I think I must be feeling better because over the past 3 or 4 months I don’t think I would have been able to think about this little concept let alone get it down here for other people to think about or even chat about.
On Thursday last week my great friend, Colin Burns, came to see me to teach on the second cohort of our Y1 course as people start their journey to learn how to place implants and to be inspired into this career hopefully for the rest of their lives.
As is the way in the modern world, Millie (one of our marketing executives) and the editor of this blog wanted a video of Colin and I for an Instagram story for the Academy.
Disclaimer (I don’t really have any idea what an Instagram story is and how it works but I’m not ridiculous enough to think that we don’t need to have this reach to tell people what we do and to try and encourage the right people and that’s for another blog this week).
And so, the picture of Colin and I face-to-face for fun for the Instagram post (shown above).
In my madness of building the practice and in my tragedy of trying to run it through the covid pandemic and then being diagnosed with HYPOT I’d lost my way a little bit in looking after myself.
I saw a little snippet video and I didn’t like it at all, the way I looked, the shape I was, that kind of thing. It played on my mind for the rest of the day.
The second picture is from the following day (actually today as I dictate this blog) it’s taken at one of my friends’ houses after a bike ride that we were both on which was too hard for me and one that nearly finished me off as I’m really not fit enough to do stuff like this just now after my HYPOT.
The fascinating thing about the second picture is though, that in less than 24 hours I’d transformed my view of myself because it represents me in a way that I would like to see myself.
I’m holding my friend’s new puppy and my hands are soft and I’m pulling away from the little dog because it’s just nibbled my ear and my eyes are closed.
I don’t look older than I feel (I don’t think) and I’ve got my plastic Oakley’s on and if you look really closely you can see that my dog has eaten the corner of the left lens and whilst that annoyed me when it first happened, I love it now and it reminds me of her.
I’ve got a red Huub t-shirt on which means something to me, my Garmin watch and even a little bit of a suntan after my time away with Callum.
I’m smiling.
I can pick holes in this photograph and I still have to lose weight after the damage of my endocrine disaster but none of this is the point.
The point is I’m not materially different in any way from picture No1 to picture No2, it’s just my interpretation of myself and the narrative that I write.
It terrifies me as I intellectualise this in my own head that I’m asking my 14-year-old son or my 18- & 20-year-old daughters to do the same thing day after day after day and wondering what damage that causes.
I took myself out of the world that I would see or post photographs of myself for other people to comment on or judge or ‘like’ or whatever, but I feel I had to step back into the world today just to explain and to reiterate for the millionth time on this blog that my decision to pull myself personally out of social media in 2015 was perhaps one of the greatest decisions I’ve ever made in my life and I will never be coming back.
Blog Post Number - 3117
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