Amid this crazy November that I've been bleating on about in these pages for the past few weeks, I started to head towards the cliff of overwhelm.
I started to talk about it with my friend Mike about ten days ago at the Pub Quiz, and I didn't even make the pub quiz this week, but it was planned overwhelm, and I'm very privileged and very lucky to have support networks around me at work and home allowing me just to step back when everything starts to get crazy and even crazier.
And so, now I find myself on the Friday morning before the Aesthetic Masterclass, ready to go, ready for this Friday, ready for this Saturday, Ready for the trip next week or as ready as I'll ever be, and what I realised is that I don't want to stop this.
I know that I'll have phases that go like this because I'll stretch myself to see if I can be better, learn more, or deliver something other than that which I'm already doing, and the essence of that is curiosity.
As I get older (53 in a few weeks), I understand that I have to work on balance and strength and cardiac health; I have to eat a bit better, I have to make sure I sleep better all of those things, just to make sure that I'm giving myself the best chance to go a bit longer.
But one of the greatest things I can do is work on my curiosity muscle.
You can see it in many people my age, even those who have just started to shrink things down.
The world is getting narrower and narrower; stick to what they know, they don't push themselves out of their comfort zone, they don't do things that scare them because, well, it's frightening, and they've done that enough in their life, and they decide to settle down.
The alternative for me is in the other direction.
This week, we went to The Script on Wednesday night, even though there was an ITI Study Club at the Practice with Minesh Patel, which about 35 people attended.
Minesh is an extraordinary young (at least young to me) educator, clinician, photographer, and individual doing fantastic things and building an enormous tribe around him of people who subscribe to his ideas and philosophies.
I've never met him, but I've seen from a distance the effect that he has on people that I know, respect, and understand, and I believe that he must be quite extraordinary.
I didn't see him speak on Wednesday, which was sad, but I need to go and see him and watch and see what happens because I want to learn from someone like that in spite of the fact that he's probably about 100 years younger than me.
There's so much to see and so much to learn because if I managed to do what I said I would do, which is work for another 33 years (actually 32 as I count it now), I want to learn; I've got lots to learn and lots to continue to change.
It's not the destination, is it? It's the curiosity in the journey of the things that you see as you head towards that.
I'll be very sad when I reach the end, whatever the end is, but I won't stop being curious until that time comes.
Blog Post Number - 3999
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