Better and Badder than before

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This is me. Last winter. At work. In my happy place. A week or two after this shot was taken I wiped out whilst riding my snowboard. It was a day like this one, with some new powder thrown in – one of the best of the season. I’d just had a sweet lap and, oh the irony, clipped the edge of the slow sign at the bottom of the run. Whoops.

I walked away (damned if I was getting dragged off on a sledge) worrying that I’d wrecked my shoulder (and I had) but that was all. It wasn’t until a few days later that my physiotherapist picked up that I may have had a concussion. Unfortunately it was the second one that season. Two concussions within six weeks is not a good thing it turns out.

Concussion aka mild traumatic brain injury is not “mild” at all, right now it is affecting my life profoundly.

I’ve been messing around with this blog for years, what started off as a travel blog kind of lost it’s way. In fact I’d been tossing up whether or not to just delete it altogether. But not now. This is my story. This is what my recovery looks like. I write this in the hope that it may help someone else, someone lying on the sofa at home, like I was. Someone with no one to talk to who’d wondering what the hell had happened to them, if they’ll ever get better. If they’re the only one like this. This is me coming back. Better. Badder. With more adventures. Watch this space.

Welcome to the world baby girl

 

To quote SirPeter Jackson “New Zealand is not a small country but a large village”    and nothing has reinforced this more lately than the birth of a daughter to our Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and partner Clarke Gayford.  In fact when announcing the birth Jacinda herself welcomed the baby to “our village.”

Young Neve Te Aroha Ardern Gayford is notably only the second baby ever born to a sitting Prime Minister.  Dubbed the “Prime Miniature,” her birth has drawn our country together to celebrate. Cynics, notably right wing journalist Mike Hosking  would have us believe that this is all a big fuss about nothing.  It’s just another woman having a baby.  But when ever was a woman just having a baby?  It’s a big deal.  Every baby is important, every baby should be cherished and celebrated.

Government, among other things, should be about stewardship of the nation for future generations.  It’s not just about economies, balance of payments and trade agreements.  Ultimately it’s about the people who live here, both now and in the future.  For the leader of our nation to have a newborn ensures we have a leader with an eye to family friendly, sustainable policies.

Right now I’ve never been prouder to be a New Zealander.  By celebrating this birth we prove that as a nation our priorities are set firmly in the right place. Yes there’s a whole bunch of issues we need to work on, for example the #metoo campaign is as alive and well here as in the rest of the world.  But for the most part we’re on the right track.  We have only to look at the United States to be reminded of that.

Staring at the wall

Bit of a clickbait image that one, but reality is, we’re all staring at the wall, it’s just a bit closer when you’re already half way through.  It’s a constant reminder to take on challenges, get out, try the new and  face life head on.

The older we get the more crucial it is to strip ourselves of the status garnered by past achievements and experiences.  To seek out the new, refreshing and challenging, essentially to reinvent ourselves.

If we lose our employment at age 50 plus, we can trot out our new and improved CV, network, and update our Linked In profile, do the rounds of agencies and HR offices.  But doesn’t this all smack of neediness and vulnerability,?  Almost begging?  And do we still want to be at the mercy of an organisational and employment culture which has proved to be fickle at best?  Do we REALLY want to go back there?

Let’s get real here: statistics show that the over 50’s spend longer in unemployment and and go back to work at reduced remuneration.    If you’re a woman it’s even harder to get back into the workforce.  These figures don’t include those of us who just give up aka “retire early” and live on savings.

If that’s the case why bother going back to a mainstream career. It’s time to get angry, to “rage against the dying of the light”, to use that rage to propel us into a new way of being, of seeing the world.

It’s time to take up the challenge to embrace the new, to feel that fear and to use our skills in a revolutionary way.  To have some adventures (before the dementia kicks in!)

 

 

 

 

 

Creativity or Self Indulgence?

 

As I sat down to write this morning that nasty word self indulgence popped into my mind.  As in “it’s self indulgence to write about just any old topic, this blog should have a purpose, a message, a defined audience”   Don’t you just love that inner critic?  As I get older I realize more and more that the devil that is my inner critic appears as the voices of adults from my childhood.  You know the ones.  In fact I recently found a whole list of them in “The Answer”  Allan & Barbara Pease:

1. Act your age – grow up
2. You should be ashamed
3. You are selfish
4. Accept what you’ve been given
5. Who do you think you are?
6. No, you don’t feel like that
7. Eat everything on your plate
8. I wish you were more like….
9. You are a bad child!
10. Don’t say that!
11. Because I’m your mother, that’s why!
12. If everyone jumped off a bridge would you do it too?
13. Because I said so
14. I’ll teach you the meaning of the word ‘NO!’
15. Do what I say – not what I do
16. You’re just like your useless father/mother
17. Money doesn’t grow on trees
18. Don’t pull that face, the wind will change and you;ll be stuck like that
19. Wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident
20. Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about
21. Be grateful for what you have and don’t keep wanting more
22. There are children starving in Africa
23. This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you

And there it is:  right up there at number 3 is self indulgence’s little brother:   Don’t be selfish.  Tut tut…

Now for some dictionary definitions:

Creativity:  The use of imagination or original ideas to create something; inventiveness.; the ability to produce original and unusual ideas, or to make something new or imaginative 

Self indulgence: Allowing yourself to have or do anything that you enjoy;  excessive or unrestrained gratification of one’s own appetites, desires, or whims

Reading those definitions would suggest that creativity is presupposed by self indulgence.   Surely it is the unrestrained gratification of whims and ideas,  of intellectual curiosities, the doing of things that one enjoys, the exploratory wanderings, that form the basis of new thought and creation?  And what a nasty little phrase that is -“excessive or unrestrained gratification”  NO NO NO NO!!!

Here’s to creative noodling and following down curious alleyways and writing about all kinds of random topics.  Here’s to excessive and unrestrained gratification,  here’s to fun, here’s to living life with #heart.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Update

 

SOOOO,  it’s been a while…..

I don’t know where to start.  Actually, yes I do.  Life got unaccountably busy last winter, fourteen hour days driving a car park shuttle on a skifield will do that.  Which makes finding time to write a blog difficult.  Especially when I got so tired that I fell asleep halfway through dinner – or once notably halfway through a sentence……And don’t get me started on the number of skis I loaded on a busy day.  Calculations on that one came to a grinding halt – it just got too scary to contemplate.   Suffice to say blog posts were down on my priority list – well below sleeping, and eating…

NONE of which was helpful to a disciplined writing routine.  And once out of routine it became more and more difficult to re-establish the longer time went by.   Then that other person in my head started up – you know the one that sounds like your least favourite school teacher.  The one that’s never a good idea to listen to.  The one that says all your ideas are crap, and who’d want to read them anyway.  THAT voice… Unfortunately I listened.  BAD idea.

ALL of which is an abject lesson in how-not-to-do-creativity.

TIME to get back on the horse again, because to be honest I’ve really missed writing, missed sharing my opinions, missed telling stories.

SO here we go again, back into it.  See you again soon.

 

 

 

 

I’m On A Mission: Money Should Be Fun

Right.  I’m going to confess.  I am sh** at money, at finance, investments and all those worthy subjects that other, proper grown up people know all about.   It’s the major obstacle between me and my ideal life.  In the past I would rather have stuck forks in my eyeballs than spend any time learning about money.

BUT it is the one thing standing between me and my ideal life….which includes flying first class on Emirates and plenty of travel.  That’s not coming cheap!    So I’ve decided that I need to get an education and fast.  And if I’m struggling with this stuff then I’ll bet that plenty of other people are too.  What’s more it shouldn’t be rocket science, after all I’m the proud possessor of two degrees I should be able to figure this stuff out.  And it shouldn’t take two degrees anyway!

Even more this stuff should be fun!  Life’s too short  to waste time studying something that isn’t.  For something that’s so essential to all of us money/finances/investment has been hijacked by  white middle class males into a boring inaccessible subject.  Well I’m on a mission to remove the snore factor.

If you feel that  your financial education has been sorely lacking until now join me, I’ll be sharing my journey to get a financial education by posting about it once a week on this blog.   So follow me!   Tell your friends.  Let’s set the world on fire.  Money should be fun!

May this be of use to you

Robx