Last Sunday I painstakingly wrote a whole post on scarecrows and then pressed the wrong button and only sent it to a few of you! (Lucky winners.) I don’t know what happened there, but once the post was out in the ether I couldn’t change it. If you missed this post on scarecrows (realise it’s niche, you just have to have trust) then you can go and read it here and then trot back again for my important PMT realisation and then the books roundup.
I’ve not had the most phenomenally great few days, what with them being day 27 of my cycle, day 28 of my cycle and then day 1 of my cycle. Traditionally they are the specific days when I a) suddenly doubt and then regret every single one of my life decisions, b) hate the way I look, the way I sound and also the entire human race and c) come close to deleting all of my social media platforms and wiping my name completely from the internet.
Mine is not the ideal job for someone with those specific PMT traits. Add in bloating, headaches and huge dark circles under my eyes that make me look like Gareth from The Office and it’s a recipe for professional disaster.
Having to drum up the enthusiasm to do full hair and makeup on yourself and then direct, produce and star in what is basically a pared-down version of a TV commercial except with a crew of one, when all you want to do is cry in the airing cupboard…
Safe to say I get very little done. It’s the same every single month. But I had something of an epiphany the other day when I was mid-breakdown, telling Rich how I was going to quit the internet and sit in my cabin to write books about giants; he said
“you do realise that this exact thing has been happening every single month for over fifteen years?”
Which is why he is now dead.
Not really, ha! No, I allowed him to continue, and he suggested that maybe when I knew it would be PMT week, which would be easy to predict seeing as though I have a cycle that runs like clockwork and also an Oura ring*, I should try and push any filming I have to do to either side of it. Because it seems to be filming videos that’s the major problem for me, when I’m due on - admin tasks I whizz through! Blog posts are more of a struggle, because I forget how to construct a sentence and put apostrophes in the wrong places, but I’d still rather write twelve blog posts than film a single video, so.
(*connects to the Natural Cycles app, which is a sort of vaguely flippant form of contraception. Probs shouldn’t position it like that, because if you follow it correctly then I’m sure it has a good success rate, but I am 45 with two kids, low B12 levels and no lock on the bedroom door so probably not the best person to test out its general efficacy?)
Anyway, the man’s a genius! Why have I never thought of this before? Shifting the work tasks I find difficult - near impossible - when I have PMT, to the weeks before or after? I’ve had virtually the same cycle for thirty years, give or take a few pregnancies and the whole breastfeeding thing, and this is the first time I’ve ever considered scheduling commitments around my PMT low points.
(Add to the above list of PMT symptoms the fact I’m also convinced I have flu on days 27/28 every month without fail. I always end up getting into bed with a vile headache, and then I miss my deadlines, and then I feel useless, and so the cycle (lol) continues.)
So yeah, what an amazing epiphany I’ve had. Nothing to do with my husband’s insights and emotional intelligence whatsoever. And this week I’m going to write my doom dates into the calendar IN RED and avoid doing anything during that time that historically has sent me into a spiral of self-hatred and anxiety.
God, I’m going to be an absolute machine! There’ll be no stopping me!
Whilst I’m in off-colour mere human mode, though: three books I’ve just read and whether I rate them. Spoiler alert: YES!; MMM-YES? and YES-GOD-YES!-BUT-WITH-CAVEATS:
