I just felt the urge to blog today. Not sure what about, or why, but I found myself opening the blog site and typing … how strange!

So life here carries on much the same as it has for the last year. I posted just over a year ago about finding a routine and indeed I do seem to be fairly well established in a routine now, though it’s not the original one and it’s not an especially exciting one. Generally I wake up at about 7.30am and take the dogs out for a quick walk, just 15-20 minutes across the road and in the woods. Then I come back and do 30-40 minutes of DDP Yoga. I’m definitely back into my yoga now and fast moving towards my third 100K club T-shirt (you earn points for every workout completed, with prizes available at certain levels). I was hoping it would help me lose weight – I’m also more or less eating healthily – but so far that’s not happened. I do, however, feel more supple and strong, and it’s definitely helped me with the knee and hip pain that have bothered me for the last couple of years. So that’s good. I’m also vaguely thinking about doing the DDP Yoga trainer certification, with a view to running classes here or back in the UK focused on helping unfit / immobile / older people. But I’m think about all sorts of other things, so that’s by the by really.

Anyway, after yoga I shower, have breakfast, laze around for a bit and then start work at ten. I’ve been kept really busy with a lot of book projects, and in fact am booked well into the autumn so that’s good. I never seem to have any money though, so there’s something wrong there because I certainly don’t seem to spend a lot! I’m finding it quite difficult to concentrate on proofreading for long periods of time and I don’t want to be doing this forever, but I’m not sure what else I do want to do. Author coaching? Yoga training? Selling handbags? (Seriously! I’m thinking about setting up an online shop called BagsBagsBags and selling drop-shipped eco-friendly handbags… haha!) As you can probably, tell, I’m all a bit mixed up at the moment. I don’t even know where I want to live really – I love a lot of things about life here in Portugal but I do know now I don’t want to live here forever, because I miss my family too much. My spiritual home, Cromer, is starting to call me again and I’ve been looking at rented places there … but I need to work on the income so I can afford somewhere to rent for me and Buddy. So many things to do…

Back to the routine. At about 12ish I let the dogs out for a run. Buddy still wanders, sometimes, but he’s much better at staying close to home and coming back when I call him, so I switch on his GPS tracker and let them loose, and they have an explore. I have some lunch, maybe attend a 4N online networking meeting, and work through the afternoon until dog walking time. We usually go for a walk mid afternoon, but now it’s warmed up it’s often too hot to go out then, so we leave it until early evening (when, some days, it’s even hotter!!). I do love our walks: it’s a time for me to switch off from work and either listen to a podcast or let my mind wander (hence all the crazy ideas above!).

Evening, and I cook some dinner and then settle down for a couple of hours of TV. I’ve been going through a Greg Davies phase recently and have rewatched every series of Taskmaster and also Man Down, which I hadn’t seen before. I noticed Cuckoo on Netflix, and I haven’t seen that either, so that will probably be my next binge. I should probably be watching something a bit more worthy but my brain just won’t take it in at the moment.

Weekends I generally don’t work, but I was finding that the change in routine was upsetting me and I was feeling very down and missing my family, especially on Saturdays. I’ve decided to try and plan activities to give me something to look forward to. Two weeks ago I and some friends went to a food market, and last Saturday I had my first Covid vaccination. No idea what I’ll do this weekend though; the weather forecast doesn’t look too good.

As Covid restrictions have eased, I’ve started getting out and about more, usually just for coffee with friends, but we did go to the food market, and my best friend and her partner came up one day for lunch, which was fab!

Last week I went to the local cultural centre to see a musical! It was fab – something called The Last Five Years, which I’d never heard of, but it was a good show and was such a treat to do something normal, albeit while wearing a mask…

I went to a lovely place a few weeks ago for a crystal workshop. I’m still not sure I believe in the power of crystals but I’ve been wearing a clear quartz one round my neck for the last few weeks, supposedly to help with pain, and my knee has been much better. So who knows! The place had a woodburner-heated sauna shaped like a hobbit house, and a stunning natural swimming pool that I took a dip in. I’ve also been swimming a couple of times at local river beaches, one of which was in a truly gorgeous setting with waterfalls and a weir, and I had a lovely walk down to a semi-submerged church.

I’ve also been doing a lot of art. I signed up to a couple of art courses and have been creating my own hand-made art journal, which is basically a load of pages sewn together and then splattered with paint in a fairly mindless way. I’m no Jackson Pollock but it’s good fun and I am enjoying playing with colour and texture. And it gives me something to do…

…because really, I’m bored. And lonely. I miss my mum, I miss my kids, I even miss the bustle of life in the UK. But I’m kind of content too, because life here is very relaxed, and I’m trying to make the most of my time here because I KNOW I will be heading back to the UK in a couple of years’ time. To do what, I don’t know. To live where, I don’t know. I guess I’m hoping some divine intervention will come along and show me the way 😉

In the meantime, I’ll walk the dogs, and drink coffee, and proofread those books (and maybe even finally write another of my own), and explore the local area, and throw paint at paper, and swim in the river, and at least try to pretend all is well with the world!

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