Usually I hide when it is my birthday and don’t tell anyone. Last year I hid under the big tree in our friends garden in a little village in Poland.
I am motivated to write this because the journey from that tree to my birthday this year has been important. (Well important for me anyway).
The turning points are best described in trips.
The trip to Poland to visit our dear friends enabled me to finally start to reconnect with myself and the deep amazing awe when I met #supercoolwife in Kraków in Febuary 2005.
Being there again with her and #babybernie combined with my head being a long way away from my seemingly permanent wanting to kill myself since 2011 gave me a glimpse of joy. This time I had the mental strength to push the door back and let the joy start to flood back in.
As I walked around our beloved Kraków it occurred to me how numb I had become as depression had set in over the last five years. My relationship with time (not time keeping – that is a no the ri) was shot – We had been married nearly nine years and #babybernie was already three! Where had everything gone?
The next time I woke up was in Lisbon in a place called Lost Lisbon, there were strange people with long hair and stickers on their computers who spoke in Italian and French accents.
It turned out I was at the European coworking conference and in the copass house. The copass house was like a party without the hangover. We ate, we coworked, we sailed, we coworked, we surfed and coworked. Then in between we went to the coworking conference.
We hailed a plane on the streets of Lisbon and shot back to London to prepare for the OuiShare Sunmit we were hosting at 90 Mainyard.
Elena and I had mumbled something about the OuiShare community running the next summit in London and suddenly everyone showed up!! They’d previously shown up in Rome, Brussels and Berlin. This was the final lesson I needed in “less is more” I thought I was running the Olympics, luckily Elena kept it all simple and Tania and Mario organised amazing food from local farms. The vibe of the OuiShare and Copass crew in 90Mainyard for a few days was the my personal confirmation this was the path to make our dent in the Universe, and I was only just getting warm.
Hours after kissing everyone from OuiShare goodbye in London #babybernie, #supercoolwife and I were heading towards Buenos Aries for Christmas. There is loads to write on this! Just not in this post, the OuiShare / Copass world connected again in BA when the Sharing Bros and Belen and Marsha all met for lunch – we recorded a podcast while we were together.
I was even more reluctant to leave the sun of Argentina this time. Sitting on balconies to meditate in the sun every morning and accidentally quitting sugar and caffeine propelled my head and heart forward in giant leaps.
When I arrived back I listened again to James and Claudia interview Dave Aspery about the Bulletproof Diet, I had heard it at the beginning of December and the part where Aspery talks about allergies, food and always being sick really struck a chord.
I had quit coffee and already had felt significantly better also in Argentina “real fresh food” is much more readily available so my diet had been great.
I brought some Bulletproof coffee beans and coconut oil and was off suddenly eight months later I had not been sick for ages and woke up alive everyday. Even when things went REALLY wrong I was able to deal with it. Sure I still have down days but I am able to accept and process them, life is a constant rather than extreme highs and lows. There are people who think I am a fussy, pedantic, food snob head case and I am. But that is only because I have been dumb enough to start finding out how food labels really work and what chickens are fed to be such a great deal in the supermarket.
I am much happier with you thinking I am a pedantic twat than I am being depressed because of what I eat.
Talking of what I eat.
2015 flew by and suddenly it was July and OuiShare summit time again. The community headed for the Rural Hub in the hills of the Amalfi Coastline. #Babybernie and I flew to Naples and then got the train down to Salerno. After the summit we’d go to Rome to see Stefano and then shoot across to Spain to meet #supercoolwife and Tío Diego in Vigo.
Traveling with #babybernie like this was life changing, being on the Rural Hub farm / hacker space with amazing food everyday, no TV, lots of walking, sun and eating not to forget ice cream to die for!
I was not exactly sure why I was going to the summit. My gut told me I needed to go. Just before the summit I had been drinking caffeine for a week “by mistake” and It had really fucked me up, my anxiety level went through the roof and my wit, charm and creative ability had left the building.
Being in the sun and having action taking bar camps about collaboration, future cities, Bit Coin, Block Chain, POC21cc and the OuiShare global budget being decided in a transparent forum by the community was mind blowing.
Everything shifted again for me, I felt like I’d woken up from a shit dream and suddenly had this cool family, friends and purpose in my life – it was like being in my very own episode of Vanilla Sky.
Or maybe I had just grown some balls and stopped whimpering inside thinking the world owed me.
When we got to Vigo I had to leave a project I was on, I just was not working for it – this was a kick in the head. I knew it, I had become blocked, anxious and everything else that stops a team moving forward.
Last year I would have headed for NetFlix and binged for days until I thought it was ok to come out. this time I headed for Udemy and binged, took notes and made the connections between what I can do, right where I am with what I gave.
Everything came into focus in a flash of light. If I was religious I would be able to make convincing reports of apparitions and heaven being present in my room.
Then I looked back at the last few years, even at my lowest points I never stopped gobbling up books, blogs, podcasts and online courses.
I never stopped learning and then passing this information onto others somehow. The effect of doing a little bit everyday had got me this far.
How about if I set out to really purposefully do a little bit everyday on a few things?
That is what is happening here as you read thi. From the 30th August 2015 – 30th August 2016 I will be blogging everyday – how can you help? Just read it and leave a comment below any blog you read – I am looking for interactions much more than I am looking for likes and shares 🙂
