The Longest Day (Part 2)

Posted on 4 December 2011 by blackandblueman

Part 1

The first 12 hours – Monday 7 November 2pm to Tuesday 8 November 2am
As I mentioned in my previous post, I got up at 2pm and felt great.

I spent the rest of the afternoon getting some work done and felling pleasant overall.

As evening fell, I decided to make a quick visit to a local supermarket and spend my last $10 or so on some corn chips and salsa, which in recent months has become a favourite nightly dish.

At around 7:30pm, my right ear started aching. That was annoying, but eventually it faded.

Not long after that, though, my rear top-right tooth started aching.

And it ached for a while.

I took some regular aspirin, and the pain in my tooth lost some of its intensity.

But over the next half hour, the pain not only remained but also travelled. It moved from my rear top-right tooth to a few of my rear bottom-right teeth, and after a while there it moved down to some of my front bottom-right teeth. Finally, it would move to a point near my right chin, stay there for a while and then completely fade away.

This was my first experience with ongoing dental pain, and fortunately the aspirin blunted some of its intensity…but while it hadn’t caused me great agony, it had been troubling because it had lasted so long and had moved about.

Good grief – no wonder people hate dental pain.

Tomorrow morning, I would definitely be making an appointment at my health fund’s dental centre.

By 9:30pm, however, the pain had been gone for about an hour, and I rang my friend interstate and we talked for about an hour or so. It was great to speak with him again.

The rest of my late Monday night was very mellow. I had my corn chips and salsa, surfed and played games. After midnight, I checked my bank account online to see if my pay had arrived, but not yet. Not to worry, though.

Around 1:30am I started feeling sleepy, and decided to call it a night.

I brushed my teeth and gargled with mouthwash, a usual routine that I enjoyed more that night because I saw it as helping against my toothache.

I settled into bed with a grim yet engrossing book that I was reading for the third time – Michael Bilton’s Wicked Beyond Belief, about the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper that took several misguided and tragic wrong-turns.

After 10 minutes or so, I put down my book and closed my eyes.

My rear top-right tooth had started aching a little again, but I ignored it because very soon I should be asleep.

The next 6 hours – Tuesday 8 November 2am to Tuesday 8 November 8am
An hour passed.

I hadn’t gotten to sleep.

The pain in my rear top-right tooth was still there.

At around 3am, I got up in anger and disgust and turned on my computer.

For the next two hours, I surfed and drank some water.

The pain in my tooth went away.

At around 5am, I became sleepy again and returned to bed.

I read some more Wicked Beyond Belief until I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer, and got comfortable.

Soon after, the pain returned.

I mentally gritted my teeth, tried to ignore it and focused on getting to sleep.

Another hour passed.

I didn’t get to sleep.

At around 6am, I once again got up in anger and disgust.

But as I sat down again in front of my computer, I almost burst into tears from sheer frustration against my fucking toothache and not being able to sleep.

I went to my health fund’s website.

Their dental clinic opened at 8am.

Good. That was only two hours away.

I surfed a little more, and then showered and shaved.

At around 9am, I left for the dental clinic, which was just under 30 minutes’ walk away.

It was a humid morning. Ugh, but there was nothing I could do about that.

I headed into the Sydney CBD, hoping that I could get an appointment.

And soon.

*

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Anger, Life Challenges, My Story, Pain | 2 Comments

“Be at peace, son of Gondor.”

Posted on 27 November 2011 by blackandblueman

Last week at his blog, OneSTDV posed the following questions in his Saturday Audience Participation post ‘Emotional Response to Pop Culture’:

  • Ever seen Twilight?
  • Thoughts?
  • Does any pop culture “get” to you emotionally?
  • If so, give examples and explain how/why.
  • Is it acceptable for men to cry watching a movie?

Those questions got me thinking, and here are my answers.

Ever seen Twilight?
No.

Thoughts?
I have no interest in seeing the Twilight films or reading the novels, because I prefer my vampires to be like those in one of my all-time favourite novels, Richard Matheson’s classic I Am Legend – bloodthirsty, horrible, and requiring to be utterly destroyed and nothing more.

Does any pop culture “get” to you emotionally?
Yes, many times. A good book, film or song can be powerful in itself, or can remind you of a certain moment or person in your life, or both.

If so, give examples and explain how/why.
Back in 2000, I read in one sitting Willie Morris’s delightful memoir My Cat Spit McGee. At one stage, he quotes from his earlier famous memoir My Dog Skip and describes when he returned home from college to visit the recently-deceased Skip’s grave and cried…and for the next five minutes I put the book down and cried myself, as I remembered a beloved family pet who’d been a big part of my childhood and teens and whom I last saw alive the day before I returned to university for my second year.

The first time I saw The Sixth Sense, I didn’t cry – but there was one scene that left a big lump in my throat, and the next time I saw The Sixth Sense it did make me cry. It’s that scene towards the end of the film where Toni Collette and Hayley Joel Osment are sitting in the car, he explains what’s been happening to him, she finally understands and they hug. Why did that make me cry? Because that scene took me back to my childhood, and Collette’s wonderful performance throughout the film reminded me so much of my mother and several other young mothers back then.

I also didn’t cry the first time I saw The Fellowship Of The Ring – but the next few times I did, when Boromir redeemed himself. Sean Bean was great as the conflicted Boromir, and after he fell victim to the Ring I was moved to tears by his act of sacrifice to make amends.

Is it acceptable for men to cry watching a movie?
Of course, it is. There’s nothing wrong with expressing emotion and crying is perfectly natural.

One night back in late 1998 when I saw Saving Private Ryan at a local cinema, I witnessed something there that I’ll always remember. During the stunning D-Day opening sequence, I heard gasps and retching all around me…but a couple of seats away, a well-dressed elderly man was sitting quietly and ramrod-straight while clasping the top of a cane with both hands. Tears were streaming down his face in a torrent, and every now and then he’d use the handkerchief he had in one hand to wipe his face, but he never made a sound.

POSTSCRIPT
I must confess, though, that whenever possible I cry in private, and the only person whom I feel comfortable crying in front of is my psychiatrist.

Why? Because like Robert Lindsay describes in his recent post ‘Should Men Cry More? NO’ (HT: In Bona Fide), it’s to avoid copping flak from others and feeling even worse.

‘Should Men Cry More? NO’ was very thought-provoking, but that’s a subject for another post.

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Life Challenges, Life Strategies, My Story, Something to Think About | 2 Comments

The Longest Day (Part 1)

Posted on 19 November 2011 by blackandblueman

To my regular readers, my apologies again for missing another post last week.

A few weeks before Monday, 7 November 2011
One afternoon, I opened a bag of Minties that I’d had for a while and enjoyed chewing my way through some of them.

Unfortunately as a result afterwards, the teeth along my bottom right jaw began to ache a little. This worried me because a few days before Christmas 2010, one of my teeth there had collapsed and I’d gotten my first ever filling.

Had my Minties-chewing buggered that filling – and if so, how bad?

Over the next few days, the aching reappeared from time to time, and although it wasn’t intense pain I became a little concerned.

A week passed, and that ache kept on returning every now and then.

A visit to the dentist was in order. Fortunately, my next payday was due shortly and I had private health insurance, so I made a mental note to make a booking soon.

Two weeks before Monday, 7 November 2011
The next payday arrived.

I paid my rent and some bills, fed the Kindle and still had enough money left over to live comfortably until the next payday a fortnight away.

A few days later, however, I decided that it would be best to book some airline tickets for my Christmas holidays now rather than later to avoid higher prices.

Fortunately, I had enough money left over to do so…but unfortunately, although I now wasn’t broke, I would have to watch carefully what was left over.

That was a downer at first, and another incentive towards my 10-Year Plan to one day get my financial shit together – but instead of seeing it as a chore, I decided to embrace it as a challenge instead. As well, I had my previous experience to fall back upon as a former university student with low income who’d spent three years living on campus.

Over the next ten days some usual fun things like eating out and movie-night had to be curtailed, but I never starved and I was still able to get myself to my next appointment with my psychiatrist.

Slowly, Tuesday 8 November – my next payday – drew closer.

A few days before Monday, 7 November 2011
The tooth with my filling began to ache worse with greater regularity and pain.

That was very worrying – especially as this was my first experience with major dental pain.

Now I would have to go to the dentist as soon as possible.

Fortunately, Tuesday 8 November was only days away, and my private health-insurance fund had its own dental centre less than 30 minutes’ walk from my front door.

Monday, 7 November 2011
As usual, I didn’t go to bed until around 2am-3am in the morning, but that didn’t trouble me.

What was troubling, though, was that my fucking tooth ached worse than before and kept me awake for another hour or so.

Eventually, though, I got to sleep – although with my insomniac regularity, I was wide awake a few hours later at around 7am. Fortunately, though, my aching tooth had knocked off for the moment.

I tossed and turned a little in the hopes of finding a nice new position to doze off in, but that didn’t work so reluctantly I got up.

I fired up my laptop PC, had some breakfast and for the next few hours did some surfing and some work until around 10am-11am when I finally became tired again.

Gratefully, I went back to bed.

*

I awoke again just before 2pm, and felt wonderful – and not just physically refreshed.

Payday was now less than 12 hours away, and sometimes my pay went in right on midnight. Other times, though, it went in at later times – but even so, although I was now down to my last $10 or so, I still had food left for Tuesday, so all I had to do tomorrow was patiently wait and work at home until my pay arrived, and then hit the town.

As well, I wouldn’t be going out for dinner as I usually did on Monday nights, but there was something else to look forward to – one of my most important friends who’d moved interstate a few years was telephoning that night, and because we hadn’t spoken for a while it would be great to catch up with him.

So, the rest of my Monday was looking not too bad at all, especially after a good afternoon nap.

But if only I’d known then…

Actually, I take that back

It was most likely a good thing I didn’t know what lay ahead.

Because I don’t know how I would have reacted then if I’d known that I wouldn’t sleep again for another 36 hours.

The longest day of my life had only just begun.

*

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Life Challenges, My Story | Leave a comment

Antidepressants and me (Part 4)

Posted on 5 November 2011 by blackandblueman

To my regular readers, my apologies again for missing another post last week.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

After several weeks of the black dog constantly gnawing at me again, I told my psychiatrist.

After some discussion and another week to see if I got better – I didn’t, alas – he suggested that we change my medication once again.

Firstly, my Prozac intake would be reduced from two capsules a day to one, and I would continue to take it in the morning.

Secondly, in the evenings with dinner I would take one capsule of a drug that was new to me – Cymbalta.

So off I went with a new prescription in hand, and after I got my Cymbalta I settled in for another month of re-adjusting to another medication regime.

*

The weeks passed, and eventually the black dog went away.

A few months passed before it returned again…

…but this time, things were different.

As I’ve described previously, in the past when the black dog attacked it was like a physical presence inside my skull, like a headache without pain but feeling like an oppressive solid nonetheless.

With one Prozac each morning and one Cymbalta each night, though, the black dog was now kept further at bay. It’s a sensation I’ve come to describe as “background static”, like a nagging undercurrent or a distant annoyance.

Background static is a nuisance when it occurs – but it’s a nuisance I’d much rather have to endure instead of getting gnawed.

*

I’m still taking Prozac and Cymbalta, and they’re still doing their job.

Recently, there’s been a couple of rough patches in my life due to some disappointing circumstances, but thanks to both my medication and my therapy I’ve dealt with them much better than my pre-2007 self would have. I stay calm and be patient, and eventually I make it through.

Life goes on.

*

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Part 5

Posted in Action, Depression, Hope, Life Challenges, Life is Good, My Story, Resilience, Therapy | 4 Comments

Antidepressants and me (Part 3)

Posted on 23 October 2011 by blackandblueman

To my regular readers, my apologies for not posting last week.

Part 1
Part 2

In late 2009, as described in this post, I went through a bad bout of depression that I thought would be temporary.

But in the weeks that followed, the black dog kept on returning.

Life didn’t grind to a halt…but there were more and more shitty moments, and especially on weekends it became harder and harder to get out of bed.

Finally, after I couldn’t stand it anymore, I told my psychiatrist.

He said that it sounded like a change in my brain chemistry was happening, and that the mild Prozac was no longer working in its present dosage. This was not unusual – as he had told me and as I’d read elsewhere, many people who use antidepressants have to change dosages and types throughout their lives as their body chemistry keeps on readjusting.

So, my psychiatrist suggested that we increase my Prozac dosage to two capsules a day.

I agreed to give it a try. Having to double my intake was a bummer, but if it made me better as a result that was the price to pay.

My psychiatrist made a call to the local Medicare office to advise them of my new prescription, and while providing details he said two words that unintentionally were a major downer indeed.

Back in mid-2007, I’d been diagnosed as suffering from “moderate depression”.

Now, though, as my psychiatrist explained to Medicare, I was suffering from “major depression”.

*

As I had two years before, I gave myself a month for my body to adjust to my increased dosage of Prozac.

Those four weeks passed, and during that time the black dog kept returning.

I have to admit that hearing “major depression” nagged at me for the first week or so, and gave the black dog a helping hand.

But I kept reminding myself to stay calm, be patient and to remember my Eckhart Tolle and my credo that had been such a big help since mid-2007.

And after that month passed, I began feeling much better again.

*

2009 became 2010.

Early that year, I went on a life-changing series of work-related visits to Melbourne that I enjoyed very much and showed me how much I’d grown and improved.

Halfway through the year, I had a crazy idea – and one night a month later, I finally bit the bullet and began this blog, which has been one of the most rewarding things I’ve done for myself.

In September, while back in Melbourne on holiday, I had a very tense experience but fortunately I kept my cool and helped someone in need.

2010 was a big year in my life, and I was pleased and relieved that I was able to meet its challenges.

*

2010 became 2011, and at first life continued to go well.

And then a few months in, the black dog began to return.

And kept returning, just like it had in late 2009.

Something had changed again.

*

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

POSTSCRIPT
Just in (pun unintended) from WordPress Stats:

Part 4
Part 5

Posted in Action, Depression, Hope, Life Challenges, Life is Good, My Story, Resilience | 2 Comments

Antidepressants and me (Part 2)

Posted on 9 October 2011 by blackandblueman

Part 1

So in late August 2007, as advised by my psychiatrist, I began taking one Prozac capsule a day.

Four weeks went by, the time in which my body should have adjusted to my new medication.

At the end of that period, I felt no mental or physical changes…

…but over time in the months that followed, several things happened.

Whenever I went walking in public, I always made sure to keep my shoulders straight, hold my head up and keep looking ahead instead of down. True, I’d long known that this was the best way to walk in public – but now I was much more conscious of doing it and making myself do it.

As well when walking in public, if I was keeping left out of courtesy and had been maintaining an unmistakable course for some time but I was approached by people coming from other directions who weren’t concentrating on where they were going or (from the indifferent expressions or smug smiles I saw on their faces) expected me to get out of their way, I maintained course and often made them get out of my way.

A local pest who had spent the past few years always asking me for money when I passed him by on the street? I began yelling at him to “PISS OFF!” or “FUCK OFF!” instead (although my psychiatrist advised me not to do this because it could be dangerous, so I changed my response for the better).

A woman who was about to exit Town Hall Station through the ticket turnstiles but couldn’t seem to make up her fucking mind which one to go through? Finally, as I went for one that at the last minute she veered towards again, I kept going and gently brushed her aside – and when she scowled and gently slapped me, I scowled back and gently slapped her in return.

The jerk at Pizza Hut one evening who also couldn’t seem to make up his fucking mind where he wanted to go at the buffet? Finally, I’d had enough of trying to be polite and so I stepped forward and gently brushed him aside as I went to serve myself some garlic bread – and after he asked me with some anger, “You right there, mate?” I replied calmly with “Yes, I am, thank you”, finished serving myself and moved on.

The four teenage shits another evening at Pizza Hut sitting in the booth behind me who were being annoyingly loud and threw a hot chip that landed on me? Years before, I would have done nothing, and admittedly angrily throwing back that chip back over my shoulder was wrong because (a) I was lowering myself to their puerile level and (b) that encouraged them to throw it back – so finally I got up and stepped around to their table, and as two of them cringed and the other two began ducking under their table I snarled something at them, hurled that chip for the last time and returned to my seat.

They didn’t bother me again.

At first, incidents like the above astounded and worried me at the same time. I was astounded because previously I’d never had the guts to act like that – but I was also worried that it was because I was becoming arrogant.

My psychiatrist pointed out, however, that I was actually becoming assertive and self-confident by taking action and standing up for myself, instead of the inaction and suffering in angry silence that I used to do. Apart from swearing angrily at the local pest, I was moving in the right direction about doing and feeling better for myself.

And where did these amazing new-found superpowers come from?

There was the therapy, of course. Talking with my psychiatrist and working things out week by week showed me what I’d been intentionally and unintentionally doing wrong all these years, and how to start doing the right things instead.

And then I realised that the Prozac was also playing its part, because whenever I’d stood up for myself I’d felt calm and certain about doing so.

There’d been no “Eureka!” moment when I’d suddenly felt different after having taken antidepressants for a few months – but instead, there had been so much subtlety that I’d never felt it happen.

Therapy and medication together had changed me for the better.

Prozac had worked for me, and as a result I felt much better about taking it.

*

And so for the next two years, life kept on getting better and better.

Until something changed.

*

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

POSTSCRIPT
Right after posting the above, I enjoyed the following auto-generated help from WordPress about extra categories and tags to use:

Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Posted in Action, Confidence, Happiness, Hope, Inspiration, Life Challenges, Life is Good, Life Strategies, My Story, Therapy | 2 Comments

Antidepressants and me (Part 1 of a semi-regular series)

Posted on 2 October 2011 by blackandblueman

As I’ve mentioned several times before, since August 2007 my life has improved dramatically thanks partly to the therapy that I continue to this day.

My therapy consists of weekly 30-minute visits to a local psychiatrist where we discuss the progress I’ve been making with my life, any problems that have newly appeared or resurfaced, and how to solve those problems.

Therapy has been very rewarding. Thanks to talking with a neutral professional, I’ve been able to get a lot of emotional and mental crap out of my system, and thus build a better life.

It was during my fourth visit to the psychiatrist that, based on what we’d gone over during the past month, he diagnosed that I was suffering from moderate depression, and to help address it he was going to prescribe me antidepressants.

That worried me.

Part of my worry stemmed from the idea of becoming dependent and reliant upon medication. Yes, it’s medicine and it helps to make you better…but having to take pills every day, and perhaps for years, and even for the rest of my life? Ugh.

Another part of my worry was that my psychiatrist advised that it may take some time to find the right antidepressant for my situation. So I might have to try several types before I found the right one. Ugh again.

The major part of my worry, though, stemmed from what I’d heard and read about antidepressants from others.

In general, both people I knew and who’d written online about their experiences had said the same things:

  • Their medication had worked in the sense that they no longer felt depressed…but at the same time, it left them not wanting to do much else at all
  • Eventually, they all stopped taking their medication because they preferred to live without it

I admitted all of this to my psychiatrist, and he appreciated my concerns. Still, he wanted me to give antidepressants a chance, and he advised me to be calm and patient – it would take a month for my system to adjust to the medication, and then it would start having an effect.

So, he wrote me a prescription that I later had filled a local chemist, and that night I began taking a moderate antidepressant that I knew nothing about except for its (in)famous name – Prozac.

And a month later, in conjunction with my ongoing therapy, life would never be the same again.

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

Posted in Action, Depression, Life Challenges, Life Strategies, My Story, Therapy | Leave a comment

Putting something together again

Posted on 23 September 2011 by blackandblueman

To my regular readers, my apologies for not posting for the past two weeks.

Sunday, around 2:30pm, 11 September 2011.

The weekend was into its last quarter, and the previous three quarters hadn’t been very rewarding.

The night before had been especially frustrating. Saturday night is usually blog night, when I write my entries for Black and Blue Man. Last night, the writing had gone well at first…but when I looked at it again later that night, it wasn’t all that interesting, so I decided that I’d need to write something else and I would get stuck back into it first thing Sunday morning.

Late Saturday night became early Sunday morning, and around 4am I went to bed hoping to get a good six hours or so of sleep.

I woke up at 7:19am, groaned, rolled over and hoped to drift back to sleep and not wake up again until about 10am.

The next time I opened my eyes, it was 11:55am.

Crap.

I got up, began surfing and cooked some breakfast.

Two and a half hours later, I still didn’t feel inspired to tackle my next blog entry again, but I decided that at the very least I could do, or at least start, something else that was productive (and maybe I could return to Black and Blue Man that night).

So I decided to do something that I hadn’t gotten around to doing for what I thought had been the past month – configure my new work notebook PC, still in its box.

When I grabbed the box, however, I saw from its label that I was mistaken – it had actually been sitting there for the past two months.

Double crap!

I opened the box, took out my new PC…

…and found that I didn’t have quite enough room on my desk for it to sit next to my old work PC.

For fuck’s sake!

I sat there for a moment and looked at why my desk didn’t have enough room.

Regular readers may recall back in April when, to not only make more room for a new big-arse desk chair but also clear enough space for somewhere just to assemble it, I spent most of a day doing a major re-organisation of some of my stuff. That had included clearing three of the then six towers of books that had occupied one end of my desk, and that had given me some welcome extra space.

But now I looked once more at those last three towers of books still taking up that end of the desk and not giving me enough space to have small two notebook PCs sit side-by-side.

For fuck’s sake again!

And so, I got up to do something I had planned to do not long after that day in April – but like several other things, I kept putting it off because of sleeping in on weekends, or procrastination, or that useful Brady Bunch-ism “something suddenly came up”, or all of the above.

I was finally going to assemble the three-drawer beech filing cabinet I had bought flat-packed from Freedom Furniture…

…nine years ago.

*

First, I propped open the door to my apartment.

Second, I lugged stack after stack of books out into the nearby hallway to clear space for the cabinet when it was assembled. Soon, part of the hallway was taken up with a city of book-skyscrapers.

Third, in my kitchen I moved aside the stack of four big boxes containing my stuff from when I’d last had an office desk in…yikes, October last year, and then I dragged out my unassembled and boxed cabinet from where it had sat next to the fridge since…yikes again, 2002.

Fourth, I grabbed my toolbox.

Finally, I sat down in my assembly-area (the couple of metres square between my open front door and desk), opened the box containing my cabinet, and went to work.

*

Hours passed.

One time, I realised I’d fitted two parts together incorrectly, so I had to carefully disassemble them and put them back together properly.

Two times, I lost up to fifteen minutes trying to fit the wrong screws into the wrong holes.

Putting the three drawers together took ages because fitting the many right screws without holes took a lot of screwdriver-twisting effort – and for the first time in my life, I appreciated why a power-drill is be a great thing to own.

At one point, though, my iPhone and the Flashlight app I’d bought for it unexpectedly came in handy when I had to work inside the partially-assembled cabinet and some awkward darkened corners.

And although it was very tempting to just keep on assembling the cabinet and bring my books back in with a non-stop burst of effort, I paced myself and took breaks.

Thus, it wasn’t until about 10pm when I was finally done.

But as I’d found with my previous labours in April, it was worth it – despite having to spend the next few days soothing my ragged hands with hand-cream and grimacing from the aching in my arms and legs.

My new filing cabinet brought more order to my chaos by giving me a central location for storing my paperwork, extra space for storing some of my books and freeing up more floor-space from the books it now contained.

And those three towers of books on my desk? They were now stacked on top of my filing cabinet, so I now had enough space on my desk for putting two notebook PCs side-by-side and more besides.

And although I had some physical pain, it was ‘good’ pain as a result of rewarding labour, and not as draining and dreary as some of the mental exhaustion I’ve experienced.

It’s amazing how productive you can be after getting pissed off at yourself.

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Action, Anger, Depression, Happiness, Life Challenges, My Story, Therapy | Leave a comment

15 Minutes (Part 3)

Posted on 4 September 2011 by blackandblueman

Continued from these thrilling installments:

Down Oxford Street again, for the second time within an hour, but walking as fast as I can.

Back across Hyde Park South, but instead of following the north-west path to Elizabeth and Park I took the west path to Bathurst and Elizabeth.

And as I approached the lights at that intersection, I wondered if I should do something just before going to the meeting…

…and ultimately, I though Why not? because I was going to be late anyway.

Across Elizabeth to the north side of Bathurst.

Down Bathurst to the 7-11 on the corner of Bathurst and Pitt, where I stopped to buy a big bottle of water because I was going to be late anyway.

Across Bathurst to its south side, and then west towards George.

Just before I got to George, I turned left into a food court in a building that was next door to my destination.

As I knew it would be, the food court was packed with a typical Sydney CBD lunchtime crowd.

I kept moving fast and weaved my way through the human asteroid field.

Finally, I made it to the other side unscathed and went through the doors to the building next door.

I went straight to the lifts.

I pressed UP and waited.

And waited.

Soon, one of the lifts pinged and its doors opened.

I got in and selected my floor, and as the doors closed and my ascent began I took my iPhone out to see what time it was –

12:28

Good grief. After all that – and I was still going to be on time?!?

A moment later, the lift pinged again and the doors opened.

I stepped out, went to reception, announced why I was there, and was pointed to a nearby room.

I walked in to find two other people there, including the meeting chairman, preparing to sit down.

I joined them, said hello, put down my bags and took out the first of many pocket tissues to soak up the sweat that was now flooding down my face.

*

A few minutes later, a fourth and final attendee arrived.

About five minutes after that, we found that the projector in our room wasn’t working and so we relocated to another room.

Just before 12:45, we finally got underway.

And as I’d hoped, it was an interesting meeting about how to plan the writing of technical documentation, some of which has helped me since.

*

In the weeks since that mad-shit morning, I’ve become extra careful whenever checking my pockets to ensure that everything that should be in them is there.

Although it was reassuring to learn during that hair-raising hour that I can now keep my cool enough to think and act quickly, and also be more prepared to take risks, I never want to find myself in a situation like that ever again.

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Action, Gratitude, Inspiration, Life Challenges, My Story, Resilience | 1 Comment

15 Minutes (Part 2)

Posted on 27 August 2011 by blackandblueman

WARNING!
The following post contains language that may offend some readers!

Continued from this thrilling installment

I quickly returned to the lights at Elizabeth and Park – and fortunately WALK was green, so I quickly and legally crossed Elizabeth to Hyde Park South.

A moment later, I was walking as fast as I could up the long and sloping path that led back to the War Memorial.

I thought about running, but I knew that would be a disaster for several reasons:

  • I’m a fatboy
  • I sweat very easily and heavily
  • I was weighed down with a large and heavy backpack that included my notebook, my pockets-filled jacket and especially my carry bag swinging dangling from one hand
  • Beyond Hyde Park South, there was the even longer and steeper slope of Oxford Street

I can walk pretty fast, though, so I did.

*

As I hurtled towards the War Memorial, I decided that any chance of returning to the CBD and making my meeting at 12:30 was gone, which was a big shame.

To compensate for that loss, however, I decided that after I got home and retrieved my keys – if they were still there, of course – I would return to Oxford Street and unwind with lunch at a pleasant little restaurant that I hadn’t visited for some time.

That took some of the edge off of my fuck-up thus far – but of course, there could still be worse to come, and therefore no lunch at that restaurant.

No use worrying about that, though, so once again I remembered my Eckhart Tolle and focussed on getting my fat arse across the park now.

*

I made it across Hyde Park South without incident, crossed over to Oxford and raced up its slope.

Fortunately it was midday Wednesday, not Thursday or Friday or Saturday night, so Oxford was clear and I hurtled along with much ease.

Near the end of my desperate journey up that street, I crossed the intersection of Oxford and Crown where in nine nights’ time I would witness a dreadful accident.

Shortly after crossing Oxford and Crown, I passed the restaurant where soon I hoped to be having lunch.

*

A few minutes later, I finally turned into my street.

My building was only about twenty metres away down a short slope.

I hurtled straight towards it.

There was no one else about.

A moment later, I reached the front gate.

I grabbed it, prepared to wrench it open and looked past it at my mailbox –

My keys were hanging there.

I halted, and let out a huge sigh of relief.

Next, I calmly opened the gate and stepped in.

I went up to my mailbox and took a very firm hold of my keys…

…and as I pulled them out of the lock, anger returned and I snarled at myself, “Don’t you ever, EVER do something stupid like this again…”

I paused, and then for good measure I added one last word.

“…FUCKWIT!”

I took extra special care as I returned my keys to my left jacket pocket, made sure they were securely inside and zipped my pocket shut.

I let out another huge sigh of relief, and then I opened my right jacket pocket and took out my iPhone to check the time.

12:13

In a few minutes, I would be sitting down to lunch…

…but then I got thinking again about the meeting due to start in 17 minutes back in the CBD.

Okay, I wouldn’t make it in time…but even so, I would only be five or 10 minutes late, and that wasn’t the end of the world.

12:13

Lunch around the corner…or being late for a meeting back in the CBD?

Finally, I yet again considered two words that had made a big impact on my life during the past four years.

Why not?

12:13

I stuck my iPhone back in my right jacket pocket – carefully – and mentally geared up for another race against time.

Then I stepped out, closed the gate behind me, and took off again back up to Oxford.

Until next time, stay well and take care 🙂

Posted in Action, Anger, Hope, Life Challenges, Life Strategies, My Story | 1 Comment