What my electric vehicle is teaching me about recharging

...and how I can better care for my own batteries

How many bars do you have?

I’m not that interested in cars it has to be said, but I have become very fond of my present car. My little e-Peugeot is beautiful, gentle, small and perfectly formed. She is comfortable, reliable, quiet and gets me where I need to be. But, she has limits.

My car is 100% electric, so I watch her battery with interest. I see her ‘bars’ deplete, and know when she needs to recharge. I notice when there are too many additional stresses on her battery with simultaneous demands for heat, music, navigation, phone charging… When the demands are multiple, she drains before my very eyes, but I see this, and I care for her. I lessen the demands, turn off the heat, quieten the noise. We stop, recharge, rest. There is no other option. If I don’t look after her in this way, she will simply not be able to continue.

Hmm.

I’m sure you can see where this is going.

It got me to thinking… if I allow this amount of care for the battery of my EV, because it is non-negotiable, why do I not afford this amount of recharging to myself? I look at the 8 battery bars on my dashboard as they tick down, rarely ever letting them go below 4 bars, so why do I constantly allow myself to run on 1 or 2…?

When I am in need of fuelling my own body at that stage of depletion, there is no plan, it is a grabbed snack filled with refined sugar and additives to keep me going - a Diet Coke and a Double Decker to help me limp forwards. My car, however, cannot be treated in such a way. EV charging is not yet ubiquitous enough for me to pull up anywhere for a quick recharge, there is no ‘dropping in’ for a tenner’s worth of petrol to get my vehicle through to the next destination. Not at all. The EV charge is a planned break, well ahead of exhausting the battery, with several contingency options. I factor in time so that my car can be ‘nourished and back up to full strength before travelling on.

I consider what my own ‘EV’ break would look like. There would be no fizzy drinks or highly processed foods, but perhaps a proper sit down with a bowl of soup. Maybe I’d come away from the phone, read a chapter of a book, do a bit of crochet. Take a minimum 30 minute rest break instead of eating on the fly without allowing my mind to pause.

How often do we actually do that within a day?

Operation Appledore

Tomorrow I am heading to Devon for the Appledore Book Festival via a day retreat with

Clover Stroud

in Oxfordshire. Oxfordshire is not on the way to Devon from where I live, but this is how my mind works - I’m going on a trip, so it makes sense to continue onwards…I’m sure there is some logic there somewhere. Oxfordshire is west (ish), Devon is west…

I have chronic fatigue, so in an unusual act of self-care due to a recent flare, I have planned in a night stop on the way down between Oxford and Devon, and also one on the way back, but alongside that, I have meticulously planned where my car can rest. I have made sure that the accommodation I’m staying at has EV charging, I have mapped out places en-route where I can stop.

People often ask if I ‘like’ my EV, and as someone with little to no interest in motoring, I realise that my car does actually bring me joy. I think that a lot of this is because of the ‘supposed’ limitations that we hear so much about. When I am fielding the questions about longer journeys, range and all those frustrations, I explain that it has taught me to drive in a completely different way. I notice how I drive, I optimise the environment to get the best from my car, I don’t pull on unnecessary ‘draining’ resources and I frequently stop…and recharge. It is no longer a race to get from A to B in the minimum time possible, but an experience. It has changed my outlook completely.

Life lessons anyone?

When I plan longer journeys, like going from Surrey to Devon (via Oxfordshire), or visiting Gladstone’s Library in North Wales which I try to do a couple of times a year, I return to old-school planning. I get a map, and plot a course, seeing which villages I may pass through. Where will I be every hundred miles? Is there somewhere nice to stop for coffee or lunch (with EV charging)? I struggle to drive for stretches of longer than 2 hours anyway as driving is a huge fatigue trigger for me, so in some ways, my EV looks after me. Forcing me to stop and rest, instead of relentlessly pushing through when I, myself, am depleted.

Forced rest

I am not good at resting. Those of you who have been with me a while will know this, as I write about it fairly regularly. I am, however, learning.

Historically, rest has often been ‘forced’ on me, in that my body has screamed ‘ENOUGH’ and gone into shut down. I also recognise that conventional notions of ‘rest’ are not always restorative for me. I wrote about this here:

However, too many pressures and an insistence on ‘keeping going’ has often sent my internal EV into a full-on stall, so I consider how I can better take care of my own batteries.

My different batteries

I have many types of battery to maintain:

• social battery

• cognitive battery

• physical battery

• emotional battery

I am definitely an extrovert in that I get energy from being around other people, but there are times when I don’t have it in me, and I need to hide away. I love chatting to people, to listen, discuss, exchange ideas. It is a very special energy, however there are times when my social battery is flat. The times where my anxiety hits the roof at the thought of someone asking me ‘what is your book about?’ as it takes an energised answer.

My social battery is very susceptible to change. I know that when it’s strong I can ‘work’ a room, but when it’s low, I feel so very vulnerable. I remember having a ‘surprise’ foisted on me once when my social battery was empty. Unexpected guests for dinner. People I love, but don’t see often, so I needed to be able to do the ‘what have you been up to?’ back and forth with strong interest and engagement. I went to the toilet and cried for twenty minutes before I could come back into the room.

My cognitive battery is probably my strongest one - writing, creativity and thought take little from me, they are a constant. However, this battery is strongly intertwined with my physical battery, which is much weaker. My physical battery is battered and bruised - sometimes it can be kick started, but often there is just nothing left. My physical battery would not pass muster inside an EV - it is the battery of a knackered Ford Cortina that splutters into life and takes off, but then conks out at the most inconvenient moments. My cognitive battery has a lot of excess energy and can feed my physical one, but conversely when my physical battery is low, my cognitive one can falter, and herein leads a road to poor mental health.

I think of my emotional battery as the one that serves others. The one that my children and loved ones plug into. The one I like to think of as limitless, and that does have a capacity to grow, but it can also shrink. It is a battery that can be powered when others plug in, I get that little green feedback light as I expand with their energy, but it can sometimes go the other way. Sometimes I need others to unplug, as I no longer have space for their needs. This battery ALWAYS keeps something in reserve for moments of crisis, like a beating heart as the oxygen ebbs and flows, but it can’t always service the minutiae.

Recently my youngest, Taz, was moaning about her new gymnastics training times. I responded with; ‘Honey, I don’t have it in me to absorb this right now’. She looked at me perplexed: ‘But you’re a mum?’

Photo by Debby Hudson on Unsplash

Services

My batteries need more care. This week in Devon is going to be one that uses up a lot of battery - socially I will be in ‘butterfly’ mode - meeting authors, networking, and staying with my in-laws; catching up on so much because we don’t see each other as much as we’d like. My physical battery will be being tested due to driving, days on my feet, not sleeping in my own bed. My cognitive battery will be firing, probably self-charging and feeding energy into the physical. The emotional battery will be resting as mothering duties are temporarily delegated (as much as this is ever possible), friends know I am away, and no dramas are anticipated…she says tentatively.

During the Heartleap writing hour this morning with

Suzy Walker

I talked about writing this piece, and Suzy commented:

‘How do we plug into the service station of our own life?’

I love this. The service station of our own life.

Beyond the daily recharge - perhaps an annual service would be quite something. I need to think about how mine would look. In the meantime, I will try and monitor my own wellbeing as I do that of my car. Take proper breaks. Recharge in the ways that work for me:

• a nap or a bath for my physical battery

• writing or other creative activities like crochet for my cognitive battery

• learning when to say ‘no’ to take care of my social battery, and having breaks between highly social periods (one to note for next year’s book tour…)

• guarding my emotional battery - allowing others to help me when I need it so that the energy flow goes both ways.

• taking a cold dip - that replenishes ALL of my batteries. Really. Each and every one.

Photo by Saif71.com on Unsplash

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How do you look after your own batteries? Are you an EV or bombing around on petrol pushing it as far as you can go? How would you describe the different batteries that you need to charge?

I’d love to hear.

As always,

Love & lemons 💕🍋

Em xx