Resistance is futile... how to stay calm within

Feeling on edge
I'm not sure what's gotten into me but I've been feeling so restless of late. One day I'll be perfectly fine and happy, going to work, doing what needs to be done, coming home and feeling optimistic about the future and my many projects that swirl endlessly in my mind, waiting to be born out (mainly in book form).
At other times, and with an increasing regularity as to slightly worry me, I feel dissatisfied, like there is indeed a pea under my many mattresses, causing only slight but noticeable discomfort (and using that analogy causes me to question whether I am being too much of a princess about it all and ought to 'man up' as one of my former beau's would have told me).
Perhaps it's a combination of having ended my intense year of dancing, and the adrenalin I no doubt called upon many a time that caused me to push through physical situations that normally would have me lying under the covers for days, coupled with the shake up of changing jobs.

Planning my escape route
At any rate, I find myself mentally planning out escapes: going to live in the jungle with a community at Pachamama in South America; going to live at a retreat centre in Hawaii as a volunteer for three months; going to Ibiza or Bali or somewhere warm at any rate to train full time as a yoga instructor. But I also know/predict these will most likely remain dreams, as I'm one to follow the 'sensible', conservative path. I'm due to buy my own flat very soon, which I'd so dearly wanted earlier this year, yet now I question it over and over, wondering whether the disproportionately long delay in the process is actually a sign from above that I ought to get out now, keep my deposit and free myself from the 9-5, if only for a year. Yet I know I most likely won't.
The funny thing is that a similar situation occured some nine years ago, when then I was debating: travel or property? I chose property, mainly out of fear of 'wasting all my money and never getting on the property ladder later' as my dad told me at the time. So, good old fear of the unknown kept me firmly on British soil.

Cycles...
Is this situation repeating now? I can't help but see patterns emerging, as I've grown older, and felt 'hmm, didn't this happen X number of years ago, or with X person?' as things seem to crop up that seem vaguely familiar, like a mild version of deja vu.
Even going to salsa last night only lifted my spirits for about half an hour - during all the really good dances I had when moving perfectly to the music and feeling that sense of connection to my partner and the dance. I came back feeling sadder than when I left.
Of course, the other explanation is that the most recent ending of a 'relationship' (I use the term loosely as the very fact it was so undefined is what caused me to call time on it, as it was not making me happy) affected me more than I thought it would. I ought to be hardened to those sorts of endings too by now, as it feels as if I've gone through a fair few, but it never does seem to get any easier. And that is another area of my life where repeating cycles are increasingly evident, hence the purchase of an online book about 'how to understand men' late last night after returning from dancing.... but there's another blog in itself, in fact a whole book! (watch this space).

A way to find inner calm?
Anyway, I'd better wrap up as work calls. The dark and dank weather make it particularly unpleasant to stare at a glaring computer screen, coupled with a harsh, bright light over head that shines directly into my eyes (I need one of those old fashioned editor's visors!). Oh, which reminds me the very reason why I began this blog! (I do tend to go off at tangents). I'm reading the Life of Pi, an excellent book, and a line in it made me stop and think. Pi is on an island, and talks of how it's a very 'Gandhian island' in that the waves crash into it relentlessly, yet the island absorbs them and is not affected or damaged, and how Pi concludes that the only way to resist is by not resisting - allowing whatever is to just be. I thought perhaps I, too, would fare better if I adopted this mindset, of letting all the situations and people causing me stress to just wash over me, like a stormy sea, and remain unaffected within. Meditate more, I'm often told. Now is a good time to listen to that advice... :-)