If it's okay to feel a bit shitty. The crazy thing is there's nothing wrong. Australia didn't go as well as we would have liked, and I've been pretty jet lagged all week yet done some really good work and life is still good. But even when life is good, we can’t always feel amazingly optimistic about everything and neither do we need to be totally positive all the time.

Life is a challenge, and we always have problems to solve. By and large I enjoy my life immensely, but I've not seen Joy, my wife since December 28 and won't be seeing her or my daughter, Roxanne, son in law, Efe and gorgeous grandkids for another six weeks and I do miss them. Naturally it is not like this is my first rodeo on the road for an extended period. However, I can’t pretend that everything is humming but at the same time everything is also okay. 

I just don't feel like I'm running on all mental cylinders. Physically I'm fine and have so much to be grateful for, but you know what, I'm not as motivated as I normally am and that's okay. How long is it going to last? I don't know. I could wake up tomorrow and be absolutely buzzing again. But just because I feel a bit shit doesn't mean that anything's wrong or that life is bad, or that there's any specific reason why I just don't feel amazing.

I used to think that I needed to just snap out of this feeling, that I was being stupid or ungrateful whereas now I think okay just relax and accept being slightly off. I'm never moody about it and nobody professionally will know unless they listen to this and equally, I’m not sad. I just feel a little shift emotionally. I think we need permission to sometimes feel a little shit, a little less motivated and take a bit more time and watch a movie or read a book or just chill and not feel pressured into feeling guilty because we are not being productive. I can't stand up and go hey, everything is absolutely amazing, so I give myself permission to have a day or a couple of days where I'm not gonna be pushing myself to be super happy or productive. 

I'm just okay and to be honest I haven’t really wanted to do a podcast this week, but that would be letting myself down and create a dangerous “feeling sorry for myself” emotion which is a slippery slope. When we start to let ourselves down and not do what say we will do then we begin to lose trust in ourselves and our level of responsibility drops. If we go very far down that road then we begin to affect our self-esteem.

I have promised myself I would create a nugget every week and that is what I will do until I no longer feel it is worthwhile. Feeling a bit shitty is no excuse to stop work completely or much at all. The remedy fits the feeling where I will do a little bit less and leave unimportant things on the back burner.

This has been a hard podcast because it is difficult to explain. What I can say is that when I feel this way it would be nice to know that this effort is appreciated. Anyway, I will update next Sunday with another nugget and see where I’m at after an extremely busy week at TeamBath, Bradfield College before jetting off to Germany.

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