The Zen Master

Sometimes it takes shitty things to remind you of how far you've come

When I got home from work yesterday afternoon, I only wanted to take my son to the front verandah, chuck him in his new swing, sit in my chair while I swing him and decompress.

My crew were travelling home from a 2.5-week stint working in Victoria. Earlier in the day, I’d had dramas booking them a place to stay for the night. Because they were coming up the coast, most places had limited availability due to the school holidays.

After a bunch of stress and far too much time, I finally had it sorted. So I was looking forward to having our sit ’n’ swing. In recent times it’s become the highlight of both of our days.

I sit there pushing the front of the swing, asking him complex questions about his day. He sits there smiling, drooling and laughing. It’s fucking fantastic. As I was putting him in the swing yesterday, my phone rang. A guy from work said that the motel I had booked had got their numbers wrong, and I needed to find an extra room for one of the guys somewhere.

As annoying as that was, I got it sorted pretty quickly and got back to the swing. I was trying to rush through it because I had a stressful day and wanted to catch up with the big fella. So when I was done paying for the accommodation on my work credit card, I threw my wallet back in the glove box, closed the car door, and we got to swingin’. Fortunately, I only park metres away from the swing, so it wasn’t long until we were… in the swing of things.

We carried on with our afternoon and into the evening. Got to bed nice and early, and I woke up feeling good. Oddly, all the metrics on my watch suggested I should feel like shit, but I didn’t!? This adds weight to the points I made the other day in 50 Weeks of Sobriety about the risks of becoming obsessed with metrics.

I chipped away at my morning routine until I was finally ready to leave for work. When I walked out the front to the car, I noticed that the small screen between my speedometer and RPM gauge was illuminated. When I took a closer look, the screen was showing that the front passenger door was not closed properly. I thought to myself, “oh fuck, I was in too much of a rush to get swingin’ yesty arvo, and now I’m gunna have a flat fuckin’ battery!”

I pressed unlock on my car key, assuming I’d locked it yesterday, but the door did that thing where it still locks even though it’s slightly ajar. I walked over to the door, opened it, and closed it so I could take off to work without the car carrying on about the door being open. My work car has a handbrake alarm where if the car is running and you take open the door while the handbrake is released, it squeals and carries on.

When I hopped in the driver’s seat, I got halfway down the street before realising that my passenger seat was way messier than I left it. Then I noticed my sunglass carrier had been opened. I pulled over and checked my glove box… wallet was gone…

I started to take stock. Literally, everything was still in the car, $300 headphones, $100 sunglasses, a light bar that I haven’t been able to get mounted yet worth $500, and my strictly controlled and highly desired daily medication. It was all still there. My work car is sign written. I have a Chinese takeaway container full of machinery keys in the exact same glove box the wallet was taken from. I had another set of keys that unlocks the entire fucking depot at work. All of which were left untouched! Bloody lucky they weren’t clever enough to put two and two together because otherwise, they could’ve come to work and driven a machine down the highway or ransacked the entire building.

All they took was my wallet and some coins. In this flash modern world we live in, I use PayPass all the time. I rarely use my wallet. It had next to nothing in it. One photo, 3x bank cards, my licence and a Medicare card. I wish the cheeky bastard hung around long enough to realise there was nothing valuable to him in my wallet and just left it there.

I checked my bank account, nothing had been spent. I moved all (haha, feels funny saying all, “fuck all” is more appropriate) the money across to a different account just to be safe.

I got to work by 6 am, and by 6:30 am, I had already cancelled and reissued my three bank cards and Medicare card. At 9 am, I was at Services NSW sorting out my licence.

I was pleasantly surprised by how easy and painless the entire process had been. Sure, it will be annoying to use the other EFTPOS card for a bit and transfer money, but ultimately, given that my car had been “broken into”, I reckon I got off pretty lucky!

So, why the fuck am I telling this story?

The good mood I woke up in didn’t waver through all of this.

I went to a mini-workshop the other day put on by the local council about raising children and the circle of security. In it, they talked about our “shark music”. It refers to that feeling you get in your gut when something really fucking pisses you off (definitely paraphrasing there). It’s like you can feel that music from Jaws building up inside of you. I thought it was a perfect metaphor, and it made perfect sense to me straight away.

If this happened to me a year ago, my shark music would’ve been loud, bassy and playing in fast-forward. I would have been absolutely fucking ropeable. But this morning, it was just non-existent. I couldn’t have been angry if I tried. I knew everything would be ok. I knew I could protect money. I knew I had escaped this unfortunate circumstance pretty well unscathed, yet I still surprised myself.

I get so irritable at the slightest inconvenience. I fucking despise the process and inconvenience of cancelling and reissuing cards and the like. I find it so overwhelming and stressful. Once I step into the spiral of overwhelm, I don’t function as well. I’m impatient and distractable. I’m a fucking gun at throwing my hands in the air, declaring this shit is all too fucking hard and giving up before I’ve even really tried.

But today, it just didn’t happen. Wasn’t even close. I was even expecting it. Like I was waiting for the rage bus to turn up, it just didn’t.

As I mentioned earlier in the week, I’ve been struggling lately. Not depressed. Just struggling. Just feeling like I don’t have the physical energy or mental bandwidth to do what I expect of myself (which, admittedly, at times, is too much).

So it was really fuckin nice today to feel this overwhelming sense of calm. It was so out of character for me, but I have been working hard on it. Weirdly, I needed something like this to happen. Sometimes I feel like all the work I am doing is for nothing. Sometimes the progress is too incremental to be noticed, and it takes something like this to happen to force yourself to reflect on how far you have come.

I even felt empathetic to the poor person who is out in the middle of the night pinching a few bucks out of people’s cars. They’re obviously not hardened criminals. Otherwise, they would have ransacked the whole car and taken anything of any value.

Times are tough at the moment. I’m sure this person wishes they didn’t have to be doing what they are doing. Someone sneaking around in the middle of the night pinching cash out of cars is probably not doing well. Personally, I think it’s just sad all around, and I wish people didn’t need to live like this. I’m sure they wish they didn’t need to take from other people to have the things they want. Sure, they’re going the wrong way about getting those things, but everyone has a story, and every action is driven by something deeper.

I hope that someday that person is in a position where they no longer feel the need to do what they are doing and maybe even help to prevent others from making those same mistakes. Hopefully, maybe, one day… probably not, though.

Am I now a Zen master? You better fuckin’ believe it. I’m kidding. I’ll be blowing up irrationally over some irrelevant bullshit again in no time. But progress is progress and it’s important for people like me who grade ourselves so harshly to stop and recognise it.

The truth is, I’ll never truly get there, not through any fault of my own or lack of trying. But because there is no “there”. The moment you think you have arrived is the moment you become complacent. It’s the moment you stop striving to be better. It’s the moment you stop improving.

For me, it’s like walking there the wrong way on an eternal escalator. The moment I stop pushing forward is the exact moment I start regressing. There is no neutral or middle ground. If ya ain’t goin’ forwards, ya goin’ backwards.

Happy new wallet ya little wanker.

Cheers Wankers.

X.

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Bogues Tonnes Up

Each week I will chuck a bit about my journey to my first 100k run at the Sri Chinmoy Canberra Trail 100k for anyone who gives a shit.

I’m running The Canberra Marathon in 1.5 weeks, where I will most likely use it as a Zone 2 training run and pace my mate to his first-ever marathon finish. It’s perfect, it means there is no pressure on me to run fast, and I can use my mate’s desire just to finish in whatever time it takes as a perfect excuse to not pressure myself into targeting a certain time.

I am running the 100k for a few reasons. Mostly because I always wanted to. Mostly though, I want to raise as much money as I can for Beyond Blue. An amazing charity that does brilliant work in the mental health space.

If you want to help out and help keep me accountable for this fucking ridiculous goal, CLICK HERE to make a 100% tax-deductible donation.

Every cent counts, and you’ll be comfortable knowing it’s going to a reputable organisation who do amazing work.

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