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good morning dear blog reader,
first things first, how’s sydney?
he’s doing great thanks, and settling into his new environment, and amazingly to watch, is causing chloe’s health to improve daily.
most noticeably in her energy levels.
pre op she would be very tired by the end of the day, but post op is now staying up and awake much later in the evenings, and is looking fantastic, with lots of positive markers, which is brilliant to see.
she is currently staying with me and tan, so we can look after her, and we are getting lots of family time, with evenings consisting of all of us in chloe’s room watching rom coms, and other candy floss screen entertainment, as we live through our ‘recovery era’ and she says thanks for all your well wishes you have been sending, i have been reading them all to her.
and whilst one evening we watched comedian steve martin’s movie ‘father of the bride’, we were reminded of how steve, in real life, learned to play the banjo.
random but true.
so, the story goes like this.
steve wants to play the banjo.
he tries.
he sucks.
he can’t tell a c-cord from a g-cord, and he apparently has no musical talent.
frustrated, he considers giving up.
then he reframes it.
“today, i suck, tomorrow, i’ll probably suck, but if i play the banjo for 40 years….. i don’t think it’s possible for someone to suck at banjo if they play for 40 years”.
less than ten years later, he could not only play the banjo well, he won a grammy.
what the heck, a grammy??
so what do we learn from steve?
nobody is good at the start.
nobody is bad after 10,000 attempts.
you just need to try.
and try.
and keep on trying.
and if you really want it, you’ll get it.
what would you like to do, but currently suck at?
golf?
cooking?
guitar?
writing?
computer programming?
are you brave enough to try?
if it’s cooking, try cooking one dish, and keep trying until you perfect it.
get the seasoning right.
don’t overcook it.
perfect it.
then you can try another dish.
and another.
you get the idea.
be brave, be more steve.
as well as watching rom coms, i ran my longest run so far on my training programme, 25k, which is a long way, but i dug deep, and managed to grind it out, and parkies didn’t stop me, which was encouraging.
however yesterday it nearly did stop me.
i had booked my 24th talk of the year for a company, who are going to be taking a bike for project 1 million 2.0, and wanted to tell their team the bigmoose backstory.
so we arranged a teams call online, and i entered the room, on time, ready with my slide deck, rehearsed and ready for the hour ahead.
we made introductions while we waited for any latecomers, and whilst not my favourite thing to do, i made small talk, as there was an eery silence which enveloped us which i felt an awkward need to fill.
the host communicated that we should start, and i asked if i could share my screen, so everyone could see my slides.
“just press the share button” she instructed me.
“great” i replied.
my nerves before any talk still impact me, and parkies exacerbates things to the extent that my right hand was shaking quite dramatically, which i could not control, it really is a strange condition.
a pop up on my screen informed me that to share my screen i had to go to settings, allow google chrome to share the screen, then restart chrome, which meant leaving my audience alone in the room, while i carried out these actions, with my hands now tapping like a woodpeckers beak.
the stress increased, as i realised the audience were not even aware i had parkinsons, and just saw a geezer struggling with tech, which really wasn’t the problem.
my tapping got worse, and i tried to navigate around my macbook’s trackpad,
i inadvertently closed a window.
f***
and another window.
woody the woodpecker was going crazy.
i tried really hard to control the shake, but had literally zero control.
“sorry about this everyone” i tried to calmly say, as i tried to steady my right hand with the left.
i was losing the fight.
badly.
i then heard katie, one of chloe’s friends arrive to visit her,
i rushed to my office door, looked down the bright white spiral staircase and in a very calm controlled voice said loudly but not shouting “katie, i need your help, can you come upstairs now please”
my tone and volume alerted her to the urgency.
as she climbed the stairs, i explained my predicament, and she became my non shaking hands, navigating through the settings change, and re-entering the room of patiently waiting viewers.
i thanked her, and apologised for the delay to the room, starting my talk giving trigger warnings and explaining about my parkinsons diagnosis five years ago, but not telling them how without katies help i was very close to giving up, pulling the plug, quitting, folding up the tents, bailing, throwing in the towel.
but, this wasn’t that time.
(prophetic pic from podcast i did this week, details to follow)
it was close, but woody didn’t win, and i managed to get through the slideshow, and at the end of this 24th talk, concluded it was probably my worst.
but after i went downstairs to thank katie, we debriefed, and concluded that for future online talks i should arrange to meet the host ten minutes early to check i can share my screen, and have wiggle room should any problems arise.
life with parkinsons is a challenge, every second of every day, but yesterday was probably a metaphor, in so far as i must never quit, and if i struggle, just ask for help, there’s always someone who’ll help, you just have to be brave enough to ask, and that’s the essence of bigmoose, if you or anyone you know needs help, be brave, reach out, we can help.
just click the link below.
until next week, what do you suck at, that you’re gonna get better at?
let me know.
blue skies,
jeff
p.s. i spoke to my one parkies mate ian this week, and he told me how he’d been to germany with a load of his mates, and they went axe throwing. unfortunately in all the practise throws he missed the board, which everybody completely understood, but when the competition ensued, he hit the board, time after time, and at the end of the competition when all the scores were added up, it turns out he’d won, which nobody understood, but all loved, and when he told me this story, i couldn’t stop imagining watching his mates watching their pal with parkinsons throwing axes like a viking superhero, which to me he is.
