Sunday thoughts
Why this Sunday is a good chance to pause and reflect
This week, writing is feeling hard again – I don’t have words. It feels forced and boring. I didn’t have a topic in mind and just thought I would see what came.
Prune and reorganise until a lovely cohesive something comes to fruition. But I barely think that’s been achieved. Anyway, let’s go, let’s try – here are some Sunday thoughts.
I’m at my desk in ‘standing mode’ in my home office, and I just opened the window to check how dark it was at 6pm (almost completely dark) and now the window is refusing to shut.
The past week or so I’ve spent working and resting – I had a brief trip to London to go into the office and catch up with friends before heading down to Devon to take a breather, see family, and see the sea. There was a trip to IKEA, a pub dinner with an old friend, a haircut, and Strictly Come Dancing.
I did plenty of reading – I finished Northanger Abbey, which I enjoyed. I think, with most good books, it’s one that’s absolutely worth reading twice. I then read Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor, which I’d recommend. I described it to my hairdresser as being a lovely, heartwarming read about an unlikely friendship between the elderly protagonist and a young writer, but actually, it's much more than that.
It’s gentle, humorous and humane, and full of poignant comments about life and old age. One brief description that stands out is of the elderly hotel residents (who live at The Claremont in Kensington, not sure if this is a real hotel) waiting for the menu to be put out on display, offering delight and disappointment like life once did. I also loved the depiction of Mrs Palfrey’s joyfulness sparked by her friendship with the young writer called Ludo. It creaks and aches but still has a throbbing heart.
I used the four-hour train journey back up north to start reading The Gift by Nabokov, and I don’t think it’s for me. I’m wondering if it’s going to keep going like this. It’s dense and I’m not really getting a feel for it.
A few days off work and a break from washing dishes definitely restored some energy, and I was really happy to come back to my Sheffield home. It was good to have a break from the visual to-do list of my surroundings, and I’m now feeling more motivated to keep chipping away at the jobs around the house. Hopefully, by next week, there will be some more changes I can report back on.
Sundays are feeling like a good moment to look ahead – to pause and reflect before Monday morning’s starting line. For a long time, I didn’t create the space to do this, but sitting down and spending a few minutes loosely planning out my week can help stave off any Sunday blues. When work takes up lots of our time and energy, scheduling in time for fun, exercise, and seeing friends makes things feel more balanced.
Be it family traditions involving roasts and relatives or just a sense that today is for sinking into the sofa, or the luxury of no morning alarm clock, Sundays welcome a slightly more inward energy. It’s the day of the week for pottering, for mooching, and for fewer to-dos done.
I couldn’t find the quote but remember author Dolly Alderton saying how through the process of getting to know herself while being single, she worked out a formula for her ideal weekend. It went something like this.
Friday: party
Saturday: dinner
Sunday: cinema
What would yours be? It depends on how you’re feeling that week, but for those weekends when work is looming, I think a cinema trip at around 4pm on a Sunday is the best possible plan. Anyway, this Sunday feels like a particularly good time to pause and look around because of the seasonal shift going on in nature. As you may have noticed, the clocks have gone back, which personally, I was grateful for, as getting out to running club would have felt even more of a challenge if it hadn’t been for the extra hour in bed.
But it also means 6pm feels like nighttime. It comes as a shock after an October that hasn’t felt anything like October until the last few days, and I’m wondering if I should just head to bed around 9pm with my book. Also, the part of the moon’s cycle that we are in right now (just after a full moon) is a time to look inward, re-evaluate our goals, and adjust our intentions. This could just be for the week ahead, or maybe an intention for the final two months of the year. This week I’ll be enjoying time with family, noticing the changing of the seasons, and hopefully shutting my window.