Friday.

My sweet Sidney is putting weight on his broken leg, which is held together with titanium pins. I think: I am almost sure this is A Good Thing. My Tern the Bird is eating her feed with gusto and giving me quizzical looks. I think: this is definitely a good thing.

I was going to learn a hundred lessons from all this and now I can’t think of that many. Well, there is one. When unexpected shocks come, you’ll run on adrenaline for about a week. It lasts a long time. In that week, I was going to change the world. I even set up a group called The Women’s Enterprise Co-operative, because I thought the most imperative thing was that the women support each other. I had wild visions of brilliant women gathering from all over the world and in about three years we would go on all the podcasts and everyone would say, ‘How did your business finally take off?’ and we would all beam and say, ‘It was when we banded together and used the power of the group.’

My friend Jane would actually say something much funnier than that, but you get the idea. We were going to move mountains.

There are currently four of us and we are mostly amusing each other by sending comical skits to the WhatsApp.

Still, we will prevail. We’ll probably have hats and an anthem or something. We’ll go to gatherings and sing rousing renditions of You’ll Never Walk Alone.

What else have I learnt? I’m really glad I know about the nervous system. I’ve been setting it and resetting it. The aim is not always to have it in parasympathetic, which is rest and digest. This would not be human. The aim is, as my friend Jane Pike taught me, to have it fluid and moveable. You can gently and easily move from fight, flight and freeze to rest and digest and back again, and that’s all right. There are lots of excessively didactic people out there on the internet who will tell you how to do this in 27 easy steps. I confess I’ve made up my own little toolkit and it works for me.

I’ve learnt that there are nice people in Devon who make proper, honest dog food which has made all the world of difference to my sweet Sidney’s stomach.

I’ve learnt that I can still forget how everything can feel like it is unravelling if I get only an hour less sleep than I need. I know this. I forget this. Last night, I got my extra hour and today, everything is possible.

I’ve learnt which the reliable friends are and why they matter. (I’m making lists and taking names. No, only joking.) I’ve also thought back to times when someone was in need and I didn’t know how to help them or didn’t have the capacity to help them or - and this may be very oddly British - felt too shy to help them. I didn’t want to intrude, that kind of thing. It wasn’t my drama. The brilliant ones who have stepped up now have shown me how to step up in the future and I’m going to remember that and pay it forward.

I’ve learnt that my brain loses organisational and logistical function when there are external stresses - I had to apologise to a client for forgetting about a moved meeting - but that I can still do creative work like gangbusters. There were times this week when I was at my absolute crest and peak, working with clients, partly because my brain thought, with enormous relief, ‘I know how to do this’ and partly because the work I do stretches me in the most lovely way, emotionally and creatively. The brain adored that, because it did not have to worry about bones knitting or adjusting medication or how to make a rehab plan or how to do twisty financial things. If you are a writer and you come to me with any question about your book or your writing mind or your writing life I rev up my engine and I go. There is no hesitation, no uncertainty. I’ve got three different suggestions for you and I’ll have another three next week if those don’t work. I have one writer just now who is deep in resistance and we can’t find our way out of it and I cry, with great vigour and unexpected delight, ‘This is tremendous! We are both failing!’ and she looks rather shocked and I say, ‘No, this is the point. We face the failing and we use it as a challenge and as useful information and as a galvanic test of our mettle.’

In the old days, I’d have had shame, because failure meant I was Officially No Good. I don’t have shame any more. Some resistances are deep-seated and miserably felt and we’ll damn well get to the bottom of this one if it’s the last thing I do. Just because something is difficult, and just because something leads to initial failure, it does not mean that I give up.

I’ve learnt that I don’t just say that I don’t give up. I don’t give up. On all fronts. This is quite reassuring.

I’ve learnt that I’d like to know more about the base science of resilience. I mean, there must be studies. There must be data. I think there’s probably a bit of Viktor Frankl in there, and possibly the Stoics. Definitely a dash of Epictetus. But someone, somewhere, must have run a study of resilient people and seen what it is they have and what it is they do. I want to know those things.

I’ve learnt, for the hundredth time, that I am ridiculously lucky. I don’t have clinical depression. I don’t have chronic pain. I have a brain that works, even when it’s a bit tired and it forgets the meeting that was moved. This is absurd good fortune. I appreciate that luck more than I can say.

And now I’m going off social media for a whole, luxurious weekend. I’m going to do real things in the real world and not look at the machines. The tank will get filled up. And on Monday, I’ll go again.