I am, head-spinning on a Sunday night with an exhausted, stressed-out body that's now taken me near to fainting, just to get the message across that something is not right. I am out of balance, and everything in me knows it.

The grey clouds bumped across the Autumn sky. The coloured leaves blew in the wind and my scarf flapped around my neck. It's a season of change, of preparation for the long, cold winter. It's a time to be ready, to be hopeful and to be diligent.

And it's certainly a time to remember that everything that falls to the ground does so, so that one day soon, new life can spring up from it. Even in nature, things start to rebalance themselves in preparation for that moment of hope, of joy, and of warm, Spring sunshine.

It is coming.