Highlights Reel (redux)

Procrastination and Highlights Reel.

This is the second part of a double header post today. The first part was called 

Procrastination.

I once wrote about the fact that I had some extraordinary highlights for a few days, yet had been miserable most of the time. The tagline of that post was: 

“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”  - Steve Furtick 

The last few days have had some notable highlights too. 

• On Friday I took my daughters and a friend to work to run a bake sale for Children in Need, which was a great success, for which one of my daughters had done most of the baking
• On Saturday I had a good parkrun, just 8 seconds outside my personal best (on a windy day which made it slower.)  I had been feeling a bit unfit and I didn't push myself super-hard, so this was a nice surprise.
• On Saturday I also got invited to visit a beautiful six week old baby.
• On Sunday I visited that six week old baby and she was incredibly beautiful. I got to hold her and at one point I took her when she was crying and held her until she went to sleep. Which is cute but you don't know that holding a baby that goes to sleep is one of my favourite things in the world. So that was a highlight of my year. 
• On Monday I had root canal treatment at the dentist. Perhaps not a great highlight but I coped with it ok which is good. And also was there for my daughters who needed me when they were ill. One highlight was not being called for jury service, which I mentioned in my procrastination post.
• On Tuesday I wasn't called for jury service, and I got myself out for another 5K which is good. But a bigger highlight was that the local paper asked to use photos from the aforementioned bake sale in the paper, which my daughter will be thrilled with. And of course makes me proud of her again. Also for the first time in years, I weighed myself and was just in the healthy weight region of BMI with a value of 24.9. This is artificial because it was after my run so I had lost some sweat, but still it's a good sign that my intended weight loss (about 7 pounds in the last few months) is ongoing. 

There has been a notable lowlight too, which is continuing to grieve for my friend who died last week.  I don't want you to think that I am the kind of person who doesn't want any emotion in their lives, and of course I am not sorry to be sad about losing a friend. 

And actually I haven't been that miserable compared to the last time I posted about highlights reel. But I do find that it's hard to remember all the good things that happen. I just naturally don't remember them. Whereas almost anything can make bad things pop into my head. Could be anxiety, could be negative self-thoughts, or memories of when I feel I let myself or other people down. 

When I went for my run this morning I did actually find myself thinking of that baby falling asleep in my arms. If I was better at thinking of positive things - of which there are many in my life - I suspect I would be a lot happier.