SOFT REMINDER MONDAY

and gold stars for trying

This week, Soft Reminder Sunday is arriving with the energy of someone who texted ‘on my way!’ but was in fact still sat on the edge of the bed, wrapped in a towel, wet hair dripping down their back, staring into the middle distance.
My sincerest apologies.

I had every intention to share this yesterday, honestly, but the hours slipped their coats on and left without me. Suddenly it was late and I was horizontal and the most productive thing I’d done all day was locate clean underwear.

It feels thematically aligned at least.
There would be something suspicious, would there not, in delivering with ruthless efficiency, a poem about not getting everything done.
With increasing regularity, I find I am a couple of steps behind the neat, aspirational self I pencilled into the margins of the week. Y’know the one who wakes up early without resentment and replies to emails and has herbs that haven’t died. Sigh.

Anyway, please accept this slightly rumpled, Monday shaped Sunday thing. A soft reminder arriving the way many of us do; a little bit late but with our hearts in the right place and still (hopefully) worthy of a gold star pressed gently into the page.
Not technically on a Sunday, but very much in the spirit of it.

GOLD STAR FOR TRYING

If you didn’t get it done this week,
that is alright.
The world won’t make a note and put it in a file.
Forgetting to defrost the chicken
is not a crime against humanity
it is simply evidence that you are alive
and occasionally distracted
by your own thoughts,
or the internet,
or the very compelling act of lying down ‘for a second’.

We’re all just staggering through,
a little bit winded by it but doing what we can.
I think we should give out gold stickers for that
and for the way we answered the sun each morning
even pipped it to the post sometimes.
For taking our makeup off when we couldn’t be bothered,
for replying to at least one email.
And if you didn’t cook the healthy thing,
if the vegetables looked at you
and you looked back
and both of you knew it wasn’t happening
well, congratulations on keeping the frozen pizza industry alive.

You don’t have to be shiny all the time,
you are not a bathroom mirror under nightclub lighting.
The week is over now
and you are still tender and hilarious and kind,
still allowed to lie on the sofa
give in to horizontality
and feel proud of the things you did do.