Is downtime a time to be down?

I’m struggling to slow down at the moment. I worked hard and trained hard all summer for two massive events in my life. I launched my second novel ’embrace’ at the end of August and took part in the Great North Run a week later. I was initially overwhelmed with a huge sense of achievement, very quickly followed by the question ‘What next?’ I felt lost with no focus to my writing or my running any more. I knew I needed to slow down a little and take some time to recover physically but I found it hard to relax. I felt restless and emotional, physically exhausted and driven to keep going. I ended up asking,

Is down time actually a time to be down?

Because if so, I don’t like it. I don’t know how to come down from these successes without crashing or how to embrace downtime without feeling down.

Maybe this is how Noah felt. He had undertaken the most enormous task and built a massive boat. He had been ridiculed and had faced the destruction of humankind by a flood which must have been emotionally overwhelming. He and his family had been spared. The plan had worked. God had sent his promise and rescued them. They were on dry land. And Noah turned to the wine.

He was the first to feel he deserved a nice glass of wine after a hard day at work (or with the kids/ at a job interview/ cleaning the house from top to bottom). Many people find an excuse to deserve a glass or two of wine every night! It becomes a symbol of unwinding, celebrating the achievements of the day……..not that I necessarily have a problem with that, I guess the problem comes when an unbreakable habit is formed…We all find it hard to relax, hard to come down to earth and unwind. When the adrenaline has been flowing all day, coming down can leaving us feeling empty and drained and not happy in our skin.

Performers struggle with this. We were watching Peter Kay the other night who had completed the biggest arena tour in the UK ever and had been seen by the most people….he stressed the importance to him of just going straight home after a show and grounding himself in the reality of his family. Within an hour of a show at the MEN arena, he would be sat in his armchair in front of the TV wondering  ‘Did that all actually really happen?’ That was how he stayed sane. He had found his solution. But there are other actors, musicians and comedians who struggle more than this. The feeling at the end of a gig is euphoric; coming down from it is not. Drugs, alcohol, partying become a way of extending the amazing feeling that comes from being on stage…..and sadly, this can lead to all sorts of problems.

We have seen this first hand. Our son Keir is a musician and has experienced the buzz of performing live all over the Newcastle area. Here’s an amateur video (mainly of his feet but will give you a flavour) – of his song Liquor Love live. There is no better feeling. It makes the rest of life seemed so dull in comparison. Coming down from a gig is hard. And it’s been hard and distressing and scary for the rest of the family to see the effect of his use of legal highs to deal with the downtime. I thank God that for the last three months, my precious boy has ‘seen the light’ and turned his back on all that and become addicted to fruit smoothies instead. He is still writing and recording but has not been performing though and when he goes off to Manchester in a couple of weeks to start his degree course in Professional Musicianship at the Brighton Institute of Modern Music in Manchester  , I hope and pray with all my heart that he will find his way without the need for drugs. Drugs scare me.

Anyway, back to Noah. He turned to wine and got drunk and did something he would regret in the morning. Sound familiar?

Noah, a man of the soil, proceeded to plant a vineyard. When he drank some of its wine, he became drunk and lay uncovered inside his tent. Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father naked and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it across their shoulders; then they walked in backwards and covered their father’s naked body. Their faces were turned the other way so that they would not see their father naked.  Genesis 9:20-23

Noah? Really? This amazing man of God? In front of the kids too? Who’d have thought it? It just shows it can happen to anyone. It just shows that everyone is human. Once you have achieved something as amazing as building a massive boat and surviving a massive flood, what is there left to look forward to? Is that how it feels to win an Olympic Gold, or a Nobel Peace Prize or X Factor? When you have climbed Everest, what is there left to live for?

I have a problem with the Take That song ‘Greatest Day’ . Today this could be the greatest day of our lives. I hope not. If today is the greatest day, what is there left to live for? Greatest day so far maybe, but not of our whole lives….there has to be life after monumental achievement.

Anyway, the point of all these ramblings is to raise awareness of ‘the day after’, the downtime after something massive. It is real. It happens to us all. We have to recognise it and be kind to ourselves and find a sustainable way to live with it. With the highs inevitably come the lows – so should we leave the choir so we don’t feel let down the day after a concert? should we never compete to avoid the anti-climax the next day? Of course not. Let’s enjoy the highs and embrace the lows (please tell me how!) – that is life lived to the full.