“You are not stuck in traffic, you are traffic” that was David Foster Wallace.
I measured my blood pressure at home today.
I do that from time to time as one of the indicators of measuring my health (along with weight) and general feelings of well-being etc. etc.
I have a tendency to higher blood pressure and in fact in 2003 I had mild Hypertension which was diagnosed as part of a medical for life insurance for the house I live in.
From that time onward's I tried to change my lifestyle because I felt at 31 I was too young to have that.
Today's blood pressure was 133/57.
I don’t think that it’s ever been lower than that.
My weight is under 13 stone which used to be an aspirational racing weight when I was a triathlete.
It seems that lockdown is not great for my bank balance, but it sure seems good for my health balance.
I have suffered and endured the ups and downs of these periods as everyone else has.
My life is not ‘sorted’.
On the 10th February, I started Clinical work at a new 7,000 Sq. Ft Clinical premises which costs an excessive 3 million pounds to develop.
It sits in the middle of an 8 million pound property development which is not finished.
After five years of planning you couldn’t have scripted that.
I am resolved though, but my life will not be eaten up by the circumstances I find myself in at the present time.
I will endure and I will survive and I will thrive on the other side of this, whatever that means because I am prepared to accept less.
I don’t need things but I crave time.
I don’t need validation but I crave conversation.
I don’t need approval but I need community and collaboration and working together for better things.
Last Monday I started The Bootstrapper’s Workshop which is an Akimbo online course promoted and developed by Seth Godin and his team.
It is as extraordinary as I would have hoped it would have been and today I ended up in electronic communication with Nicholas from Australia.
He is taking a break from cycling around the world with his wife to raise his two daughters and trying to develop innovative ways of making a living, in the right way, during that time.
He introduced me to David Foster Wallace and the commencement speech that he gave at Kenyon University in 2005.
An edited version of that on a YouTube video is available here.
I know that very few people who read this blog click the links, but if you have never clicked a link you should click that one, it’s here again in case you missed it.
It’s just under 10 minutes long, so sit down and watch and listen and understand that the way forwards from here will be different but not worse.
If you can take the things from your life over the past six weeks that you have loved and protect them (at least to a degree) for as long as possible, you will begin to live a better life and so will I.
In a bizarre coincidence someone commented on the blog this week from Australia advising anyone who reads the blog to get things done while you are locked down because you will be so busy when you go back to work you will wish you had.
The biggest job we all have now is to protect some of the space that we have been able to create, to think about how we can make a positive contribution to a world that will be different (but not worse) after COVID-19.
Blog Post Number - 2356
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