My outdoor living room – Page 15 – My Outdoor Living Room

I will start this post by wishing you, your family and your friends and pets a very Happy New Year. However last year treated you, I hope you get what you need from 2021, and I am sending you positive, warm wishes.

I haven’t written a blog for what seems like a long time (“Thank %*@#” goes the cry). It’s not because I haven’t had anything to say – I generally always have something to say, it’s usually a choice between whether it needs to be said or if I’ll say it in the right way. Now obviously the elephant in the room in this difficult second paragraph is the C-word. Not the religious festival we just saw fly by in the blink of an eye, or the word mostly used on my birthday cards, no, of course I am referring to the C-word of the global pandemic. I’m not going to write about what I think of the politicians, or any conspiracy theories, or rant about how bad it really has affected me, as I’m sure it has affected everyone in different ways. I will address though that despite a few bumps along the way that weren’t directly related to COVID-19 and lockdown, more bi-products, I have actually enjoyed it. I’ve said before that I am a largely solitary person, and the lockdown didn’t massively change my life, and I’ve tried to work towards self-improvement throughout and seek out the positives. On New Year’s Eve, I wrote a long list of all the great things that came out of lockdown, so I have a lot to be thankful for. In fact, my introspection and getting-on-with-it mentality is the main reason my blog posts have dropped off and my social media presence has been zilch since the summer – I have just been happy doing my own thing. I look at the news every day, but I don’t get down about it as to me, it is what it is and in my trying-to-be-a-Buddhist eyes, anger and worry will do nothing. So being quite black-and-white over the matter, and just making sure I stay on the right side of the law have been just that – no fighting against things that I cannot change.

On my list of New Year’s intentions, I overwhelmingly decided to look at picking up the pieces around me of things that I used to do that had fallen by the wayside, so began writing a new blog at the weekend. Here in the UK on Monday evening, we went into another national lockdown. This altered my post considerably. I had been writing with the subject of returning to ‘normal’ (whatever that may be) and my perhaps cynical views on that. Overnight I had an enforced change of heart – I can’t write about returning to normal when people are now being told not to go out. Even I am not that insensitive (he hopes). With that thought and a combination of things that happened the following day and the rest of my New Year’s intentions, and a blissfully sunny day, my subject matter changed, and I’m glad it did.

I have many goals, intentions, ambitions, whatever you want to call them, for this year. Some of them thrill me, some of them terrify me but they do one thing – they give me a sense of purpose, hope and positivity. It got me thinking – there has never been a better time. I think it is the same for all of us. We can all think about what we would like to do with our lives, where we would like to be, even whom we would like to be. This strange situation is going to play out in its own way. It doesn’t care about you or I, and we have two great tools at our disposal: effort and attitude. I’m not saying that if you feel lonely and depressed, that it is your fault. What I’m saying is setting targets no matter what they are or how big or small they are, they can make a huge difference. There has never been a better time to look inside yourself. Never been a better time to learn something about yourself, history, the world, even someone you’ve never met. The journey could be incredible. Don’t come out of this historic pandemic and live to 100 years old just to tell your grandchildren that all you did was binge-watch stuff on some sort of streaming service (avoiding free advertising space there), and made silly videos of yourself miming to ‘Holiday’ by Madonna on another well known (and morally questionable) social media platform. You are destined for greater things!

In the first lockdown, I busied myself with lots of small projects, more for my own sanity and a break from work really. That lost its momentum during the summer and I lost my purpose somewhat. I spent most of my time outdoors, reflecting, thinking, fighting wave after wave of changes that hit me from all angles. My original hope was that I would continue to post, and continue to support and inspire others, whereas all I did was end up trying to support myself and disappearing off the radar. I half expected to read my own obituary somewhere (transient thought; as an exercise, if you’re up for it, write your own obituary. Write how you would like to be remembered and thought of at the end of your life. A bit morbid perhaps, but I had to do it for something two years ago and it can be very humbling.)

As covered earlier, but humbly reiterated, Happy New Year to you, and I genuinely send you my best wishes. You won’t be reading my obituary any time soon, I am still here and I intend to be a bit more useful.

Hau’oli makahiki hou (try saying that without smiling).

For me, as for pretty much everyone, this summer has not been normal. The strangest things I found were things like the complete inability to just jump in the car, and go and visit somewhere. Having that spark of imagination, or memory and saying, “Let’s go there”, as, in my area anyway, most places had booking systems. Furthermore, when it was possible to go somewhere, I was finding them more packed to the rafters with other tourists than normal, so things were pretty strange. I did get a good mountain walking day in over south Wales on midweek day, but it had to be an early start, which I have never minded.

On my previous post, I mentioned losing momentum over the summer, and lacked motivation. My way of dealing with this was to take a week off running. After returning to it, a couple of weeks later, I realised I’d been running on 6 consecutive days. Competitive drive activated. I thought, “Why not go 50 days running every single day?”, so that’s what I did. One of these runs was a few miles along the Worcestershire Way long distance footpath, which runs for 30 miles north to south, or vice versa of course. I have completed an organised ultra marathon along most of the path on two occasions. The light bulb of adventure pinged on and I decided to attempt to run the whole thing. A couple of weeks later, I decided to run it in both directions, in one go. 60 odd miles (or 100km, as that sounds more impressive).

I have lived in Worcestershire for my entire life, except for four agonising months when I lived in Warwickshire. The shame. In all those years, it’s amazing how little of the county I have seen and how little I know, although I probably know more than some. During the training for my solo ultra marathon, I covered miles and miles that I’ve never seen, passed through towns, villages, orchards, woodland and valleys completely new to my eyes and feet. One hidden gem was a valley that was home to a self-sufficient community, living in shepherd huts and cabins. Almost like a hidden oasis. There were steep climbs that were tackled practically on my hands and knees. While it made me wonder at my home county, it made me curious about firstly the other hundreds of places like it also in my county still to visit, as well as neighbouring counties and the rest of the country while I was as it. It’s things like that that make you realise how short our time is, and how busy we are. How many Saturdays to see all of Worcestershire? Don’t even get me started on all the books I need to read (or should read), films I need to see or albums I need to listen to. Next time someone says, “Life is short” – agree with them, cos it bloody is!

I won’t bore you with a blow-by-blow account of the run, but in a nutshell, I ran out of gas/daylight at 41 miles. Not the hallowed 60 that I had dreamt of. There was a pub at 41 miles that was too good to resist. It happened to be right at the bottom of a steep bloody hill too, so perfectly placed. I’m very pleased I did it, and it was just what I needed for motivation.

As I write, I am planning the next one, in a week’s time. Another local long distance footpath, more to discover. This desire to complete things in their entirety has been with me for years. When I was younger, I cycled a little bit of the A38 road through my home town, and wondered what it would be like to cycle the whole thing. I got home and did the research for an hour or so (pre-internet days), until I was talked out of it by my parents, with their many what if questions and parental concerns. Seven years later, they watched as I cycled the length of the UK. I’d regularly run a section of my local canal, and in 2011, I ran the whole 32 miles of it. That mentality still exists. I don’t know if I’d call it adventure, stubbornness, stupidity or what, but you can bet your life, if there’s a trail, famed road or river, someone, somewhere will have at least thought about traveling it in its entirety in one fashion or another. That quizzical curiosity of what lies past the end of your street. What is beyond that hill? Then what? Then what again. And again. In old days, people didn’t have the need to do it unless it was for trade, and besides, they were probably terrified of falling off the edge of the world. Toppling off the edge of the world is fine with me.