SO I have been walking around all day thinking about what to blog about.
We are back from four weeks in Argentina and everything shifted for the better. Just before we went I was at the end of my emotional string, not in a bad way – more like “Post Post Traumatic Stress.” The end of 2014 was so much better than the beginning in my head – I just needed to get to Argentina and not kill anyone on the way there and I’d be done.
I had planned it like this:
- Lisbon Coworking Conference with Copass
- OuiShare London Summit #6
- Marathon Podcast session.
- Fly – away – Ctr Alt Del – reboot
Elena and I did the ‘on the ground planning’ – actually Elena did most of the ‘making it happen’ I hid in a cupboard at 90 Mainyard breathing into a paper bag most of the time. Elena would come and open the cupboard every so often and ask which activity we should do on which day, have I sent this email and do I know where the good coffee has gone.
Sometimes I’d have answers – often not.
In the end Stefano took zillions of photos that made us all look way cooler than we really are, we did not run out of food and did the whole thing a shoe string budget thanks to people and organisations like Grub Club, Food Assembly, Google and Echo collaborating and Traity and FreeAgent sponsoring us.
On top of this I squeezed in a marathon podcast session with my partner in crime on “Beyond the Business Card” podcast and then was forgetting what order to post them in.
No one sent me any hate mail and my Klout Score (not that I pay attention to it of course) jumped four points in a few days – so I feel I made it.
Then the next big thing was getting on the plane to Argentina.
Before that I went into hiding, all this meeting people, hugging people and collaboration and podcasting had drained me. It is certainly not a moan, I love this life but I need time on my own to regenerate and finding that time was near on fucking impossible with such a hip, cool and jet set life. I was wallowing in introverted-ness in the middle of last year, really I can only do so much, then I either fall asleep standing up or turn into an arsehole.
Please watch Susan Cain below to see what I mean (Subtitles in Spanish)
So when I got to Argentina I thought fuck it. I am not doing anything. Well I kind of planned to anyway but did not really believe I could, should or would.
So I sat and meditated twice a day for the first week and this was the best move of the whole trip, I calmed right down. It only took a week and one uncomfortable outburst at dinner and I was clear headed. I looked at the my bank account and what was coming in and then thought what am I really going to do here that can’t wait until January?
Before I came away I vowed to myself that if I only did one thing in Argentina it would be to sort out my engagingpeople.wpengine.com site and I did. You are on it now.
Other than that I realised that what I really needed to do was let go of as many things as I could and stop wishing things would be a slightly different way.
Also for the WHOLE year I had been saying ‘when we get to Argentina’ and I was turning it into some kind of Zion or second coming of Christ an ever eluding horizon that is the place of milk and honey – which it is not it is the place of great pizza and meat as well as my mother in law.
So in one final move of power I shifted my universe and joined the five super novas that are the great suns of Bernie and forced them into a cocktail blender and came out with….
Just stop and do nothing.
Go cold turkey and see what happens.
Nothing happened – I woke up with a clear head apart from on a few days the heat was really bad and I felt ill. Even then I was delighted to be feeling ill properly and not depressed, fatigued and angry.
One thing that did piss me off was this: I gave up coffee, suddenly I’d gone a few days without coffee and felt like I when had given up smoking, drugs and alcohol.
This is not quite the same as ousting those vices from your life but my head and body felt much better not being pumped with double espressos, indeed my anxiety level dropped, I would feel like I was meant to get anxious then and it would wash over in a second or two.
Now all this is new to me, this is probably the longest time in fifteen years that I have not done anything, of course I slept, lay in the sun, meditated and met people but I was relaxing and intend to carry on.
I have to run now, more about this tomorrow and my habit app. Thanks for reading!
Sent from my mobile device – excuse any typos!
