So I have a confession to make. I have utterly blown NaPoWriMo. The final count of pieces I spat out this month was 11 out of 30 days – including a haiku I entitled “Cop-Out? Or ART“. Maybe once I’m done here I’ll get that number up to 12, but who knows? I will keep that blog active, though. The challenge is not complete until I have had a solid month of daily “poetry” writing (eep).
It feels like Confest was ages ago, but it turns out that was actually this month. My final shift at the library feels like it was only yesterday – it’s been closer to 7 weeks now. Funny how the brain puts all this stuff together. So that means … for about 6 weeks I haven’t been running that much. And for about 2 weeks (thanks to Confest) I’ve been having the odd ciggie here and there.
I got busted a couple times by friends, not that I was making any great effort to hide it. Most people expressed disappointment, and rather than make excuses I would usually say some variant of, “now, I’m not gonna be the wanker who says ‘I can quit any time I want’ … but TRUST ME”. The point was not to bury myself any deeper by overthinking it. For the most part I wasn’t even enjoying it that much, and besides I can’t afford cigarettes these days! I didn’t expect it to last. Besides, I was sure that I’d already figured out how to recover from this one months ago. (I’ve been sitting on 78kg pretty much unwaveringly since I stopped worrying about it – but since my haircut I’m thinking it’d be nice to have defined cheekbones rather than this silly squishy puffer-fish thing I have going on at the moment.)
Last week I found it was screwing with my lung capacity and by extension my ability to sing. OH REALLY, SMOKING?! OH NO I CANNOT ABIDE THIS. ALSO I AM NOT ENTIRELY SURE HOW TO USE ABIDE IN A SENTENCE AND I DON’T FEEL LIKE LOOKING IT UP RIGHT NOW.
Watch out, Smoking. This Bad MofoFlipper is comin’ for ya
Bam. Friday I was out there in the morning, doing the running thing. It was harder than I remembered, but I also remembered how quickly it got easier from last time. The psychological stuff catches on again a bit quicker than the physical side, apparently.
This was all interrupted by a prank call from my dead Grandmother. Which was unexpected, to say the least. Usually Nana just texts people to make silly jokes before funerals. That is to say, the last person I knew with that phone was my Dad (some weird version of my Dad with an odd sense of humour), but I later learned Real Mum had it for some reason. Before I pieced all THAT together I indulged in a few paranoid musings, such as how I would deal with it if it turned out nobody knew who had Nana’s old SIM, if I had proof it had been destroyed months ago, and/or if I got another call. Was I going to become some sort of paranormal detective? Would I gain some sort of mystical powers?! But then, Nana was a pretty straightforward lady – I doubted she’d want to hang out and solve crime. Maybe she was just annoyed that I hadn’t visited their grave in a little while?
And that got put to the side when I got a message from Sardonic Brother Dude which practically used my real name (as opposed to some generic insult), and asked if I was free. This actually set off my alarm bells louder than the idea that Nana might be reaching out to me. The only possible explanation: my sister must have gone into labour.
Aww geez guys don’t mess with me or this crazy little miss
I mentioned that my sister was pregnant, surely?
So there’s been that, there’s been a ridiculous amount of self-study happening and last night I did the run properly – another 10km in (exactly) one hour, only this time it was a lot more painful. I have lost a little bit of physical fitness, but the mind is just as important with these things and the mental fruits of my earlier labour are still ripe. I feel like the experience from January/February taught me a lot on an emotional level rather than an intellectual one – now that I have shown myself that I can get fit, lose weight, drop the smokes, etc, I really know I can do it. It’s no longer a Big Thing that requires a lot of getting pumped up about. I just think, “geez I could be feeling better than this” and BOOM – out for a run. There is simply no time to spare for me to feel like I’m cursed with bad lungs or bad habits or bad fitness or whatever.
This feeling extends to a number of things. I can read the Persian script now (which includes all the Arabic letters, although some are pronounced differently). I picked that up mostly in a week. People think that sounds impressive – but I knew after Chinese 简体 and Japanese 漢字 a set of 32 letters couldn’t be all that scary. (Not that I understand a word of it yet – that will take more than a week.)
Okay, so part of me just wanted to shoehorn that in there, of course, but the point I was making was just how naturally this sort of thing is fast becoming for me.
I used to think the way to go was to cultivate “Right Thoughts” first. I was taught that thoughts will impact on emotions, which will in turn colour your behaviour. In other words, get a good attitude by thinking the right way about stuff, and you’ll start doing things the way you want, etc.
This is not the best approach when it comes to motivation. In the case of motivation, the opposite sequence applies. You need some amount of confidence or curiosity to begin with, you need to shake yourself out of your comfort zone and try something new. If the experience goes well, then your attitude improves. For me, it has been like climbing a ladder. Some challenges were like “Starting small” and others were kind of like “Jumping in the deep end”, but with each little success, I get more self esteem and I am more comfortable in my own skin. Then fear of failure becomes less of a thing and I’m in a better position to try the next thing. It is a truly delicious spiral, like corkscrew pasta.
April has been the Month of Opportunity for me. Considering that I am currently unemployed I have been ludicrously busy. A bunch of seeds that were planted earlier are all sprouting up at once. This is my main cop-out for not blogging too often – it has simply not been a high enough priority to sit alone in a room ranting about myself to a blank screen. That being said I think I’m going to try and make time to do these posts. It is a wonderful way of keeping focus on all these things I’m juggling at the moment, and it is a good excuse to write anything. I’d like to develop a bit more discipline towards writing so I can get onto this Short Story challenge. (No bloody clue when that’s gonna happen haha.)
As I have alluded to before, Challenges have still been going on. Being busy, out and about has caused me to stumble face-first into a couple of them, which has been great because it feels way more like an adventure when you don’t see it coming! It is amazing what wonderful and crazy experiences you can have just by making it a priority.
It’s sucked that I haven’t been posting about them, so hear I’m going to promise three particular entries for the new future:
- Volunteer Work
- Immigration Detention Centre
- Recover Japanese
A Year of Monthly Challenges 