In the middle of yesterday afternoon, I was at home just for about an hour in between coming from the Clinic and off to another meeting at the school where I'm a governor. I was sitting on the sofa with the dog, just scrolling through some emails or something, and then I got up, and I couldn't walk.
I have a long history over the past eight years of a catastrophe for my left knee, the thing that stopped me running, that stopped triathlon, and that led to the collapse of the left knee to the point where my family call me 'banana leg'.
But I've been managing this (of sorts) for all this time, despite the fact the surgeon told me in 2016 that if I didn't have a fancy meniscal transplant operation, then I would need a knee replacement by the time I was 50.
Maybe I've just beaten him by 2.5 years.
The reality, though, is that I've not looked after myself as well as I should have in relation to this, particularly over the last little while, and I can tell myself a story about why that is.
I'm supposed to be as skinny as I can.
I'm supposed to be as fit as I can.
I'm supposed to eat and sleep well and keep myself strong, which will stave off the impending disaster that is my left knee, which is coming around the corner at any moment (in fact, it came around the corner yesterday).
It's going to be fine, my knee.
I'm back on the thing about looking after myself, but it's a bit distressing that I'm here giving people advice about putting your own oxygen mask on first and then running around, putting lots of oxygen masks on people while I suffocate.
This is a metaphor, though (as it always is on here).
In your work, your organisation, your family, or whatever, it's not enough to stretch yourself as hard as you can all the time, without any scope or space for what might happen when the catastrophe comes.
We need to deal with as many catastrophes as we can in advance, and that means making sure that we are well enough and fit enough and well-resourced enough to deal with the inevitable crises that come on a day-by-day and week-by-week basis.
The opposite of this is to scream forward as fast as you can with no logistics behind you, no resilience, no stamina, and no ability to recover.
It's terrible this balance, isn't it? It's a really hard balance to strike for all of us.
But one of the most important ways to do this is to have a little bit of time to think about it, to look at where you are and to look at where you're going and to come back to your values and think, 'Am I doing the right thing?'.
The past two weeks has been quite an extraordinary two weeks for me, both ups and downs for various reasons but the most important thing I can remember is that I am much closer to the end than I am to the start, and for that reason I need to put more effort into allowing myself to last as long as I can.
Oxygen mask on.
Blog Post Number - 3809
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