Get it in the vault

Always a fan of Jerry Seinfeld (although I guess there’s a pretty strong chance that particular sitcom donger appears in the Epstein files … let’s not get into that), there are a couple of classic moments I always loved in that series; (1) SERENITY NOW! Shrieked by Ben Stillers father will always hold a warm place in my heart, and (2) It’s in the Vault.

The Vault was always this sort of undefined secrecy/honour system the characters had, with varying success. But it makes me wonder what my own Vault is, what it holds. I suppose I’ve worked hard to move away from the flurry of adolesence, in which one’s Vault is filled with gossip and slander and secrets (tbh I was never much into those things anyway), and towards a place in which my Vault is filled with tools for myself.

Tools that can help me when I’m at my lowest ebb, when my poor modern brain is unable to think clearly or decide how to help itself. When I’m so numbed by input that I can barely form sentences, I can open the steely Vault and select a tool or device which will give me some comfort, soothe my boiling brain, and help me to recover back to my truest, whole self once more.

This box-of-tricks approach was introduced to me during some training a few years back, on mental health (not that I’m a psych/therapy person by trade, but the topic is always interesting no matter your professional background). The training began with us all listing the things that gave us energy – you do that and make it a good list before you even begin learning about stress and MH methodologies – and then you refer back constantly to your gives-energy listing.

So perhaps the question I’m putting to my gorgeous, intelligent, numerous and variously weird blog readers is this; in good times, have you made your own list so that in bad times you can read it? Does your vault contain the shameful screams of a thousand banshees, or does it contain tinctures that may balm your weary soul on days when overwhelm beckons? Which tiny elixirs could restore you from the realms of burnout to which we all seem so attracted?

Here’s my negative list of things I can do which sort of help in the short term, but which tend to lead me into darker cycles:

• Drink beer/wine/cider/spirits/cocktails/anything
• Wanky wank
• Drink EVEN MORE
• Wank EVEN MORE ooh it’s getting a bit sore
• Doom scroll social media, try to avoid rage-bait and grievance politics

Here’s my positive list (this is the real Vault):

• Go on a walk in fresh air
• Put my phone on flight mode
• Make a lovely cup of tea
• Touch lichen, appreciate the infinitesimally detailed and perfect/imperfect nature of the cosmos
• Have a lovely bath
• Have a lovely nap
• Make a lovely cup of tea
• Sit in an ancient pub with a trusted friend or two
• Read really terrible scifi from the 60s-80s
• Make a lovely cup of tea
• Walk somewhere with a river, remove my shoes and socks, and wade across the river for no reason
• Play minecraft (it follows a certain set of rules and can be chill af)
• Type ANY words as fast as I can; no grammar, no structure, just freeflow gogogo for 15 minutes, see where it goes
• Travel pillion with my significant other to a cafe and sit and talk shit for an hour or two
• Go on a serious walk in forests until I’m completely lost and have to use the compass app on my phone
• Browse old vinyl in rotting old record shops with no intention of buying anything
• Ditto books, ditto rotting old shops, ditto zero intention
• Make a lovely cup of tea
• Zen and the art of various types of mechanical tinkering
• Cycle, garden, prune, clip, hoover (I quite like hoovering!)
• Plan one absurdly high-end meal and walk to a shop to buy one or two extremely niche ingredients, and cook the meal while dancing around listening to the vinyl I intended not to buy but inevitably did
• Journal/write/blog (like I’m doing right now)
• Make a lovely cup of tea
• Set fire to things and sit and watch them buuuuurrrnnnnn until my eyeballs are warm and my bogies are black with soot
• Tea … two sugars.

We all have negative lists, but what’s on your positive list? No, seriously. Let’s write it, share it, and perhaps we’ll begin to live it.

[Boobies]