Out of Reach

Hi Readers, Another day and yet another post. Talk about motivated and organised!

Well actually, I'm just slopping around the house this morning and doing a bit of a clean up as I have family from interstate coming to stay for a few days.

Do you ever wonder how parts of your house can begin to look untidy even if you rarely or never use them? This frustrates the living daylights out of me, because I'm okay cleaning up after myself, but cleaning up after no-one ??? There must be a ghost living here with me somewhere !!!

This post will be relatively short I feel as I want to do some other things that are not cleaning related, plus this post stems from just two sentences I read last night in a new book that I alluded to in my last post.

I fully realise that I might be jumping on a quote too soon rather than reading the entire book, but it just made me think so much of my own future, as I have no idea what tomorrow will bring let alone next year !

I also might be reacting too much to what may appear to be just a simple comment, but I don't mind. I just love the fact that I'm coming across books that really make me think about the bigger picture, whatever that may be.

To give you some context about the quote, in the opening pages Nedd is only a few hundred km's into a 4 000km fundraising run across Australia. Already his body is under intense stress and he is doubting his own ability to successfully complete what he had set out to do. His mental strength is being challenged just as much as his physical strength. 

I'm sure we've all been like this at times after a really hard workout or physical exertion. Usually we are struggling after just one day of doing it, or just an hour or two. 

Other times it might just be the mental stresses that we encounter in our daily lives.

Nedd is running 100 km a day, and doing this each day for 40 or more days, and at the point of the book right now he has just finished 500 km and already he is fighting his body to get it up and prepared each day for another long day on the road.

I think the pictures help to provide the context.

He is talking about how he needs to be able to shut down his mind and body at the end of each day so that it can fire up again the next day so that he can do it all again.

Now I hear you wondering, what on earth is the quote that is so important????

"How can you train yourself to approach things that way (talking about the strain he is putting himself through), when the future feels perpetually out of reach? You can't"

This really slapped me between the eyes, just like any other quote that resonates with me. As a result, I couldn't even finish the paragraph as my mind was racing with how I was interpreting this statement. Readers, this is why it often takes me so long to read a book as when I come across things that really get me thinking, I put the book down and let my thoughts just wonder about what I have just read. Jen would get just so frustrated with me when I did this, especially if she was waiting to read the book after me. More often than not she'd read a book first before recommending it to me, otherwise she'd be waiting forever !

So what feels out of reach for us?

* Winning Lotto?

* Losing weight ?

* Getting that promotion or job ?

* That new car or holiday ?

etc.

The ones that I mentioned are mainly material things, and sure I'd love to win Lotto ( I'm not that dumb to deny that still !!) but after lying awake for a long period of time last night pondering this I began to understand the statement a bit more.

I don't get out of bed each day striving to win a bucketload of money ( I actually won $8.50 the other night !!), because that's pretty much out of my control. Sure, if I buy a ticket my chances improve to 1:134 490 400 in a $12o million Powerball, very remote, but still a chance.

What I have taken from Nedd so far are more personal goals, dreams and ambitions, and that I just can't do nothing about them, but need to prepare myself each night to do what I can the next day to get the ball rolling again.

As I said earlier, what I'm doing next year is a total blur to me. I have got no idea at all. Do I still want to be teaching? Do I go part-time? Do I look at doing the Barrista course that I've longed to do ( probably not now with my hands the way they are) Do I stay living in Bendigo? 

There are just so many 'what ifs' floating around my brain and at least I have been lucky enough to learn that I have to be careful not to make impulse choices, like I nearly did last year with the ute and caravan !!! (Read previous post for that story!)

What other things in the future feel perpetually out of reach then? Can I train myself to achieve them? Apparently this is too hard according to Nedd, and I'm not saying that you have to agree or disagree with him, but perhaps just wonder about it.

The way I see it is to not see them as perpetually out of reach, but rather as things that I can get part of the way, or as much as possible in reaching them. Striving for something that we see as achievable is much easier to go to sleep with at night rather than creating further anxiety aiming for the impossible.

Sometimes it does feel like this!!

After the events of the past 2 years I still go to sleep at night wondering many things. Will they happen at all? What do I need to do the start things happening?

They won't happen if do diddly squat about them, so there needs to be action and effort from my part.

And this is where I'll digress for a moment Readers (I haven't done that for quite a few posts !!)

Warning !! Vulnerability alert!!

One of the things that has sustained me since mid 2021 has been this blog, and the regular, and more often than not, irregular posts. It is my release and helps me to understand things more clearly. People have said to me things like "Why do you need to write it down?"

I find that when I write it down I think more clearly about it. It works for me, and if that bothers them...not my problem!

I have also had people take me to task about mentioning Jen so often. I can't avoid that as it is the one thing that has affected me the most in my entire life, so I can't ignore it. Think of the events in your life that have affected you the most - do you talk about them or push them to the side? To spend 10 months watching someone fade away and not have it affect you is something that I just cannot fathom. Most of it was done on my own, and now I need to try and find some level of happiness that often feels out of reach, but I mustn't give up on it. Every single day is still incredibly hard, but I'm committed to having a crack at making the most of whatever lays ahead of me. Putting it in the "too hard basket" is not what Jen would want, and neither would anyone around me as I'd be a total loser to them all.

After my recent light hearted posts this one has ventured down "Vulnerability Street", something that I'd never thought I'd be able to do in recent years, but now feel totally comfortable in doing. I hope you understand, and are able to identify things in your own lives that you really do need to take care with how you approach them, but don't give up on them.

We are two weeks into our holidays and while I did get away for a week in Qld, yesterday I just had this nagging feeling that I couldn't put a finger on, until it sort of came to me last night.

For the first time in 18 months I actually have enough mobility to go and do things, and here I am sitting at home. I am looking forward to having family here for a week or so, but it has been the being at home alone that has bugged me, when I should be out doing things. I think I just got used to being at home unable to do much, but that is going to change I can tell you!!!

Admittedly I do have to be in Bendigo for doctor appointments, but once they are done a new bike is on the cards, another trip to QLD and hopefully some totally random trips away. When one has been incapacitated to some degree it is so easy to remain in that space even after recovery ( using that term loosely Readers!!) 

This where I am reaching out for the things that have seemed perpetually out of reach. Sure, running is the one thing that I'd dearly love to do again, but I'm realistic enough to realise that is out of the question. I now look for substitutions for the things that I want to do. They might not cut it like the things that I was once able to do, but as they are still within my reach then I'll go for them.

As for my bike, I'm enjoying the opportunity of searching for what I think will best suit me.

And after buying a new bike for our Grandson Henry, I just can't wait to go for a ride with him ❤️

Well Readers, I went a bit deeper than I had intended, but as I said, this is what helps me to reach out for the things that may seem at times to be perpetually out of reach. I may not get there, but at least I'll have a crack.

I hope you do too.

Until my next post,

Cheers 😁

Things we just know, for no reason!

 Things we just know, for no reason!

Hi Readers, another day, another post. Quite a good way to spend the early days of my holidays after a busy week away to start with. I also think that the body is encouraging me to take things easy for a few days as there are a number of 'hotspots' crying out for some love and attention 😖

I left a little message at the end of my last post as to what this one would be about, but let me tell you where the idea came from to start with.

Last week I drove from the Gold Coast up to Caloundra in Queensland, a trip that took 3 hours each way for a number of reasons. On the way up the traffic was fairly slow all the way to Brisbane due to the severe storm damage from the night before, and the road was littered with tree debris.

After finally getting to Caloundra and fulfilling a long held promise to catch up with great friends Anne and Lee, it was back in the car for the trip home.

This was a nightmare, and after travelling at no more than 30 kmh for about an hour I definitely had plenty of think time while crawling along at a snail's pace.

There was a discussion on the radio and for the life of me I can't even remember what it was precisely about, but at one point a caller said that Sydney weather is more volatile than Perth's because Sydney is further north.

BANG!! My attention level piqued, because I know for a fact that Perth is further north than Sydney. Why do I know that?

I heard some people arguing about it one day, so rather than continue listening to the argument, I decided to find out for myself, and that fact has stayed with me since.

Maybe for some reason we perceive Sydney to be further north as there are more places to associate it with, or compare it to ?

Why? Probably because I didn't know myself and was interested to find out.

It is a piece of trivial information that has no bearing on my life, but by finding this one out, it dawned on me that there are so many other things like this that I now know, that 99% of the rest of the world could not give the slightest bit of interest to.

For the record :

   Sydney.  33.8688° S, 151.2093° E

   Perth      31.9514° S, 115.8617° E

And why do we remember these things???

I have no idea. Sometimes I have trouble remembering what I watched on television last night, but I can remember how may seconds in total that Dustin Martin had the ball in his possession when he kicked 4 goals in the 2020 Grand Final !!

They can be great discussion starters in those awkward moments of silence we all experience from time to time, but please, choose ones that are appropriate to each situation!!! You could use them when you feel that they can add further to what you are talking about, making you look pretty good with your "amazing knowledge" when in fact it may be the one and only thing that you know about that subject !

In recent years I have collected quite a few of these facts and figures, and many of them are prone to change as they might be feats of endurance, weather changes or sporting records just to name a few.

Added to this, I have been fortunate to have been able to present workshops at maths conferences in recent years, and I have used these facts and figures as ways to get participants interested to start with.

For all I know, they might have been the only interesting part of the workshops to start with !!!

So Readers, let me bore you with some of the things that have stuck with me, and then perhaps it might encourage you to think about things "that you just know" for no particular reason.

I bet that some of you might even check the validity of some of these, but as far as I'm aware, they were accurate at the time that I wrote them down back in July of 2023.

If you catch me out, I have no problem, I'm sure they are still pretty accurate. Just by getting you to challenge me on them is a great response, I'll embrace it !!

Here we go....

Now it's 2.00.35  !!!!!!!

For my overseas Readers, please forgive me for my indulgences with my favourite Australian Rules Football team, but it ALWAYS gets a reaction here !!!

There might be facts and figures here that interest you, or most likely they bore you to tears. However, I'm sure you must "know some things that you just know" that would similarly excite me !!🥱

Feel free to share some if you have the time!

That's about it for today Readers, I must admit I'm feeling really glad that I've been able to punch out a few posts over recent days, as it's clearly something I love doing, but just don't organise my time well enough to do it.

As for what my next post will be about, I'm unsure, but there's a very good chance that some inspiration will be coming from a book written by ultra distance runner Nedd Brockmann. Thanks for lending it to me Squidgy!!!

Until my next post Readers,

Cheers 😁

Life is a Drama, a Comedy or a Tragedy

 Life is a Drama, a Comedy or a Tragedy

Hi Readers,

Well this is a first. 3 posts in a week, and possibly more to follow as I have some other ideas to write about, plus some enforced rest time that I need to take after my recent surgeries. I got a bit eager yesterday in the garden and started to do a little bit of edging with the lawn, and one thing lead to another and an hour or so later I'd done the front and back lawns.

All one handed of course, but I've still woken up so sore today that I really need to remind myself that the shoulder is just operating on its own time frame for recovery!! 

Hence another post.

In previous posts you'd be aware that I'm a massive fan of the TV series "Ted Lasso", possibly the best series I've ever watched. Not just because of the entertainment value, but more about the life lessons that are intertwined throughout the events across each episode. I've had countless discussions with a few colleagues at school who are similar devotees, and when each episode was aired I'd be texting constantly with one of my sisters as we discussed the virtue of each episode.

As we all know, one only has to whisper the name of something near your phone and almost immediately you'll be bombarded with links, ads, and goodness knows what else about what you had been talking about. I'd been talking about Ted Lasso on the phone earlier in the day, and sure enough my feed was soon loaded with all things Ted later in the day. Not that I minded, but it made me thankful that I hadn't been talking about incontinence pants, mobility scooters or retirement homes!!!

These things probably are ahead of me !!!

There was one quote that I saw on one particular page that really resonated with me, and that's where I'm going with my post today.

And this is it.

Our life is usually a Drama, a Comedy or a Tragedy.

My first impression was that this was probably pretty close to the mark, and that there could be lots of other terms that we could use here as well.

And then it got me thinking that sometimes I think that I'm experiencing one of these more than the other, other times I feel that I get all three in the one day, and most times I just can't figure out if I think I'm experiencing one of them, when it's more likely I'm experiencing one of the others!

Also, while I might see myself experiencing one of them, others might be looking at me from the outside and considering that I'm going through a totally different one. I guess it depends on perspective. The same applies when I look at others and see what they are going through.

In recent posts I have discussed the concept of 'ants and elephants', where we can tend to catastrophise events in our lives, and make them bigger than they need to be, and this could also influence if we see things as drama, comedies or tragedies.

So, let me look at each in turn.

Drama

This is probably the most prevalent one with me, as I have tended to see little things as bigger issues. Two years ago I was much worse with it, but after the events in that time I really did learn about perspective in such a terrible way. Whereas I might have tended to rush in without thinking through things clearly, I probably have moved too far in the opposite direction now, and could easily give the impression that perhaps I don't care about things as much.

Trust me when I say that I do still care, it's just that I probably don't display the amount of concern that most people do, as I see that it isn't the biggest hassle facing me right now.

For example, after living in Melbourne for 6 months, I came back home and our garden was a disaster zone. The lawns were unkempt, loads of plants had died and the ones that were still hanging on looked like they were having a permanent plant version of a hangover.

We had put so much work into this garden after buying the house 2 years previously, and I've always been fastidious about keeping our gardens neat and tidy in each house that we have owned. In normal circumstances this would have been a MASSIVE drama for me, and I'd be madly rushing about trying to fix everything all at once, or as quickly as possible.

BUT... after what we had just been through, I found that although I was disappointed with what confronted me, I just didn't let it bother me. There were worse things to worry about, and that mindset has stayed with me since. Sure, the garden needed work, but it would get done. It might take a long time, or a short time, but letting it become a drama didn't consume me, so I was able to get on top of it gradually without blowing every vein in my body!!

I even remember someone saying to me something like ""Oh boy, you sure do have a lot of things in your way now". I know that they meant well, but after taking my perspective pill, an untidy garden was the least of my worries.

Hardly a drama at all.

However, in my own mind I felt a certain level of 'drama' as the school year drew to a close. I'm very open in saying that I struggle with many aspects of the teaching of Literacy at school ( clearly not my strength!) but also when it comes to the various testing and reporting...well that's where I feel they need to take me behind the shed and shoot me !!!!

Luckily I work with extremely supportive colleagues who are too kind to agree with me about my literary abilities, maybe I'm creating a drama for them in always reaching out for support?

I'd nearly say that's the only time I really sense any element of 'drama', and upon reflection as I write this I can see that it is pretty pathetic in the big scheme of things !

Other times that I start to sense 'drama' when in fact it is just an annoyance?

* Missing the turn at the airport to where I need to park my car in the long term carpark, and having to go around again, adding 15 mins to my trip. 

* Putting the dishwasher on before I go to work, only to come home at the end of the day to find that I didn't press 'Start'

* Washing my car, then it rains.

* Opening one of my home brew beers, and discover that it didn't carbonate (fizz up) Then I wonder if it was just that one bottle, or the whole batch of 60

* Mowing the lawns and the battery runs out with only about 2-3 mins of lawn left to mow

* Not being able to ride my motorbike, as much as I totally love doing it.

Readers, I know these are trivial moments, but when they happen we can tend to give them more attention than what they deserve, changing our behaviour and sometimes how we then react to others.

I fully understand that in our lives we encounter more serious events that really do deserve to be treated as dramas, and I'm not for a moment neglecting these. 

A sick child, losing your job, an illness, copping an injury. All of these things can affect our lives. What I'm saying is that we can tend to park our less than serious 'dramas' with the ones that definitely require our attention, and this just adds to our stress.

Message from this?

Identify your dramas and treat them accordingly .

Tragedy

I won't dwell on this too much, as I feel it isn't fair to try and judge what anyone else is going through.

I do feel though that perhaps we use the term too loosely at times, mistaking things that aren't great with things that are definitely tragic.

Losing a pet. Having your car stolen. Losing a Grand Final at the last minute.

I've heard these things being referred to as a tragedy, but really?

Before you all start waving your fingers at me in disagreement, I totally understand that we use the term loosely without really thinking. I do it all the time as well.

For example, I thought that when Richmond lost the 2018 Preliminary Final and Mason Cox torched us, it was a tragedy. But I got over it.

For me, tragedy is more aligned to the events that confront us that are incredibly hard to understand, work through or recover from. We have all probably had these at different times in our lives, and for me the tragedy of what Jen went through has had such a profound impact that I now see my 'dramas' as being selfish, and that I have nothing to worry about at all. Whenever I think that something is hard for me, all I need to do is reflect on what happened with her and I'm slapped back into reality pretty quickly !!

For you?

I just hope that you are able to find ways to cope with whatever tragedies have occurred in your lives, and that you have support around you for any that may occur in the future.

Comedy

Well Readers, this is the section I find it easiest to comment on.

As many of you would know, I've been under the knife a fair bit in the past 12 months in particular, to the point where my situation is just laughable.

I've had people say that it has been a tragic year for me due to the number of surgeries, or that it has been a drama filled year due to them. I couldn't disagree with them more !!

Maybe they say it because they have not experienced it, and I get that, but as far as I'm concerned I can only laugh at myself and the predicaments I get myself into.

Jen did make me promise that I'd get "all my bits fixed", but now the doctors see me coming and just start rubbing their hands gleefully. I'm sure I've paid for a number of their holidays and investment properties over the years !!

As soon as I have had one body part fixed another one pipes up with "How about me now?"

My attitude towards this must be infectious with the kids I taught last year ( wow, already calling 2023 'last year') as they would walk past me in the classroom with an exaggerated limp with a limp arm trailing as well. Even I could laugh at them laughing at me. 🤣

I could have easily rebuked them for being what others saw as disrespectful ( I surely didn't) but if I saw my situation as laughable, then why shouldn't they?

There were even times when they would move my trolley to the other side of the room, or hide my crutches or walking stick. Even during sport, which I could sort of sometimes do, they would walk just out of my reach, knowing full well that I wouldn't be able to catch them.

On the other hand (no pun intended ) they would also go out of their way to assist me when they saw when I was struggling. God bless them!!

It hasn't been just this year with my injuries, as I've managed to be pretty consistent with getting something patched up every year or two. Mostly all my own fault, so there's no-one to blame except myself !! I've woken up today with a swollen ankle and very sore shoulder. My response? Laugh at myself !!🤣

I mentioned previously that my 'drama' is my literacy skills. Or lack of them to be more precise. That's also my Comedy as I'm able to laugh at my own inability to teach something as well as my colleagues. Rather than try and pretend that I'm on top of it, I choose to embrace the fact that I know where my weaknesses are, and rather than try and fluff my way through, I'll openly talk about it and seek the help I need.

It's quite refreshing to identify and name the the things about oneself that others may be concerned about, but you are prepared to laugh about. Please don't think that I'm dismissing them and not caring about them, I do. 

It's just that I'm not letting them get me down as there are far worse things in life to be worried about.

I'm pretty confident that when we start school again in a few weeks, one of the first questions I'll get from some of my colleagues will be "So what operation are you having done next?" And I'll just reply with a laugh, "Who knows?"

My life really is a comedy right now, and it's the attitude that enables me to get on with things in a positive manner, rather than walking around dragging everyone down around me.

Well Readers,

More fluff and rambling, but I've enjoyed it. I have another idea that I'm swishing around in my mind at the moment, so here's the teaser...

What are some things that you just know, for no particular reason at all ?

Wishing you all a Happy New Year, and once again, feel free to hit the comments tab below.

Until my next post,

Cheers 😁

i