June is my busiest month at work:  the usual tasks continue, while all the routines necessary to prepare for the new academic year also fall due.  I find it strangely amusing that, unless I work through a long list of IT processes, September would be chaos  – students in Year 7 would not automatically find themselves in Year 8, students choosing their GCSE subjects wouldn’t know if they could take their preferred choices,  no-one would know which class they belonged to and, most obviously, there wouldn’t be a timetable to take all these variables of students, staff, rooms and combine them in a way which – fingers crossed – will keep everyone productively busy during each school day.

As a result, I become very conscious of the need to manage my time and my stress levels, trying to apply some honest self-knowledge about my stamina and tolerance.  I can’t just plough on regardless – I get over-tired, mildly obsessed, weary and, hence, both less effective and less pleasant to live with.  So some de-stressing activities are needed but, as time is limited, these have to be assessed quite ruthlessly, seeking an optimum ratio of input (time, effort, mental energy, money) to benefits.   I realise that this may sound as if I am about to slide into some dreadful weekend magazine banality about the importance of “me time”.   Don’t get me wrong – I like – what’s the normal list?  –  shopping, yoga, lunch with the girls and candlelit, scented baths…well, probably as much as the next person.   But I don’t want activities which are equally relaxing to the next person:  I want to pinpoint the precise things which restore me. Indeed, I wonder if one of the effects of being “stressed” is that we lose individuality.    We feel defined by the pressures upon us – “this month, I will be mainly a Timetabler” – or whatever combination of different roles are competing for our time, our attention, our identity.

So my search is for the particularly soothing, the peculiarly wonderful, the uniquely rewarding.   It is, perhaps, an indulgently selfish activity, but I do think that each person requires maintenance and care.  If we don’t attend to our own well-being, then someone else will probably have to do it.  So maybe it’s for the greater good and saves someone else having to make the effort on our behalf.

There is, of course, no point in sharing my list of restorative blessings, as they will probably make no sense to anyone else.  All I can suggest is that, when you can see there is a similar need in your life, you focus on the specifics.   Of course, going to the theatre works for me.  But to be really effective, it’s not just going to “the theatre”.  For me, it was being a groundling, at the Globe, crying “God for Harry, England and St George” with a full heart and voice, ready to follow Jamie Parker’s Henry V unto the breach once more.   Yes, reader, I finally got there – and it was, absolutely, as wonderful as I hoped it would be.  I don’t think the devil is in the detail. I think salvation can be in the small things.  The things which ring true for me, or the things which ring true for you: the small, personal, individual things which cause your heart to leap, your  spirit to rejoice – yes, which stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood.  I hope you can find many of them, and entwine them within the mundane to create for yourself  restoration and refreshment.