On an average day, my life is often accompanied by the radio in the background. Radio Four wakes me up as my alarm in the morning, and working from home, I often have the radio on between meetings.

However, in the past few days, I have found myself switching it off. What is normally comforting  feels superfluous and invasive.

What has changed? Well, the last couple of months seem to have just been full of challenges: the biggest one being another flood to my home on the 26th of September. Add to that, the sudden news that my wonderful boss is retiring at Christmas, with the possibility that my team will face a restructure, and an unhappy teenage son  who is hating his new 6th form, my brain feels utterly overloaded.

So I think that I crave peace in a way that I haven't for a long time. I'm not watching the news or listening to serious radio programmes. I'm being really careful about the company I keep. I'm normally a good listener for my friends, but I just don't have the capacity to deal with all of them. One of them always wants to tell me about her latest date and how it's going or generally not going. At the moment, I just want to tell her to stop wasting her time, so as she is a dear friend I am keeping a wide berth!

Some routines remain the same: the twice daily dog walks in the park behind my house are comforting. I'm also enjoying Christmas preparations: my cake is made and iced, many presents bought and I even started writing cards today. 

But as you, dear Moodscoper, know, it's all so hard work...

What are the things that give you peace?

BrumMum

A Moodscope member