Last night I was relaxing in the bath after a big bushwalk, and I heard a helicopter overhead. Nothing unusual about that - but it kept getting louder and louder as if it was coming in to land - then I remembered that there was frost forecast for this morning, and the grape vines have started to bud. I was hoping they'd have to send the helicopter in - both to save the vines from the frost, and because I LOVE helicopters. I called out to the kids (by this stage the noise was directly above the house so I figured they'd probably heard it but maybe not realised what was happening) and they ran outside to watch it land. Luna was terrified and was happy to have their company. Tony and the kids chatted a bit to the pilot before he headed off to wherever he stays on the frost nights.
The helicopter has come most years in spring, when there's a frost forecast for the next morning and there are already buds or leaves on the vines. It's job is to fly over the vines and created enough wind that the dew can't freeze and destroy the crop. Some other vineyards have big fans installed to do the same job, or have a sprinkler system installed which stops the water from freezing. If the new leaves are damaged in spring, the wineries will have to wait for a secondary crop which would mean that yield would be down significantly. Usually when the helicopter comes the temperature doesn't end up dropping enough to form a frost, so the pilot gets a good night's sleep somewhere and comes back and picks his helicopter up in the morning.
Last night we went to bed as usual and I woke at 2.40am to a noise I couldn't identify. I'd put the washing machine on timer so that it would wash overnight and at first I thought it was the spin cycle, although I couldn't ever remember the noise taking over the whole house. There as also what sounded like an alarm going off. Then I remembered the helicopter and jumped out of bed to see it - I went out into the carport (where it was pretty cold, just below zero I later found out) and could see the helicopter getting ready to take off (it was over near the sheds). The noise was phenomenal, echoing through the carport and practically shaking the house. The alarm sound was just the high pitch of the propellers whizzing around, and there was a deep throbbing sound as well. I watched it take off in the dark night (it had lights) which was exciting, then watched for a while as it flew back and forth over each area of the vineyard, under an almost full moon. It was totally worth getting up at 3am and standing in the cold to see it.
Luna was once again terrified and when I opened the back door she raced straight into the house (she's usually reluctant to come in). She curled up on the couch and was much happier. I watched the helicopter for a bit longer (from the warmth of inside) then went back to bed - it flew for half an hour then landed again and the noise was pretty loud the whole time. Tony and the kids didn't wake up - I was surprised. I heard it take off two more times through the night - a big night for the pilot this time. The temperarture hovered just below zero for most of the rest of the night, then warmed up quickly once the sun came up. I slept in a little due to being up in the middle of the night, so the frost was gone by time I went outside.
I love living where we do for so many reasons, and this was one that I don't think of very often - it's like a little value add to have the excitement of the helicopter on our property, and I also enjoy the strong reminder of how much agriculture is at the mercy of the weather. I'm grateful to live here and be surrounded by grapevines and that the company is in a good enough position to protect their assets - which helps with Tony's job security and income.
Monday 24 September 2018
Saturday 12 May 2018
The choosing game
Yesterday I was thinking about some of my learned thinking and how it's not really helpful (for example, feeling like everything should be perfect in the lead up to a fun event, otherwise it's too hard to enjoy it). This morning I'm quite tired (I went out for a fun event last night (after a less than perfect lead up, and I still had a great night) and some more of those learned thoughts/conditioning were swirling around in my head (e.g. thinking people are all good or all bad and feeling confused when it turns out that's not true (every time)), and the thoughts were leading to anxiety, even though I knew they weren't true. Then I started thinking 'Oh I need to change all this conditioned thinking, there's so many things I need to change, I don't know how to do it' and I felt myself about to really spiral down into an anxiety pit...
I was making a cup of tea while these thoughts were swirling, and pouring in our beautiful milk straight from the dairy calmed me a little, and I came back to the moment, and was somehow able to shift perspective on my thoughts, and instead thought 'Wow, there's some conditioned thinking that it would be helpful to change, which will make things a bit easier' and then I felt great. I felt like I was making a choice, a positive choice to help improve my life, and I wasn't saying that things were bad, just that I'd found a way to make them better. My early thinking had been victim-like which can feel isolating and hopeless.
I feel so different in my body when I am thinking negative or victim thoughts - my shoulders hunch, I curl in on myself so my lungs end up squished and it's harder to breathe - and then I feel anxious because I'm short of breath, but my brain assumes that the shortness of great is because of anxiety, so it starts to worry more and try to figure out what I'm anxious about, and (as Sarah Wilson says in her wonderful book First We Make the Beast Beautiful) I 'get anxious about being anxious'. If anything goes slightly wrong or unexpectedly when I'm thinking like that, it adds to the anxiety and before long I can be feeling like nothing is ok and everything is a disaster. I don't seem to be able to stop and think, everything is so swirly in my brain there's no room for new information.
When I am thinking positive thoughts, staying in the moment, feeling in charge of my life, I stand straighter, I open my lungs up and breathing is calm and easy, I can stop for a moment if something goes wrong, think about a way to deal with it, and then move through it. I can feel really happy and content, even if things are going wrong around me - they don't impact my mood.
There's a couple of things that I can learn from this. One is that knowing that my thoughts impact on how I react to things - SOMETIMES when I start to move to anxiousness, I can tell myself that what I'm thinking is not necessarily true, it's not the only way to think. Sometimes I'm not able to change the way I'm thinking, but knowing that there are other possibilities can mean that I know that the anxiety won't last, it's only until something shifts, and that makes it more bearable (it used to feel like I'd be feeling that way forever, and that was scary). The other thing is that if I realise early enough that I'm moving to victim mode, I often CAN change my thoughts, just reframe it a little - sometimes that's enough to lift me right out of it (like this morning), other times it just calms me enough to be able to keep functioning and I can recover more quickly. It helps if I can do something nurturing or notice the great things around me and come back to the moment.
I also know that practice makes it easier. Every time I shift my thinking I get better at it, and I can continue to improve. I know it's not a fix-all and I'm not going to be able to do it every time - any time that I can do it though, improves my life and that of those around me. So I will celebrate those moments and remember that I do have options when I'm feeling low - even if I choose not to access those options every time, knowing that there are choices makes all the difference.
(This activity from Scott Noelle illustrates all the above - I've been doing it a bit lately, and this morning was the first time since I started that I truly remembered the advantage of knowing there is a choice https://www.dailygroove.com/choosing/)
I was making a cup of tea while these thoughts were swirling, and pouring in our beautiful milk straight from the dairy calmed me a little, and I came back to the moment, and was somehow able to shift perspective on my thoughts, and instead thought 'Wow, there's some conditioned thinking that it would be helpful to change, which will make things a bit easier' and then I felt great. I felt like I was making a choice, a positive choice to help improve my life, and I wasn't saying that things were bad, just that I'd found a way to make them better. My early thinking had been victim-like which can feel isolating and hopeless.
I feel so different in my body when I am thinking negative or victim thoughts - my shoulders hunch, I curl in on myself so my lungs end up squished and it's harder to breathe - and then I feel anxious because I'm short of breath, but my brain assumes that the shortness of great is because of anxiety, so it starts to worry more and try to figure out what I'm anxious about, and (as Sarah Wilson says in her wonderful book First We Make the Beast Beautiful) I 'get anxious about being anxious'. If anything goes slightly wrong or unexpectedly when I'm thinking like that, it adds to the anxiety and before long I can be feeling like nothing is ok and everything is a disaster. I don't seem to be able to stop and think, everything is so swirly in my brain there's no room for new information.
When I am thinking positive thoughts, staying in the moment, feeling in charge of my life, I stand straighter, I open my lungs up and breathing is calm and easy, I can stop for a moment if something goes wrong, think about a way to deal with it, and then move through it. I can feel really happy and content, even if things are going wrong around me - they don't impact my mood.
There's a couple of things that I can learn from this. One is that knowing that my thoughts impact on how I react to things - SOMETIMES when I start to move to anxiousness, I can tell myself that what I'm thinking is not necessarily true, it's not the only way to think. Sometimes I'm not able to change the way I'm thinking, but knowing that there are other possibilities can mean that I know that the anxiety won't last, it's only until something shifts, and that makes it more bearable (it used to feel like I'd be feeling that way forever, and that was scary). The other thing is that if I realise early enough that I'm moving to victim mode, I often CAN change my thoughts, just reframe it a little - sometimes that's enough to lift me right out of it (like this morning), other times it just calms me enough to be able to keep functioning and I can recover more quickly. It helps if I can do something nurturing or notice the great things around me and come back to the moment.
I also know that practice makes it easier. Every time I shift my thinking I get better at it, and I can continue to improve. I know it's not a fix-all and I'm not going to be able to do it every time - any time that I can do it though, improves my life and that of those around me. So I will celebrate those moments and remember that I do have options when I'm feeling low - even if I choose not to access those options every time, knowing that there are choices makes all the difference.
(This activity from Scott Noelle illustrates all the above - I've been doing it a bit lately, and this morning was the first time since I started that I truly remembered the advantage of knowing there is a choice https://www.dailygroove.com/choosing/)
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