To Be Happy :-)

As I walked along the road towards Costa coffee shop to meet Flocky Bicep at rush hour and watched the serious faces and the toot of an angry car, or watched someone rushing past their road and having to turn back :-) and as I felt the rising need to say something or think something like "idiot" or "should have gone to Specsavers" I didn't - I stopped myself in mid thought, killed it off and just carried on.  It was just a pleasure to be walking along the road.  It is fun just smiling or acknowledging your fellow walkers and give a smile and you'll often get a smile back for your troubles.

I'm still feeling great and happy, above all I am happy and I can't even begin to tell you what that is like after all this time of carrying a pile of baggage around with me.  It really feels like I've lost about 3 or 4 stone.  I am breathing well, my heart rate is down - I'm guessing but haven't tested it that my blood pressure is way down too.  My real weight is also down and dipped below 15 stone so I'm an even happier bunny..

I feel a bit like some sort of evangelist but I don't want to ram my "enlightenment" down your throat at all.  Because half of the story is missing (and will be for a while I'm afraid) I can only hint at what happened here.  Some of my close friends know so it's not as if I'm not boring the hell out of them :-)  Bless them, they've been great all the way through but more so in the last 15 weeks - yes 15 weeks today!!!!

In 15 weeks I've lived a lifetime of experiences and emotions and finally made the changes I knew I wanted to make.  They didn't come about in the way I had planned at all but the journey was part of the destination (if that isn't a strange thing to say).  I haven't arrived at the destination yet but the journey has had more plot twists than a Christopher Nolan film :-) 

The me of 16 weeks ago is hardly identifiable with the me of today.  Gone are all the anxieties and worries I had then and gone are all the heavy guilt and self flagellation baggage that I carried around with me.  Gone is the guilt trip of living after cancer and the guilt of not dying.  Gone the worries about what people thought about me, gone the "whole world is against me", gone the need to "get even" with my foes.  As my friend often said to me "Let It Go Louie" 

Absolutely - it's all gone.  No need to get all rattled about the past, no need to get worried about the future either.  Once you get that into your head, everything else drops away and so that's why I'm in a good place.  

So happy and being in a happy place?  I find it amazing as I should really be in bits and all upset and miserable with my lot and yet I'm not at all.  Suddenly it all makes sense and from the ashes of my past life and the last 15 weeks journey when I've built huge monuments to life and ripped them down and torn down the dusty veils behind my eyes I've finally arrived here and can start to live again.  The freedom is incredible, the feelings of space and lightness are palpable and the ability to identify my own thoughts and ego and pain body trying to get at me is so acute that I can catch it pretty quickly and deal with it and almost laugh at it and deal with it.  That's the trick to work out the stupidity behind worrying about all these things, taking on board all that worry when it is totally unnecessary to do so. 

There is someway still to travel and who knows what I will find and what I'll experience then.  The main thing is not to worry about it and to just roll with the moment.  

It is difficult to explain further here but someone who means a lot to me who holds a very special place in my affection, my heart and my mind gave me a magical gift all those weeks back when I started this journey.  Whether they knew it or not they gave me back my self esteem and self confidence.  They had been missing for years and just needed awakening.  They spent a lot of time rebuilding me and putting me back together and through patient industry, tenderness and love gave me the strength to go away and tear down the old and come through it to where I am now.  It feels like a Caterpillar to Butterfly transformation and whilst I had to do that myself, the catalyst, the motivation, the person that lit the touch paper was there encouraging and supportive.

You need friends like that too - those who pick you up, dust you down and set you on your way again.  If you were locked in jail they wouldn't bail you out because they'd be sitting next to you saying "Hell what a ride!" :-) 

Strange Feelings - Lightness

It has been most peculiar I have to say - since a few weeks back when I finally realised that I could get rid of all the baggage I used to carry around, that's all the legacy stuff and all the planning and dreaming stuff.  It was an interesting thing because I went to bed and as I lay there I just started to do some breathing exercises - you concentrate on your breathing and the air going in and out and then your chest moving and then try and actually feel your hands and your feet and your body and concentrate on nothing else, no thought at all.  

When I awoke there was nothing there at all.  I have to stop myself many times a day because we are all creatures of habit and things come back but all I need do is stop, breathe a few times and concentrate on that and the thought has nowhere to go and doesn't get my attention.  The same with dreams, I now smile when I get one of these future dreams and snuff it out - it isn't real.  

What I'm left with is a lightness in my chest.  It was always tight with knotted fear or adrenaline or something similar, some sort of dread and now it is fine and I can breathe easier and feel just great.  Maybe I ought to check my blood pressure and get that appointment with the Asthma Nurse now :-)

We are still in embargo - sorry, looks like at least another 3 or 4 weeks - not of my making I'm afraid but there you go.  Once we are out of embargo it will all become a lot clearer - maybe :-)

I'm working on my future and that's interesting indeed.  I need to work out how I can raise some decent money being a researcher but I'm sure if I put my mind to this, anything is possible.  It's nothing that a bit of hard work can't resolve.  It's probably the first time that I've entered something where I know there is a medium risk that this may not work at all but I'm sort of confident that it should provide me with the sort of lifestyle I want.  I can work the hours as required and build the business to suit myself.  Being employed may not provide me with that option.  I know other things I did also provided no return but in many ways, this is MY business and my drive and my enthusiasm and energy.  I can't see why it shouldn't work as long as I commit a lot of time initially to it.  After tomorrow I will have a fair idea of whether things are viable in terms of the initial thrust of the business or not.

The really great thing is though that I'm free of the past at last I can't tell you how liberating that is.  All that guilt and all the nasty voices are no longer there.  I don't have the premonitions and fear I used to have.  My confidence is returned and my outlook is so much better.  From now on what is the worst thing that can happen is a sort of unwritten motto :-)

Business Planning - Decluttering and other stuff

My office looks like a mini Hurricane has passed through it.  Loads more stuff has arrived all requiring being posted on eBay and gotten rid of.  I've finally made a decision that all of my old books and files can just go as all they've been good for is trapping dust.  If they don't go then they are going to Flocky Bicep's incinerator along with a lot of confidential documents.  Stuff I've kept for years just in case can now be dumped and thrown away.  

The Vinyl record collection that a dealer offered me a few hundred pounds for will go onto to eBay too and it can raise its market value on there and be gotten rid of.  Unfortunately much of it will end up where it belongs in landfill or maybe I will see if a Charity Shop wants it.

I've been looking at stuff that I am "attached" to and do you know what?  There isn't very much that I'm attached to at all really.  There's stuff I want to keep - all my books, I love my books but my Vinyl and my CDs well - I don't need them - I have electronic versions after all.  All my reference books from when I was an electrical engineer - are being offered to those whom I know and if they don't want them then they too will go to the incinerator or charity shop too. 

The sheer amount of clutter and stuff stored away surprised me.  All my musical instruments I'll keep though as I really ought to get back and play those - I used to derive pleasure from them but put them away years ago and didn't do anything further.  What a waste.  

Why all this activity?  Well I got fed up with it all and wondered what on earth all the clutter was doing here?  It isn't doing anything and it really could do with being thrown out - if someone else can use it - great - if not dump it.  It serves no purpose.

The trouble with this is, once you've started clearing the place you end up causing a lot more clutter for a short period of time - in my office which is a pain in the arse because whilst doing this I am also trying to start my new business :-)  Oh well bring it on.....

I'm still feeling great about my life and whilst not fully out of the brown smelly stuff, I can say that I am beginning to feel good and to start to let really enjoy this new found freedom.   I've started to really pull the business plans together and start to ramp up my thinking and how I can go about running the business.  It is a life style business centred around genealogy services and also photographic services.  I've thought about this for a number of years and think that it's about time I just went and gave it a go - what's the worst thing that can happen?  The main thing is to actually run it as a business and spend time building it and making it happen.  There are lots of competitors out there but I'm sure I can bring my own style to it.  Let's hope so. 

Watching the detectives

Great track by Elvis Costello of course but also was interesting to be people watching yesterday.  I really enjoyed getting back into the swing of things.  I couldn't help myself in conversation letting the ego get going but once I realised what it was I changed tack and became a really good listener and answered when asked.  

I ended up talking to the girl behind the bar and listening to her woes and travails and just let her get that off her chest.

I had a few beers and travelled home and felt great.  It is strange I have to say.  I feel really quite well and light - sure I've lost weight - but this is a lightness in body because there aren't all those old doubts and worries, no beating myself up about stuff I did in the past and also nothing in the future.  

I have to say that that bit is a little concerning.  It's not that I don't have plans and some concerns about my future, but somehow it isn't significant anymore.  I was worried that I may not be able to afford to go on a nice holiday if I go run this lifestyle business and yet, in reality, does it matter as long as I'm well, warm and comfortable and can feed myself?  Where does happiness lie?

Last week I thought it lay in a different place altogether and was wholly convinced of that only to have the whole lot come crashing down around my ears.  Hence my posts of last week.  I had grand ideas and plans and as usual, I do nothing by halves.  But it was a house of cards and in the end what I perceived as foundations weren't.  I was blinded once again by my mind and my thoughts and I was so glad that I had read A New Earth by then and was able to rationalise what was going on.  In fact, reading it had already prepared me in some way because I'd already got a feeling that all wasn't to be plain sailing.

This week gone has been one of finally getting it all together and whilst there is bound to be residual bits of resistance, I'm overcoming them.  The one about my future is very keenly in my mind because I don't think it is easy to not worry about the future or consider where you'll be.  How will I pay the bills etc and yet, in reality you can't worry about stuff like that - what's the point?  Having worried all my life about stuff like that to then try and not do it is always going to be difficult.  

It's not as if somehow I've forgotten how to run a business or as some of these recruiters would have me believe that I've somehow forgotten how to work abroad or manage people and projects.   So why not go and do what I'd planned to do years ago and just get on with it and see where it takes me and to take the risks and run with them.  What's the worst that can happen?  The worst that can happen is that it doesn't work out.... Failure is always an option but it shouldn't stop you taking the chance and living.

New Season

It is a new season in the Masonic calendar and I'm off to a meeting today and I've got a job even though I'm a visitor and I'm delighted to do something.  I hope to have a good afternoon and  also to just enjoy myself.  At last, all I'm after is to just go and out and enjoy the meeting to join in and just have a great time.  I decided not to dine but to come home afterwards.  They do go on a long long time into the evening and I'd rather just go for the meeting, enjoy their company and then wander off afterwards.

I'm interested to see how it all goes and I am looking forward to meeting a lot of people I haven't seen for some time.  

So the difference in me is that I am looking forward to this (maybe I shouldn't - it isn't the moment!) but what's great is that I have no worry about it, I'm feeling good, no dread no worry and I get to see all these guys again. 

I've been really good this week, I've handled a really traumatic event and a very unpleasant one OK.  It has obviously been difficult but this new way of dealing with it and moving on is excellent.  The ability to start to see the good in everyone, to look beyond the exterior and the rhetoric and to control the emotions generated by your own mind is beginning to really help me day to day.  There are quite a few things that I need to get my head around but without doubt, the main thing is to enjoy living in the now and really enjoy being freed up from the guilt and the anguish I have lived with for all of these years.  To find a space in my head and my body where before all that was there was this huge weight is amazing.  Long may it continue and long may I continue working on it to make things better.

I feel, at last, I can get on with life again without being held back and turned away from the courses I used to "choose".  At last the self destruct switch that I held onto all the time has disappeared and I don't know (and don't want to know) where it is.  This is the switch that would find a situation that I was enjoying and then by my own actions I'd destroy - could be a job, a relationship or anything else.  Whatever it was it isn't there now.  it doesn't mean I've lost any common sense or intelligence or anything like that it does mean that I don't have to worry about bringing my own self down - it is like self assassination - if there could be such a thing :-) 

So that's gone, the fear of the future, is gone, the damaging and clawing, terrorising past, has gone.  Sure they come back but for no more than 30 seconds now and I can deal with it.  If the Black Dog wants to come take a visit, I can toss the critter a bone and it can go away again.  The film a Beautiful Mind comes "to mind" :-) when I think of this - recollect the characters who loomed real in his life and haunted him, manifesting as people he interacted with?  He managed to ignore them to realise they weren't real - they didn't perspire, didn't get old and so on.  It makes a lot of sense.  How can the past be anything other than that?  How can the future hold dread when it hasn't actually happened yet?  It's all a series of distractions and noise you just don't need, made up  by your mind and for what?  

I can't say that anyone would easily get what I'm saying at the moment but the whole point is to finally wise up to what is going on and to draw a line under it and to move on in a new light.  It is close to 15 weeks now since I started this journey.  When I'm allowed to say more, I will and then it may become even clearer.  

Enough dear reader, I've screwed with your head long enough and I'd like to to consider a question about this blog and its 7 year tenure.

Q:  Is this blog all about me, all about my Ego, all about my Pain Body (see Eckhart Tolle pain body on Google).  Is it all about wanting to give something to society or is it something else?  I'll grant it has evolved but does it help those who have Bladder Cancer or not?  

Leave you with it :-) 

Back to the Inner Peace Stuff - Sorry About That

Sorry - I don't like to ram stuff down your throat but you can always move to the next post :-) 

It was really about an experience and when we get out of embargo I can say more but imagine if you will that something pretty awful and stressful happened to you on Monday night, then you already had scheduled something you really didn't want to do on Tuesday and that was stressful and unpleasant and upsetting too and then imagine having to deal with one after the other.  I suppose they can both be tragedies to give you the scale of the problem.

Here is the upside though.  It is Friday and by Wednesday I was already back on an even keel and whilst there was pain and hurt and a fair amount of it.  Today I'm in a great place and feel really good.  I would rather that both incidents didn't happen but, they have, they are in the past and I can't do anything about them.  I caught myself a little earlier on dwelling on the subject but quickly killed that off.  I found myself in a sort of dream world too thinking of something that could clearly not happen following the events of Monday and Tuesday and once again just stopped myself from going further as it wasn't beneficial to me going forward.

The more I think about keeping in the Now the more I am able to and the better I feel.  I certainly feel well in my body a sort of warmth throughout and still have the empty space in my chest and head which is great.

Plans, such that I have are more about the business and the direction I want to go in.  I think that I should be in an advanced state by the end of next week ready to make a decision one way or the other.

But the main thrust of this post is just to start to work on the positive results I've experienced this week and to note that all the bad stuff that used to be in my head is gone.  I'm not getting any negative stuff at all and haven't for over a week now so I'm delighted with that.  Long may it continue.

Ideas Settling In Now

I am trying to think about what to do next and for many years I have had a business and not really launched it.  I've got close sometimes but never really did it.  I was always worried that I was "blowing it up my own a***".   By that I mean that was I really being realistic about the job, making a case that wasn't there?  After all it is a lifestyle type business (genealogical research) practised, in the main, by professional researchers and very keen amateurs but only a few have what I would call a professional look and feel to their web sites.

Well, I have been giving it some attention because it is difficult to know whether to just push the boat out and go for it - which I probably should have done 5 years ago when i first formulated the ideas.  I am just doing the math (USA) maths (UK) to see if it can give me a living and that to me is actually all I want.  Food and warmth and so on.  It needs to make a fair amount but in many ways I want it to be something that I love doing, that will give me a flexible and interesting job and one that I can bring my experience to and thereby use that (35 years worth) to build a business that will attract sufficient customers to employ me.

Well - that is the idea and I have 4 or 5 years of notes and ideas to work through this weekend.  I then need to discuss some subcontracting with some friends and thus provide extra value through my site.  I have other ideas in place as well and just need to get my A*** into gear, get myself working in an office type way and also to put my back into this, my heart and soul and to concentrate on building a business that will be able to provide a living in the long term.  Sure it will take time to do that but I am sure that it is viable but I just need to complete those checks to make sure that I really am not being delusional and that I'm not running with my ego or some baseless dream.  The more I think about it, the more I'm sure I can make this happen.

The Grip and The Release

I write this blog and have for years since just after I had Bladder Cancer and so the blog must be coming up to 7 years old this October / November.  In all that time I've been the victim and I've tried all sorts of things to make myself better but actually more than that to stop it coming back.  In many ways, I hope that the diet I'm on now will be the answer, the weight coming off and a new level of fitness and getting out of the house more often will all help.

I'm surprised that Mrs. F. thinks that I am depressed?  I think that I'm a very changed person but I'm certainly not depressed but I don't actually have any plans at the moment, I don't know what I'm going to do and that I suppose might be a bit destabilizing but not to me.  I know I've been struggling with the new me but my real depressions were dark, black, awful places to be and I'm not there at all.  I did say that I felt on the brink of a nervous breakdown not long ago but again was aware enough to do something about it.  I feel a long way from being depressed.  Anyway she asked me to go to the Docs but I've refused - I don't need drugs or any of that nonsense.  She then blind called them and apparently they can put you on 1 to 1 or group counselling.  

The strange things is that I think she is misreading my new state of being as me being depressed.  I used Grip and Release in the title and that's the way I look at it.  Fourteen weeks ago or just over I made a conscious decision to move away from the 'grip' of depression and the cycle of ups and downs and all the other stuff I recognized were stopping me from getting on with my life.  I realised that I lived in a world where the past and the future ruled me.  Where I beat myself up constantly for being a failure, for getting ill, for so many things that it became self destructive in nature.  How could my own brain beat me up like this and if you've looked at the blog long term it's all about battling with myself.  Cancer stripped away the mechanisms I had to fight off the voices and to rein in and check my imagination and it's schemes and plans.  My head was so full all the time and my body was heavy with carrying this stuff around.

So that was the grip.  the release came recently when I realised that it was OK to be me.  A good friend took me to one side and re-built my self-confidence and my self-esteem, spent a lot of time doing that and convincing me that it was so, that it had always been so.  I owe them so much for doing that because it came at the right time, Karma again.  In fact it all arrived at the right time just after I'd made the decision to abandon the old me, to do something about it and to move on.

The release means that I now read and listen to books and music more and more (music was always important of course).  Now I write so much - it isn't here it is in a series of documents - I've written pages and pages of ideas and thoughts and many poems and just marvelled in this new world I've discovered. 

Some of the dreams I had crashed and burned but they were just dreams and were never likely to happen and some things happened to me that were truly wonderful.  The release is that I see the world differently now to just 3 months ago.  The hardest part is to maintain the living in the now, the present and not to be dwelling or thinking about the past. To also not be dreaming of the future because that too, whilst it is nice doesn't help especially if they never come true.  I have great schemes and ideas and ideals and they feel so real and yet they can never be like that so they become a source for disappointment and let down.  That's difficult for me - I've forever been a dreamer but I realise that and dwelling on stuff that has happened don't actually get me anywhere at all.  

Recent events too showed me how quickly your dreams turn to ashes and huge disappointment all because I dared to dream how it could be and wasn't here in the present enjoying how it was now.  How foolish I was not to do that but I know now and I've learnt and I can move on. 

I think it is nice to have dreams but you must temper that with the knowledge that it can never be like the dream.  It's nice to have a direction (I don't have that at the moment) but it needs to be sufficiently vague to allow you to get there.  If I look at my vision of my future from years ago it is nothing at all like the reality, how could it be?

The Power Of Now

It's another book by Eckhart Tolle and I happen to have the audiobook version and have been listening to that today.

To say that the book, A New Earth, arrived at the right time for me is an understatement.  With all that is happening in my life at the moment, some I can tell you, some I can intimate to you but all of it can be summed up as the most intense 14 weeks of my entire life and it's still going on.

I've gone from being pretty low to complete ecstasy and everywhere in between.  I've demolished the old me and rebuilt a new version, for us in the software world I'm around about Version 2.1.9 at the moment :-)  I've had to let go of the old me and found in myself so many new things that were there all along.  I've made some people very happy and I've made some people very sad.  I am upset myself about the sadness I've caused and I'm happy about the joy (I think) I may have brought to other people.

Talking in riddles as I am leads me to saying why the book A New Earth arrived at a good time for me.  Something happened to me on Monday night that was as powerful as the death of my father although I knew he was dying and had been for a while.  On Monday I had an inkling of what was going to happen but it hit me anyway and it hit me very hard.  I had to go for a very long walk at night, in the drizzle but I hardly noticed that or indeed where I walked.  I then stood outside looking up at the stars for about an hour - saw some shooting stars and wondered at the immenseness of it all.  I got back indoors and had the merest of claustrophobic attacks as I lay in bed so I got up again and went outside again and spent a few hours just gazing at the sky and trying to work out what sort of animal was at the end of my garden with golden eyes that stared at me and blinked in the reflected light from my kitchen lights pouring through the window.

The hurt was immense, as if someone HAD died but that wasn't what it was at all.  I knew that I'd just have to take the pain and the hit of it and there was nothing I could do about it.  I also knew that I could actually do something about it now, I finally had the toolkit to make the pain go away and to deal with this and many other things that had - up until recently cursed me.  The destructive voices, the pain body and my overactive mind.  All these things are addresses in a New Earth and it's been less than a week since I finally was able to be at peace with who I am, what I am and started to pull down the last bastions of my destructive inner self.

For whatever reason Monday night was only one of the "issues" I am dealing with at the moment and post embargo I'll let you know what on earth is going on! :-)  So after having that episode of being upset and then finding it all too much I remembered that I could o something about it.  There are a few methods Eckhart Tolle uses to remind you how to get past problems like the one I was feeling on Monday.  Firstly, the event had already happened and it was in the past.  I could do nothing to stop it, it wasn't my actions and I could do nothing to change it.  As it was in the past it could no longer hurt me.  So "this too will pass" is a good mantra to repeat to yourself.  You have to also get yourself out of the thinking about it or listening to the pain body part of your head that enjoys making you suffer.  So looking up at the stars, concentrating on your breathing disengages the thoughts, the voices and the pain body and repeating the words "this too will pass" referring to the pain I was feeling took it away and I was able to control it to some extent.  It didn't quite work when I was trying to go to sleep but I just carried on with the breathing and the moment and repeating the words and eventually fell asleep.  

In the morning, I did wake early but I was in a much much better place.  The day was a bit up and down but a long walk in the woods once again connected me to the outside world and allowed me to just be still out there and again I used the mantra every time I felt the thought coming back that was making me sad.  Then, amazingly, my head or something came up with a really positive spin on the whole sad story and suddenly, it wasn't sad at all, it was a joyful thing, a positive experience but, and here is the but.  It was in the past, it had happened and so nothing I felt about it mattered anyway but I liked the positive spin because it means if the feelings come back that I also have that to help.

I feel quite strange at the moment because I have stopped the incessant planning and plotting and scheming I used to do.  I have been using this new found freedom, let's call it space for want of another word, to consider what I should now do with myself going forward.  It's not planning, it is more introverted and inward looking than that.  I'm finally getting nearer to the point where the answer lies and yet I don't have the answer by any means.  I no longer have the voices in my head putting me down, nor does the pain body exist anywhere like it used to.  I'm in charge of those, when they appear I can combat those and it doesn't take up much time.  In combatting them I've also got rid of the planning and the whir or calculations and scenario crunching I used to do.  All of this has left the feeling of space in my head and in my chest - it is a most bizarre feeling a sort of emptiness and lightness.

Talking of lightness and going off subject, I finally dipped below 15 stone this morning and was delighted that I weighed 15 stone clothed and with a jumper on (it is pretty cold all of a sudden).  But I digress.  The main point of the post is that the book arrived just in time, the situation could not have been foreseen 48 hours beforehand but happen it did and under normal circumstances it would have sent me into a tail spin for at least a week if not a month.  I was in a tail spin for about 2 hours, in a shallow dive for about 5 hours but after that, I was OK with what had happened, managed to alleviate the majority of the pain it caused me and was able to quickly and positively see the upside of the situation.  It's only 48 hours since then and I'm back under control again.  I'm sure there will be the odd trigger that will bring the pain back and I've had a few of those today but a 30 second stop, breath, focus, mantra and it goes away again.

If you get a chance to read A New Earth then do so - you have to be ready for it and I hope that it turns up in time to make a difference in your life.  Quite how it did for me is interesting, could there really be that level of Karma out there?  Perhaps there is after all....

The Week Ahead

We are still embargoed from my main news.  The week ahead will be interesting I feel and whilst I have no idea what it will hold for me at this moment, I've had a number of things come together in the last few days which is good.

The best thing is honestly to now be clear (mostly) of the damaging baggage I've been hauling around with me these past years.  I can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to control this stuff, get rid of it, stop it in its tracks.

I didn't get to meet the hirers for the job - well that's OK too.  I feel fine about that too and no doubt they will find someone far more suitable.

Once I found out that, I thought I'll write an action plan, a page of things to do, a project plan a mindmap and work out what I will do next.  Here it is:














Yes, that's it :-)  All my life I've written plans and lists and things and suddenly, yesterday, nothing would come out at all because there isn't anything there anymore.  I tore it all down last week when I removed the past I also realised that all the stuff I plan and scheme about never happens in the way I want it to and so it isn't necessary to do this - it leads to disappointment and it is not productive either.

So an interesting week coming up and who knows what's coming down the line... :-) 

Peace? Well for me maybe at last

It isn't going to be an overnight change, whatever is?  I still notice I carry around "stuff" in my head but what is different is the way I'm dealing with it now.  I haven't thought about bladder cancer in days - it just happens this blog reminded me.  I don't feel the same way about that now either.  I've got rid of all of the Monkeys on my back and the little voice, when it says anything is firmly put back in its place.  I've no idea what my purpose is yet - I guess that will come eventually as will being more in the now than reliving the past, fantasising about the future and making plans and schemes that are all a bit Walter Mitty.

Early signs are good here.  I wake up at peace and whilst I get the odd nagging and bitching from my head I realise what it is, stop and get rid of it and dismiss it for it isn't reality, it isn't helpful and so it can be dispatched back to whence it came and be forgotten about.  

I've now got rid of the "poor me" had cancer stuff.  The voice in my head is banished and the evil words that put me down for years and undermined me are now gone.  I've stopped, apart from real dreams, dreaming about a future in all these places (by the sea, in the lakes and mountains, abroad dah de dah) because it will be what it will be - they are dreams and not reality and whilst it might be nice to think about doing such things is it real, is it helpful and do I need the distraction?  I found them unhelpful and if you are unable to fulfil them it adds to the distraction and the feeling of not succeeding in the long run which is what the little voices say all the time.

It all sounds a bit bizarre I know, especially coming from me, but I have to say that - what?  13 weeks ago or so - it was certainly around that sort of time, I started on this journey and wasn't sure what I'd find at the end (it isn't the end by the way) and along the way major change has happened to me (still embargoed folks).   Today, this morning, I feel content with my lot at last.  I'm happy with who I am.  In many ways I'm happy with who you are and who everyone else is too.  I've got clear space in my head and my body - I no longer feel the stress of having no more room inside me to hold on to all the "baggage" that I had.  I feel maybe that I've turned a corner and can no longer see anything in the rear view and in front of me is clear, bright but not defined - it isn't frightening that it is not defined, in fact that's good.  Up the road there will be junctions and decisions to come but now those won't be difficult decisions any longer.

Finally I feel able to control my emotions, my brain is calm and no longer scheming all the time.  I've pulled back from the madness or dysfunction of an overactive mind and entered a different, calmer place altogether.  That's not to say life is not going to get stormy but that I know how I am going to deal with it in the future.  I've come along way in a short time since I said enough was enough, I do feel I was heading for some sort of breakdown at the time and I knew - just knew - I had to do something about it.  So many things set off back then all at once - not through my design all of them I have to say - it became a rush to get here too quickly in the beginning and yet I doubt it could have been any other way.  Hunter S Thompson said "Buy the ticket, take the ride" I believe.  What a ride and you still only know half of it :-)

So I'll leave you with the possibility that you can find some peace in this troubled world, you can actually accept what is going on around you and you can find that you can get rid of the voices and also stop the past haunting you.  I'd recommend the book a New Earth by Eckhart Tolle and (if you can cope with Oprah - bless her she does grate on me a bit) you can catch the web casts on Youtube of her and Eckhart there are 10 of them 1 - 9 are 1.5 hours long and No 10 is 2 hours.  Now it's best to have read the book first or read the chapter before you see the web cast.  I read the book in about 3 days flat and I've watched the webcasts at one or two a day - sorry Oprah :-)  It may be that I find our cousins in the USA a little too nasally or self righteous (that's an over generalisation) but if you can cut through all the ego (that isn't meant to be there and the pontificating) then the actual stuff that Eckhart Tolle discusses and shares may resonate with you.

It has totally restored the balance in me about religion and its place in society and there are some useful techniques to just be still, calm down, get rid of all the negativity in you and so on.  Worth 15 1/2 hours of your life - but do concentrate on the book and the videos.

So here I am, I said Peace? Well maybe for me at last and I actually do think that now.  I am so different now, so calm.  Sure I get angry or upset as we all do but I can recognise it, stop it and do something about it, that's the difference now, I have the ability to see it and do something about it quite quickly.  I have yet to give it the "idiot test" but let's see.  I have no seething anger anymore, I'm not off on some wild fantasy filled scheme  I'm not reverting to the past and I'm not beating myself up all the time.  I'm not worried anymore about the future, where I will work, what I will do and how I will live.  I can't do anything about it.

So I can't undo the past neither should I regret it or fret about it - what good is that?
I can't live in a future fantasy as it doesn't exist and doesn't happen and also I shouldn't be worried about it as it hasn't happened?
I need to live now, today and concentrate on that.

So - finally - after 7 years or more - some sort of closure and some sort of coming to terms with it all.  Long may that continue because finally I am at peace with myself and finally I am empowered to move forward positively and to cast off all the emotional baggage I've accumulated all these years. :-) 

Breaking The Cycle

Here's the thing.  We all do it, we all have egos and we all have something called (in Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth) a "pain body" it is where bad news accumulates and sucks out your energy, it keeps you down when you should be up it makes a victim of you (in my case) and it thrives on anger and pain and it never really lets you go.  Your ego too has a built up fictional version of who you are.  Your name, date of birth, school days, jobs and career, wife and family.

Yesterday I had a long chat and then watched that part of the Oprah / Eckhart Tolle webcast about the pain body and I realised that I wasn't going to suffer it any more.  In addition I wasn't going to push to make stuff happen anymore, I'm not going to be sitting here waiting for stuff to happen, people to call and so on.  If it makes me feel bad why should I?  This morning I woke up and I actually felt refreshed for once.  Felt like I had a good night's sleep, felt like lots of the pack of troubles I carry around with me day to day had disappeared - not all of them - but a lot of them.

Today would be about changing the approach and it's already lunchtime and I have no idea where the morning has gone.  Better than that I don't really care where it has gone, I don't care about what is going to happen this afternoon because it is just going to happen whether I worry about it or not.  

I'm training myself to recognise stuff reemerging from the past and stopping it - it's in the past.  I'm forgetting about lots of things like that - letting go of them they aren't doing me any good.  Things that drain my energy (normally people) will no longer do that.  I can't do anything about the past, I can't do much about the future that will happen I can do stuff now, in the present, in the now.  That's what I'm doing.

It's difficult I grant you not to be off on some fool's errand or to be sulking and upset over something that happened some time ago.  It's difficult not to try and plan a future but planning and doing if I consider it never have become reality - no, never.  You can risk manage and mitigate of course, you can save for a rainy day by all means but to think and dream (although I enjoy my dreams) they aren't reality.

I also realise that I'm trying to force things to happen and I've stopped that as well.  If things are going to happen they will and there is nothing I can do to force the situation and I've been working far too hard at relationships these past 3 months or so now.  I've drained my energy and I'm flat and out of gas.  That sounds bad but actually it shows how hard I've been working and once again I realise that I've had to do that but it is time now, I've come far enough along this road that I don't need to work hard at it, I need to work smart not harder...

Still embargoed - will let you know when it isn't.

Walking in the woods

They say is good for the soul and so it seems it is.  I do versions of my circular walk around the village and it is great it helps me to do some of the repair work I know is necessary.  There was just one or two people on the whole of the walk and the sun was out warming and pleasant.  I was able to spend time in some of the larger fields just on my own just eyes closed and listening to the environment.  

I'm no tree hugger but I do find that this getting out of the house and into the country which is easy for me being 5 minutes away, allows me to just get some perspective.  For yet again this urgent requirement for people has now lasted 4 weeks - so how urgent is it really (although most of Europe appears to have been away on holiday).  I chased it this morning as a matter of courtesy and they say there is no news and will keep me informed.  Oh well let's see what happens there.  I have a plan B - I will just need to instigate it but would rather get a job like this one and just move it on from there.  Life is complicated enough at the moment as it is.

Oh well - my choice :-)  

So get yourself into the woods, listen to yourself breathing and listen to whats around you then take it all in without thinking about it - see what that does to you.  So look but don't theorise or name things, don't judge, just be still - see what happens.  

More Delays

I'm afraid that the Embargo stays and at least another week I think.  

In the interim I leave you with the consideration about how you see people.  I've been thinking about the people I know and after reading a A New Earth have been able to relate to some of the areas of that book.  But one thing struck me about a couple of people I know and that is that their - I'll use the word beauty - shines out of them.  When I think about them, I realise that they have a sort of aura about them, a glow of goodness if you will.  They appear to be quite normal human beings in the normal run of things but when you look deeper and longer and begin to think about these people and in some ways study them it is obvious that they have something very special about them.

I find myself now more interested in them.  i know already that they are good people.  They "care" for me and that's nice, they care for others too and their lives appear to be ones where they willingly give of their time and help others along.  In some ways I like to think that I am similar to that.  Not sure I have the presence or charisma that they have though.  

I'm wrestling with my emotions at the moment as I react to the changes in me in these past 11 (or is it 12) or so weeks.  It sure is a roller coaster of a ride up and down and bigs highs and massive disappointments as I struggle to bring myself out of 7 years (or more) of what I think can only be considered to be Depression.  I don't think I qualify for full breakdown as I've not actually had the incapacity piece - I've had long periods of inaction but have been able to get on with things albeit not always great constructive things.

The hardest thing is to actually get around to "loving yourself" or perhaps accepting yourself and who you are.  It's not at all easy to do that and that is exactly where my problem lies.  I've been particularly hard on myself and not accepted who I am, what I am and all those good things.  More so now, I want to go beat myself up for all the things I did and that didn't work out or the way I approached my life especially these past 7 years and as another very good friend oftens says to me (after the Budweiser Frog Advert...) "Let it go Louie!"  And so I am doing so, in many ways I'm not built to "Non, je ne regrette rien" I regret nothing but actually that's EXACTLY what I have to do.  It's all happened, it's all history.  The stuff I just typed is in the past now, it's happened, you've read it, it's happened.

Training myself to be in the NOW is very difficult.  I am a man of plans and schemes, stratagems and tactics, theorems and reviews.  I play hundreds of scenarios all the time in my head, that's what I do and how I'm built.  It pleases me that I do these things but it has a down side which is that I operate outside of the NOW I tend to be working for things in the future and more and more they weren't being fulfilled.  My plans and ideas weren't working like they used to and that's a bit disturbing.  I am normally so confident and assured and yet in the last 7 years not much has gone right.  As some people will realise - how on earth you can plan anything when you have cancer is beyond them and of course how on earth I thought I could do anything like that too was arrogant in the extreme (although not to my mind it wasn't).

So here I am - I'm actually in a good places and most of the time I'm very happy - with occasional slides into a sort of mini sulk or depression if you like.  It isn't ever going to be easy to change yourself but the good thing is I'm out of the rut.  I actually am getting on and doing things now and beginning to operate as a human being again.  That's good in itself.   Things are getting better and I hope that the progress I am making will continue.  As usual I want it all to have happened and be effective now.  In reality it will take me a few years I think but of course my head wants it changed now.  Because it doesn't always work out my head doesn't always get it :-)  One day it will I just have to keep working at it.

Reflections On A New Earth

Good grief - that was an strange and interesting book.  I can barely even tell you what it was about as it is so complex and yet so simple at the same time.  

Here is a link to Amazon and I'll let you read the reviews.  Mumbo Jumbo?  I don't think so - it's where I've been heading these past 7 years and perhaps for longer than that.  It has started to make me question and more importantly recognise what the hell has been going on in my head all this time.  It isn't an "easy read" I'd have said but in three or four days I've now read through and variously identified much in this book with my own experiences and there are some areas that I just need to go and work on.  

I'd say you need to keep an open mind to read through this and be going through some of the processes would certainly help you understand what he is driving at.

It is strange how you can relate religion and consciousness so clearly, it also answers some of the karma like stuff that has been going on in my life (still embargoed folks - sorry).  But I've got plenty to think about and discuss with my mate now I've read this.  

I've read plenty of "self help" books and yet this isn't self help as such but does give some pointers.  I've lots to think about now :-) More later! 

Careful of what you eat

It's interesting that at the moment my weight loss has stalled and I'm around 15 stone down from 18 1/2 in 7 months now - but I've been hovering around 15 for a while.  Interestingly this is quite common and one thing is strange is that I'm still losing weight around my stomach (it's tightening up) but it is possible that muscle mass is replacing the fat.  So that's OK and apparently it is quite normal.  I'd like to be a lot lighter than I am but at the moment I'm not as disciplined either and cheat day no longer exists as it used to.  I just occasionally have a chocolate biscuit or a Latte or Cappuccino or perhaps a bit of bread.  However, it is often small and rare.  A beer every now and then as well.

However, none of the above are in any major quantity nor at any great frequency and I still take care what I eat when I'm out etc.

Today I found that Ham and Salami both of which I'd always taken for granted were OK to consume are in fact not.  I tend to have a light lunch these days or Ham and/or salami or other meat cuts, a few Olives, a little cheese and a little salad with some Olive Oil and Balsamic vinegar.  I looked at the packs today.  Salami has Glucose Syrup in it and Ham has Dextrose.  This is where the food industry needs to get a grip surely.  They know that sugar is addictive and they add it into our everyday foods.  So it looks as if I need to re-think that strategy and just go back to basics again on my lunch.  Breakfast still tends to be egg based in the main with mushrooms and every now and then bacon and occasionally a tomato.  

Just thought I'd warn you about things you never thought you'd find in basic foods.  It's frightening what is in these packages.  It's like Fructose in pickles which I used to enjoy.  Someone ought to be held accountable for making us fat and introducing all these carbs and sugars into our food and saying it's good for us!  

Letting Go Of The Past

I think it was Dale Carnegie and he sort of said something about the past has happened - you can't do anything about, the future isn't here yet so why worry about it and live in the day as you can control that everything else is beyond your ability to control - I feel that is a pretty awful paraphrasing but hopefully you get the gist?

So here's the point, the past, the stuff that haunts me sometimes is the past, it's history, it's happened, I can't do anything about it.  That is a fact.  I may regret some things but I can't go and undo them, they have happened.  There is no need to worry and no regrets about them.  Let go, leave alone, move along (nothing to see here).  

Where I find myself now, today, in the present is due to the past but that's it, there's nothing I can do about it but to deal with it today and just get on with things.  It's not meant to be enigmatic but perhaps you can see that finally, at last I'm drawing a line under the past and saying enough is enough. You, Cancer, have taken your payment and I don't owe you anything anymore.  I don't owe you my life, my attention or my reflection.  I am what I am today and that's where I've got to start from.  I can't bemoan the fact that I was a different person back then as it isn't particularly productive.

I'm beginning to find an inner peace with myself and a contentment with who I am.  I realise how bad things were only by the fact that I have reawakened interests and feelings long buried.  I am starting to enjoy reading again and music.  Long may this continue and expand.

I've got the now to deal with and whilst I have an eye to the future I will not forget the other Dale Carnegie saying (or something like this) "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday!" damn right why worry...   

A New Earth? A New Me?

We are still embargoed folks so hang on to your hats for a while yet - I thought by now it would be OK but not quite.  The title?  Well A New Earth was a book recommended by a very very good friend of mine and we have both had very similar experiences.  We've both done the heavy depression and The Black Dog has been a visitor to both of us in our time.

A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose is a self-help book by Eckhart Tolle and it looks at Ego - " it encourages its readers to live their lives in each present moment and to create happiness for themselves without emphasizing material possessions. Tolle's intent is to change the way human beings think, and he envisions a world population that is increasingly more humble, enlightened and pure." 

Now, even for me this is a little "way out there" but in fact it is not really as there are pieces of this book that I've already met and not quite understood, areas of recovery from cancer that touch on some of the very subjects that this book presents.  

I said some time ago that possessions don't mean anything to me anymore, I would be sad to lose the sentimental connection but the material value and the purpose of owning anything doesn't seem to do it for me anymore.  In some items I am a custodian and in others they will disappear and are of no use to me once I'm dead.  There's a phrase I use that I get in trouble for from some people and it is this:

"He who dies with the most toys is still, however, dead"

To me that sort of says it all.  Perhaps I can pass certain stuff on to my kids but just looking at the "value" of things that I have now (Vinyl record collection and so on) they aren't worth anything.  At present we are clearing the garage.  I have a set of Golf Clubs and a Golf Cart - and they are worth?  Nothing, I will give them away as I will with loads of my stuff.  I just don't need it or want it anymore - I have mechanics stuff when I used to (and you could) maintain your own car - these days you need a computer and be able to replace components :-).  

The book is beginning to produce more questions for me and to answer some very interesting parts of my life and my journey.  I've felt for a long time that all the "stuff" we have isn't really necessary and that we place too much emphasis on materialistic things.  I have 2 watches I don't wear them at the same time.  One is my day to day watch the other is my father's watch and is the one thing that I have that was his that I treasure as in a small way when I go out and wear smart clothes he comes along with me and yet it really isn't "that" important in the overall scheme of things, surely I should carry his memory where it belongs in my head?

My recent journey is still only 10 or maybe 11 weeks old and I've come a long long way in that short space of time.  I've tried to let go of the Mr. Spock (Star Trek) logical world I created and went more with my emotions and tried to reassess my life in terms of what I really want.  In some ways I've become quite a dreamer and have started to consider seriously some of my earlier plans to get away from it all, live somewhere else, be someone different.  

Deep down inside I want to finally be at peace with myself and to be happy with who I am and what I am now.  I said that cancer had ripped me apart and reassembled me differently and it has without doubt changed me to my core.  I just haven't accepted that who I am now is different and I've fought against it and baulked at it until finally it cannot be ignored anymore.  I have to accept that I am who I am, I'm not who I used to be and the struggle has been that I've tried to be that person I was all that time ago.  You can't go back and be who you were before cancer (well not in my case) it alters you right down inside.  In the book A New Earth it talks about this Ego, The "I" the "Me", "Myself" and how it is built and how it works and how disruptive it is.  The point is to blot out the Ego if at all possible or to somehow make it ineffective.

In addition the book talks about "thought" the little voice in the back of your head - constantly there constantly talking and in my case analysing and plotting.  I've been able to start to fight back and find myself more alive to my music, I've started reading again, I've done all those chores I should have done months or years back and I've started creative writing and poetry again.  I haven't picked up my musical instruments and painting yet but they are also on the list of things I ought to do.  All the things that used to be outlets for my creativity were suppressed and stopped.  In many ways, I became a prisoner of my own mind and was locked into a self imposed jail bounded by my Ego which made me a victim. 

So no more will that happen and whilst there is even more news, embargoed as it is, life has taken on a different meaning and a different purpose.  Finally the veils are slowly lifting but enough for things to begin to change - some things slowly and some things are more dramatic.  I hope to be able to say something soon on that front but until then this will have to suffice.  

Occasional Update

I like writing it gets stuff out of my head and onto (electronic) and real paper.  You can't believe the amount of writing I do in a day I carry around a notepad all the time and I need to write things down to get them out of the recycle bin that is my head.  People find it funny that I dispose of knowledge - so at the end of a project I just defragment my brain and throw away any stuff I have cluttering up my head and go get on with the next thing.  It's a bit like that bit in the Matrix where Neo gets fighting programmes loaded into his brain - "I know Kung Fu" say Neo in only the way Keanu Reeves can utter without one wasted bit of breath.  So it is with me.  I need to learn something to do the next job, let's say it is customer research (polls) then I will very quickly research this and will have a very good handle on it.  If I need to remember my languages, French, Italian and bit of German perhaps, I will just need to immerse myself for a day or two and can refresh my brain on it.  I know that in reality these things are still inside your head but it is the way that I work.

Someone asked me about something I did 10 years back - I said that I don't remember the detail but I'd be able to talk knowledgeably about it by the next morning - all I need do is read it up and it should all come flooding back.

So why tell you this?  I'm not sure really other than I had a pre-interview conversation and I realised just how much experience I have and how "valuable" I am to a business - it was striking once I started to recall all the things I can do - it was also startling that I have such a wide and varied experience across all industries - just luck or something I have unconsciously striven to do?  I'm also lucky to have grown up with technology from the earliest days of microprocessors, through early home computing right up to today.  

So if they like my CV then hopefully I might get an opportunity to go work with this company who are well respected - I kind of hope so as the knowledge and experience I have gives me a really useful toolkit to go and take to a customer.

So that's one good thing, perhaps something may come of that.  On the other front well news is still embargoed - not for too much longer I hope.  

I'm feeling quite good but as always (given that you don't know what is going on) with these things there are doubts and difficulties and ups and downs.  My friend is coming over today and we will go out to lunch and have a chat as he too is feeling up and then down.  It is pretty strange how we are both very similar - in fact there is only a very slight difference in our personality types I am INTJ and he is INFJ and both are sought after in our line of business.  He and I both had Cancer at the same time and we've been pretty close since then and built the business together and lived and breathed that.  At the moment we both find ourselves frustrated that the "market" doesn't see our full potential, we are both senior people, with stacks of business knowledge but our ex-colleagues still see us as how we used to be 15 years ago.  It's also that the market has Agents who don't actually match people up to jobs (I know that's what they say they do).  They use key word searches and yo almost have to do an SEO exercise on your CV to get it past the gatekeepers (computer) and past a bunch of sales kids to the customer.  It is money for old rope really and it competes with Estate Agents and Solicitors as the lowest form of life in my book.  

Anyway - we will be very supportive and be able to tell each other our stories today and at least we will feel OK once we've done that :-)  A minor purge of the soul.  It is though mind numbingly annoying that we can't seem to get anywhere and yet have so much to give.  The other problem is that we are also a lot different to your average exec and that may also be difficult for people to come to terms with.

So all is OK, I'm OK with the world at the moment.  Massive changes going on but coping OK and getting on day to day - doing lots of chores around the house and finally getting around to fixing stuff that I should have fixed years ago :-)  At least I am out of my major malaise and back on a road to recovery.  I have tests at the GPs on Friday - a Spirography (not Spirograph) test to check out my lung function (especially as an ex-smoker) and we will see how that goes.  Next week the dentist which I hope, now I hardly have any carbs will require no work.  A Bank Holiday weekend coming up - plenty of things to do and hope to keep busy.

Cancer Robbed Me!

I've been recording loads of my old music and listening to it - stuff from the late 1970s and the 80s - you know when we had so much great music around.  

I was listening to a track just a moment ago and it struck me how much I've been looking back to those days - carefree and exciting, days of my youth, free and just enjoying everything - or is that just how I remember it?

I then thought back on the last 7 years and thought - when in the last 7 years did I spend time enjoying myself, relaxing, enjoying life and being free and finding things exciting?  Well i don't recall my life being like that at all these past 7 years.  I feel that a huge lump of my life was ripped up and thrown away and everything went "on hold" and now I feel very bitter about that and another reason that I'm not overly using the blog is that resentment that anger that frustration and just hatred is all boiling up and much has been released (I'm glad to say) but I just felt maybe I ought to put this on the blog today.

7 years....  Makes you angry and want to do something about it and that's what is happening.  

I am nostalgically looking back at the 70s and 80s and realising I can't go there and the music I listen to isn't actually making me feel uplifted it's rubbing my nose in it - and yet I'm drawn back to the soundtrack of my life.  All the music seems to do is pull at my emotions good and bad and I've got to snap out of that and into the present.  I've had enough of my time stolen from me and I've got to get up, move on and start to rebuild my life that was torn down and left in rubble on the floor.  I have to accept that when I rebuild it, it won't look the same or work the same as it did 8 years ago before all this kicked off.  I hope that Mark II version of me is better, happier and can walk away and leave the last 7 years behind me and get on with my life, cancer and it's pernicious claws have had their hold of me far too long, life is yelling at me to come and get it and I have a foot in each camp unable to let one go and not quite in reach to grasp the new.

Well there we are - part of what's going on inside this crazy orb I call my head :-)