This is what someone at work told me this week: "how does it feel to come in a new job and handle the first 2 months like a boss?". So I laughed, then I sat down and told myself that I indeed have been doing a good job so far, and gave myself a little boss-like pat on the back. Learn how to take a compliment and appreciate it, there is nothing wrong with that!
Because we all fuck up stuff on a regular basis, right? I mean, this is what life is about partly, trying stuff, working out stuff, going down the wrong path and then turning around, fighting your way through things. Small stuff (work problems, ego bruises, little heartbreaks, plans that go wrong) and bigger stuff (loss, grief, sickness, proper heartbreak, betrayal, etc). I feel that I am doing a crappy job at this, but then I look around and I feel that we are all doing a good job at pretending we are doing just fine.
We aren't doing a really good job at talking about all this, in general. Daily life is just too busy, too much about looking happy on social media, too much about dealing with your own fears. Who cares about what the others are dealing with anyway, right? Compassion is underrated.
I was going somewhere with this, I promise. I was thinking about how sometimes the things that you are fighting with seem like this fucking gigantic mountain right in front of your face, but when you air them out with another person it helps reduce the mountain. Right? With aging gracefully, I also realise that most days, there is not much that a really close friend and a really good bottle of wine cannot cure. Or at least make more bearable.
I know, there is this red line with my last few posts, about the demons and the fear and what's behind the fear and the fights, the daily fights. I don't think I fight more, maybe I am just more aware of it. Maybe I am just dealing with it differently. Maybe I am airing it out more for everyone to read.
I stuck out this note on the wall above my desk, I can look at it right now. It says "What is on the other side of fear?". I try to ask myself that more often. Because most of the time I end up finding out that the answer is "not much", "nothing but you", "nothing that cannot be fixed".
This month I am teaching what is so far the biggest intructor course of my short diving career, and it is giving me some serious headaches. It's awesome and scary, stressful and rewarding. I have in my classroom the most random bunch of people you could possibly put together, which is one of the reasons why I love diving so much. Age varies from 18 to 48 (true), they come from Americas, Europe, Middle East, Australia, they have never worked a day in their life or had a different job for 20 years, and I am helping them become dive instructors. Pretty awesome, uh? We are almost through, my body had given me already for a few weeks some warning signs of stress, before hitting me up last week with the worst back pain I had in years in order to tell me to chill the fuck out. Funny how I was feeling I had got better at dealing with stress and then my body reminds me that not really. Too much at the same time, too many things happening at once, other stuff outside of work as well and suddenly boom, it's just too much.
So I had to take pills and to chill the fuck out and made it through the first week with being in constant pain and high on meds half of the time. Great role-model skills right there, when you have to pop in a Tramadol at the coffee break. Gave my staff some good laughs when I was high half the day.
New ink is going to happen as soon as I can be dry for a few days, which is probably another 10 days. Drawing stuff this week, I think I have it ready. Continuing the little journey of my life by inking it on me so I shall not forget.