Ways to stay sane

NEW LOCKDOWN: Day 7, Thursday

 

Covid, the American election, lack of direct sunlight: when reality becomes too much I retreat to the discrete and the manageable.

     For my last birthday I was sent a stylish Scriveiner rollerball pen, which works just fine.  But that is not the point about the pen, nor its understated elegance.  No, it’s the totally satisfying thunk-click the top makes when it is pressed home, down over the nib.  It has a depth and a solidity and a crisp finality demands that you do it again.  And again.  I do realise that it is the sort of pen that can only be used in isolation: what is satisfaction for one is incitement to murder for another!

 

My new watch has arrived!  I wonder just how many times I have said, or could have said, that.  Having found mechanical watches that fit virtually all of my prerequisites, I have long gone on to smart watches – which of course give a whole new meaning to the search and to the cost.

     To be fair to me, I have never bought a really expensive watch, something like a Tag Heuer or Rolex Oyster Perpetual or whatever, I have been drawn instead to ‘good value’ inexpensive watches.  And sometimes to downright holiday rip-offs.  In the long run, of course, I have possibly (!) spent more than I would have if I had purchased a single heirloom-type conventional timepiece. 

     But I would not have had anything like the fun.  From where I am sitting, I can see two briefcase sized containers that hold (most) of my watch collection.  Each of them brings back memories, sometimes specific places, while others are the triggers to regret, missed opportunities or miss-steps.  It is sad that most if not all of my Cassio Period (early digital) acquisitions are lost, destroyed or discarded.  Though, come to think about it, if all my watch purchases were brought together in one place, I fear that even I would be a little shocked at just how much I had squandered!

      However, to get back to the immediate present, the timepiece that I have on my wrist I bought prompted by a pop-up ad on my mobile phone.  My (extensive) researches into acceptable smart watches have led me to Amazfit.  In my view the battery life, swimability, bikability, and function meet my basic needs.  So, I have bought one or possibly two-ish of them, and generally been fairly pleased – but there is always a niggling doubt about one or another aspect of the device that brings me back to the marketplace to waste (Toni’s word) more of my money.

     The latest version of the Amazfit watch on my wrist is the GTR2 and so I have reverted to the traditional round shape for the watch face instead of the curved strip of the X.  The advantage of the GTR2 is that it does allow you to have a basic always-on face, though this does drain the battery, by just how much time will tell.  And who knows when I will have the opportunity to test it in the pool?  Rather disturbingly, our pool/leisure centre has sent us details of commercially available on-line fitness classes that we can take as part of our subscription – which doesn’t bode well for when they think we will finally be allowed back for our swims in actual water!

     But until then, there is a period where I can luxuriate in the purchase before the novelty wears off and I subject it to a more rigorous utility analysis to see how well it truly performs given my demands.  So far; so good!

 

How much time do you have to spend watching Netflix before it becomes an official medical complaint?  With me, I don’t think it is the amount of time spent in front of the screen that is a problem, rather it is the inability to finish watching what you have started looking at.  I don’t mean that I turn on Netflix and watch relentlessly until I fall into bed, it is rather the fact that I seem to have the temporal toleration of full-strength Coked-up (please note the capital letter) kid with ADT.  My critical systems do a full analysis within the first ten minutes of a film or half the first episode of a series and I’m back to the home screen and searching for something new, or reverting to my default viewing position of an episode of Family Guy or The Big Bang Theory, neither of which seems susceptible to my dismissive critique.  And before you know it a couple of hours have gone by without your noticing.  Or is this just a function of Covid and the consequent lockdown?

     To answer my own questions, I don’t really know, but I am not doing as much writing as I feel I should be doing.  And, I put that down to the fact that my use of my notebook has shrunk to almost nothing because I do not swim.

     As I have mentioned before, my habit is to write something (anything) in my notebook after I have completed by daily swim and while I am having my cup of tea.  Now that swimming is forbidden, at least in the indoor pool that I use, and I have zero intention of throwing myself into the sea, in spite of the fact that my watch will accommodate ‘free swimming’ as easily as pool lengths, do not write anything on the pristine notebook pages.  I do not seem to be able to shift my notebook writing to any other period and adapt to other circumstances.  Odd.

    

I have often wondered about the power of habit. 

     I have realised over time that I have particular ways of packing and setting out my clothes when I change for my swim.  I use a certain number of pegs and I divest myself of clothing in a particular order.  If I change the order then something goes wrong: I forget to take my swimming goggles or I leave something out.  I think it is because there are a whole range of activities for which you do not really think; you are on automatic pilot and as long as things are regular everything works well.  I always us the example of touch typing: the more you think about where the letters are the more mistakes you make, you just have to go with what your fingers know they know and everything will be fine.  This is why, if someone talks to you while you are getting changed, you forget to put your ear plugs in or something.

     When I used to play squash and you were warming up the ball with your opponent before the match, some players would ask, “Which side would you like to start on?” and I made a conscious effort not to care and to be equally at home with left or right just in case I got used to one side more than another to start off and then if that was denied it would have an effect on the game.  If you are used to starting on the right, then it can be unsettling to be made to start on the left.  Gamesmanship is not made up of cheating (though I have known a fair number of shameless cheats in squash) but of little niggles that have a disproportionate claim on your sporting ability.

     As with the warmup in squash so it is in so many trivial aspects of everyday life; from brushing one’s teeth to going around the supermarket for food, there are too many rituals that are so second nature that they don’t register until they are disrupted!

     And lockdown is the perfect opportunity for self-disruption!

Guessing the time

 

The clocks have changed and so my schedule or my itinerary or my sequence of what I do in the morning has been changed too.  The timings are the same, but the circumstances different.  To be specific – it’s the sun.  As I am now swimming an hour ‘later’ than I was last week I can no longer time myself by sunshine.

I have a needlessly complicated way of swimming.  Not my stroke, that was, is and shall be (if I say so myself) a reasonably elegant crawl – though that looks like an oxymoron, now that I’ve written it.  Anyway, owing to the evils of capitalism one of the apps on my Pebble watch has ceased to be supported.  Pebble is by far the best value of smartwatches, with the longest battery life and an always-on screen.  But, alas, the tense in that last sentence is non-operable as the whole enterprise of Pebble was sold to Fitbit and they seem to have supressed the make in favour of their own productions.  Not one of which, I might add, matches the value of the Pebble!

So, my Pebble, that used to count the lengths of my swim and give various other pieces of information that I never used, is now non-operational.  I therefore rely on time.  Even if I am swimming with little enthusiasm, I manage to get my 1,500m or metric mile done in a few minutes under 40, so to swim for 40 minutes ensures that I complete the full length.  I do not, however, like looking at my watch to see how much I have completed.  Instead I use my internal clock and make a laboured game of guessing when the 40 minutes is up.

What I do is set a point that I choose when my body tells me that the time is almost up and, from that point, I swim an extra six lengths.  In the penultimate length of that six, I evaluate how well and fluently I have swum, judge my physical well being, respond to the tell-tale aches and stitches that suggest whether I have exerted myself enough or not.

 

In the last of the six lengths I try and estimate the time – having noted the time at the start of my swim.  So, I add on the 40 minutes to get the time I should finish and then I guestimate the actual time.  Well, you have to understand that swimming is not the most intellectually stimulating form of exercise and you have to find interest where you can!

The number of times that I have been spot on with my guestimate is very limited, but I count it a success if I am within five minutes of the actual finishing time.  I tell myself that I should be able to work out time from experience and from those physical indications that I (as the body’s owner) should know.  Sometimes, I am woefully out in my estimates and that just goes to show that the state of a person’s body is in a constant state of flux.

Sometimes after a rare day’s absence, or an even rarer two-day absence, I can tell that I have been lazing rather than exercising as the effort needed is appreciably more than if I had been more diligent in my exercise.  But, oddly, after a period of time not swimming I sometimes swim with an ease and fluidity that seems to benefit from abstinence!  Bodies are complex things, god wot!

Getting up at the ungodly hour of 6.10 am, in darkness, I at least had the experience of swimming into daylight which, when the light was strong, I knew that my swim was over.  Now, my swim begins as the light is dawning – my body or brain is now forced to find other indicators (apart from the watch on my wrist) to guess the end of my swim.  This uncertainty adds a certain something to what is, after all, a tedious form of exercise.

I am still coming to terms with my ‘extended’ day, and in that rush of activity concentrated into the first three hours of waking, I find that I have done my household chores before the shops are open!  I then feel vaguely guilty if I am not up and doing for the rest of the day!

My poetry is languishing.  I have notebooks full of ideas but they are waiting for me to make something of them.  There are two books that need to be prepared for publication and extra pieces of writing that are stubbornly not flowing out via the computer keys.

I am still using the inexplicable non-issuing of permission (indeed the complete lack of response from the requisite authorities) to use reproductions of paintings in MNAC as a reason to delay the whole book that should have been published by now.  This is not satisfactory and I know (and I am telling myself here!) that I should simply plough ahead and take the consequences!

And that is good advice!