It is day 876,352 of having Covid. 

Really, in actual fact, it is day 5 of testing positive. My life hasn’t changed apart from missing one day of work and allowing myself to watch as much tv as possible until my body needs sleep. Today has been a busy day considering that on Saturday I slept for over 20 hours. I woke up and no longer felt the fatigue in my bones. So I grabbed the laptop and started ploughing through the to-do list for our next big trip. 

To be fair it is a small list at this point, but two hours in and one of the days on the trip had transformed completely. Out of the 14 mornings while we are away, most of them start before 7:30am. In fact, most start at 6am. Paint me shocked. Tell the girl from 10 years ago who’s days usually started at lunchtime. Mr W has definitely had an impact. 

The plans I looked at today were busy enough to have us doing three big hikes starting at 6am. There’s maybe one day when we need to start at 5am to drive for two hours to witness the sunrise and I don’t mind it as a one off, but there are certain limitations when it comes to the body. Hell, in January, after a fortnight of deep research and planning for this trip, my limit light was blinking and my brain shut down! So, doing an endless fortnight of 14 hour days of photography, walking, driving and battling all the elements is going to be exhausting. So, when I found myself cutting parts out of the day in question, I was pleasantly surprised at how calm I was. When it comes to travelling I rarely know my limits. I will be up and ready for a long day and I will never go back to a hotel without completing an itinerary. It’s how I’m built. 

Or at least how I thought I was built. Today’s cut, pastes and deletes were owed to something new I found to do near Ben Nevis, a place which opens a lot later than the rest of Scotland. This caused a shift in the day’s plans and meant taking two things off the agenda. It made me choose between events rather than force myself to do everything. In light of these changes, I realised that we would be too late to another event and with a quick ‘delete’ and an ‘Oh well’ I made the necessary adjustments. This is not me!

Also, I know how frustrating it might be for me to sound so vague, but I really want my first experience of telling you about our trip to Scotland to sound fresh, so keeping details back as much as possible is really important. Stay tuned!

It’s not that I haven’t had limits before, I have, I’ve dragged my arse across Australia feeling tired up to my eyeballs. I’ve forced my feet up and down the avenues of New York because the itinerary calls for it. My limits are screaming at me like warning bells and I hear them, I just pretend I don’t.

It’s only since travelling in this country and the changes that lockdown brought about that the voice inside my head with all warnings about limits has started to make sense. In our personal lives we’ve even started to block out weekends so we can be at home, together, with nothing else to do. Inevitably, when I get a message asking if I’m free on those blocked out days, I will feel awful about saying we aren’t available because I’m a 1000% committed people pleaser. Being a people pleaser has ultimately stopped me looking after myself in situations and in turn neglecting Mr W. His limits are often dictated by my own. And that is not fair. Saying no to people is a crushing feeling. Especially as I never have. There’s a mass of guilt that swarms over me everytime I do. And that in particular is something I have to work on.

It just so happens that the weekend just past was blocked out. We needed to do this so we could spend some much needed time in the house we pay a mortgage for because June saw us come and go like passengers at a railway station. And then we got covid and were home anyway. Maybe fete stepped in and missed the memo.

During lockdown we found it hard at first to sit still, but as the weeks dragged on we found comfort in these walls. And as the world began to open up, we found ourselves dreading going backwards into the fray of events. It’s a complicated feeling. It isn’t the events that are the problem. It’s the sheer number of them. It’s knowing your limits. There came a time where we’d be seeing people for brunch on a Saturday morning, after a heavy night out the Friday, running a quick errand before seeing family on the Saturday afternoon and then heading out that night. Repeating ourselves on Sunday. Time flew and it felt difficult to enjoy it. How could we be in the moment, when we were thinking of where we had to race off to next?

When lockdown ended in July 2020, I particularly found it difficult to return to normal. To hug again, close the window and enter the crowds. An afternoon with friends was beautiful and yet saw me sleeping after the exposure to filled hours. Since we’ve put a curb on our weekends, we feel lighter and have to remind ourselves that doing things on other weekends shouldn’t be classed as ‘busy’ but ‘enjoyable’ instead. Yes, we still get rather busy, but it isn’t work, it is socialising. It’s freedom. It’s life. 

For the first time in my life, I’m appreciating the limits before they appear. I realise now that the fear of limiting your life, your time, yourself is very real. Push just a bit harder. Strive for more. You can do it. However there is a very large part of life that calls for boundaries and the ability to say no. It is self preservation. It is knowing that no matter how hard you try, keeping the pace is not always possible. Saying no every once in a while has to be a good thing. Choosing to stop instead of being forced to stop is always going to be win-win. Lockdown taught us that. And for that I am grateful.  

Photo by Dave Watson

Please check out his work on https://www.instagram.com/davewatson_uk/ or at https://davewatson1980.picfair.com