Well, as you know, I have been attempting to keep myself the right side of mentally well with exercise. So, I decided to sign up for the ‘Couch to 10k’ app. Having once run the Shanghai Half Marathon (once) in the past, I decided I should challenge myself properly. So, my exercise regime consists of TEAMS classes with a mixture of barre and full body workout 3x per week, HITT with Ms Manley 5-6x per week (6 if at all possible), run/walk 3x per week via the app and then substituted with barre sessions from a different app. Depending on how hard I have pushed myself, I may walk back up the stairs to the 18th floor too. I’m feeling ok, and for the first time (possibly ever) I went for a jog because I couldn’t settle one evening this week. This was an entirely new phenomenon to me, only ever having other people talk about ‘needing to exercise’! 😊 I still count myself as very fortunate that I have a regular circuit to run around – roughly 250m around the front of my compound and down through the underground car park… the compound does not have a big footprint! Still, I am allowed out in the fresh air and I am able to do all of these things. On one of my runs this week, I got back into my podcast listening. It’s something I have actively missed about not having any sort of commute so I am pleased to be able to do so.
I saw a clip on LinkedIn of Steven Bartlett interviewing Jessie J on “Diary of a CEO’. Unsurprising to many of you, I am the sort of person who starts a podcast series at the beginning so that I can experience the ‘journey’, however this one really piqued my interest so I started at the ‘end’ instead. If you have time, it is well worth a listen; Jessie J (or was it Jessica Cornish speaking?) is compelling and very real. She opened up with real humanity and there were some clearly raw moments. She talked about everything from fame to loss to grief (in and out of the public eye) to her own experiences and not being so fiercely independent and (my own spin here) just how much music is ‘inside’ her whether she likes it or not.
One of the aspects I wanted to talk about today was actually the bit when she talked about her own struggles with wellbeing and ‘being inside her own head’. Her advice was (is) to go outside, to walk around or go to the park. I doesn’t take much to work out why this stuck with me. I can picture exactly where I was on my jog when I heard this; I was heading towards a locked gate where I could see people on the other side walking down the road freely. Yes! I thought to myself. Yes! Go outside and be outside in the fresh air. Go and be in an open space. As I say, I am fortunate. I am allowed in my (admittedly not huge and shared with many other people) compound and I am free within that space. I can choose to go out or not go out. Many of my friends and colleagues can’t. They don’t’ have what we are now calling a luxury. I am not going to go into the rights or wrongs of any decisions made by anyone, that isn’t what this is about. It is, however, about recognising how challenging these circumstances are.
The other aspect is identity. She was very clear that she had struggled with finding her own identity and when she was ‘Jessie’ and when she was ‘Jessica. Indeed, she spoke about attending a family bbq in a catsuit with a bob wig. She said it was a challenge to find her place and work out how to present herself. She also talked about developing relationships in the public eye and how challenging it is to develop meaningful connections. She talked about fame and how to deal with it, how she asks her close people not to point out articles about her in the media because she doesn’t want to know, it isn’t helpful. The media (and possibly the public) feel they have ownership over anyone in the public eye and the right to comment on a whole range of things from querying a pregnancy or commenting on sartorial choice. She also talked about just wanting to do what she loves to do which is singing and song writing and that she hasn’t sought fame.
It was, as I say, raw and open and honest. She spoke a lot about grief and loss and how she is learning to deal with it. She also spoke candidly about being an empath and about how she carries her loved ones with her all of the time whether they are still living or not. She gave lots of food for thought, and my particular takeaway as a school leader was the part about identity; which ‘you’ are you showing at what time and how comfortable do you feel?
That’s all for today, I think everyone should be enjoying the sunshine in whichever way they can.
Happy Friday everyone – we made it!
Music today is a particular favourite of mine – 4 Non Blondes and What’s Up from the YouTube ‘Alternative Rock’ playlist – covers of famous rock songs. Particularly enjoyable.
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