Goodbye Sweden, the alien game and a bit of mindfulness

Blog Stats

Well, that was decisive. In my previous blog post I wondered why my blog was receiving thousands of visits from Sweden. Within two days of posting it the visits started to tail off and have now stopped completely. My stats are back to their normal level with not a single visit from Sweden over the last seven days. 

I had been wondering if these visits were some kind of automated bot that was not actually registering the contents of my posts but now I've changed my mind. Someone, somewhere in Sweden has been viewing my blog... viewing it thousands of times a week!! They have obviously now seen that on 1st August I called my post 'Hello Sweden' and talked about them. Apologies to Mr/s Swedish Blog Post Viewer if I have shocked you into going away but you have to agree that your vast number of visits were a bit strange.

The Alien Game

Mind you, this is a very strange world. When we were kids we used to play the game of pretending we'd been visited by aliens. We took it in turns to explain something that we perceived as normal like making a cup of tea. Did everyone play that game or was it just me and my group of friends? We'd laugh at how the aliens would be shocked that we were heating H2O up until it turned into a gas, mixing it with tannin-enriched dried leaves and adding the juice from a cow's udder. The game would keep us amused for hours. 

This image is a small section of a photo I took when Daughter treated us to afternoon tea in a posh London location.

Mindfulness

Aliens would consider most of what we do to be extremely strange - sometimes so do I, especially if I stop my daily busy-ness and make a conscious decision to look, listen and notice things around me. I'm doing a mindfulness course at the moment and this includes mindful walking. How many times do we walk to arrive? Sometimes it's better to slow down, think about the movement of your body as you walk, be aware of details around you including smells and sounds. It's different - relaxing and satisfying, especially when you notice something that has always been there but you hadn't noticed it before or you look at it in a different way. I really am trying very hard to slow down and notice what I'm doing rather than always working in autopilot mode. A note for those who know me in real life - if you see me reverting to my old autopilot ways then you have my permission to give me a prod (but only a gentle one!)