This isn’t a blog about my work, but it’s a major part of my life and regular readers may have detected a hint of work-related stress creeping into my posts over the last few weeks. What with long days, off-site meetings requiring 4-5 hours travelling, and milestones coming out of my ears, there’s a lot going on at the moment. So I’m working hard on pacing myself, to make sure I get to the end of the financial year more or less in one piece. That means making full use of the opportunities offered by flexitime and TOIL so that if I can take an afternoon off (as I have done today), or work from home for a morning (as I did last Friday), I am trying to do so.
But that’s not really enough – I need to take active steps to de-stress. So this evening, I shall have a back, neck and shoulder massage, which I really find helps me relax. And on Sunday I went to Eastnor Pottery for one of Jon the Potter’s throwing workshops. I find the pottery itself to be a very relaxing place – it’s in a tranquil rural spot, in some old farm buildings next to Eastnor Castle. There are horses in the next field, and the major sound is that of birdsong – or the artisan blacksmith next door hammering away on his anvil. I can feel my stress levels dropping just through being there.
I managed to work out a great deal of my frustrations and stresses on the clay. Lumps of clay found themselves being thrown and centred on the wheel-head with perhaps unnecessary violence! I do find it helps to imagine people who’ve annoyed me during the week, as I force a fast-spinning lump of clay to conform to my will! But the actual shaping of the pots on the wheel is a very right-brained activity and quite a delicate operation. One has to lose oneself in the process, and concentrate on the hand-eye coordination needed to get the shape one is aiming for. I can’t think about work during that bit of the process, or I get a very wobbly pot!
I came home mid-afternoon, physically tired and absolutely filthy. But I was a lot more relaxed with lower stress levels, which was the whole point.
