Ya Gotta Have Faith- The Rebuild Week 4
An ongoing lesson, 18 years in the making.
This one is a little long-winded, but I felt it was important for me to go through these stages of my life for my own benefit to really reflect on where I have been and where I am at and give me a sense of reference.
For those who have been here for a while, there may be some repetitive stuff in this first section, and I won't be offended if you skip it. In fact, I won’t be offended if you don’t read it at all. I had to write this one as a reminder to myself, hopefully someone else gains something from it.
Background
Eighteen years ago, I was in year ten at Lanyon High School. Like most kids, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, not in terms of my career anyway. It’s funny. When I think back on those times, I seem to remember a lot of questions about what I wanted to do with my life, and I always felt like they were coming from a career-orientated viewpoint. It was never specified, but you just knew that if you answered, “I want to travel the world, build some hospitals and schools in third world countries and run a couple of ultra marathons,” it would be met with a disgruntled “that is not what I meant!”
I did know, though, that I craved what I thought was a “normal” life. I’d get some qualifications. Get a good job. Enjoy my youth, maybe travel a little, and meet a girl. She’d be hot, too. We’d enjoy a few years having fun together, then settle down. Buy a house, a couple of kids and a fuckin’ dog. Some real white picket fence shit.
I went to Lake Tuggeranong College for years eleven and twelve (in Canberra, high school finishes at year ten, and you go to a separate school for years 11 and 12), where I signed up for all tertiary classes. I still had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. But I knew doing tertiary courses meant university could be an option.
The autonomy of college didn’t suit me very well. As someone with undiagnosed ADHD, the responsibility of studying on my own was a recipe for disaster. By the end of year 11, I passed all my classes, doing no study whatsoever. My grades were average, but I was doing enough to pass. A family friend knew an electrician who said they would be looking for an apprentice at the end of the following year. I applied for the job, had an interview, and got the job. So once I’d secured the apprenticeship, I dropped all of my classes to an accredited level except for maths and English, meaning university would no longer be an option. My grades and commitment to study were most likely to prevent that anyway. With school much more accessible and my future employment secured, I decided to dedicate more energy to skateboarding and partying. Smart choice.
The apprenticeship didn’t work out. I was working with an arsehole tradesman who expected too much from me. I was 17, and even though I’d had jobs since I was 13, I’d never worked a “real job” before. I didn’t realise this at the time, but what he was doing was a cut-and-dry case of workplace bullying. I was unhappy and decided to apply for a job with another company. Of course, the owner of that company knew my boss. Knowing this other arsehole didn’t like me, my boss told me that if I didn’t want to work for him, he didn’t want me either, and that was that.
I fucked around with some labouring work for another year or so after that while trying to find another apprenticeship, but another apprenticeship was harder to secure than I anticipated.
One weekend my parents were at the coast and caught up with my cousin for lunch. They talked about me, and my cousin, who was running a road crew then, said he would put me on. I scoffed at it at first, thinking I was above doing that kind of work, until Dad mentioned the type of money I could earn with all the overtime and living away. So within a month or so, I lived with my cousin in Mogo, NSW, travelling around the NSW countryside sealing roads. A long way from university or TAFE, but I was enjoying it.
Three years later, my cousin took a promotion within the company, which meant he would be moving his family interstate. I didn’t know many people in the area, but I had few options. So I moved in with a bloke I knew, sleeping on a mattress on the ground for six months. Eventually, I got lonely and homesick and organised to transfer back to the Canberra depot.
So I moved home. I was 22 years old, had a big red V8 HSV Clubsport and moved straight into a sharehouse with three other mates. I’d been partying a lot at the coast, but nothing like what I was about to do. When you throw four single 22-year-old blokes in one house, anything can happen, and they did. Until this point, I’d dabbled in drugs, but for the most part, I was just a drinker. Over the next nine months, I went from occasionally taking recreational drugs to, at times, taking drugs five days a week. I’d convinced myself it was OK because I only took them on weekends. But at weekends, I started to start on Thursday night. I’d get whatever sleep I could Thursday night and occasionally take something Friday morning to help me make it through the day. Friday to Sunday was on for young and old. Then Monday mornings, I’d need something to get me through the day again. It’s fucking embarrassing and shameful, but it’s the truth and a part of what makes me who I am today.
While in this sharehouse, I’d reconnected with a girl I’d dated while living on the coast. My lifestyle was conducive to laying in bed, being unable to sleep, feeling sorry for myself and being miserable. Although I lived in a house with my best mates, I felt lonely. I thought I was living it up, but on reflection, I was miserable. She’d moved to the Gold Coast alone and was experiencing similar emotions.
She moved back to Canberra briefly, and then we decided to be together and move to the Gold Coast. At the time, I thought we would be together forever. I was young, miserable, directionless and just existing. I probably bought into it a little more than I should have. I probably convinced myself it would be more than it eventually was because I wanted it to be. I just so badly wanted out of my situation that maybe I convinced myself this was a saviour.
We separated five years ago after seven years together. We both admitted the relationship probably lasted a couple of years longer than it should have. I hold no grudges and harbour no regrets. That relationship served a special purpose in my life; I like to think it did the same for her. It just is what it is.
So there I was, 29 years old. Single, now living in Wollongong. Again, I didn’t know many people. I had no assets or fundamental career objectives. By this stage, I viewed a career as something I did to supplement my lifestyle and nothing more. I was content to underachieve. My job was easy. I could go to work, do the hours, earn the money and live for the weekends.
Around this time, I was finally appropriately medicated for ADHD, which I had been diagnosed with a year earlier. Still, I had been fucking around with a dodgy psych putting me on experimental medications that didn’t seem to be effective. Once I was finally on the correct medication, everything changed. I decided that if I were going to be a roadworker, I’d be the best roadworker I could. After ten years in the industry, I was pretty good at it because I hate being shit at anything I do, and my curious nature means I need to know how everything works.
Four and a half years ago, I met my current partner. She was based in Canberra. I was in Wollongong with nothing holding me there. I was still paying rent and bills at the house I had with my ex, but I wasn’t welcome there. Fortunately, I was working away for three months near Canberra. I seem to have developed a trend where I meet people when I feel lost or directionless. So I spoke to my old boss and got a start at my old Canberra depot. I was 30 years old. I owned a single cab ute and enough shit to fit on the back of it, and that was it. I was debt free but had nothing.
Three years ago, after spending 15 months house/pet sitting, we bought our first home. Two and a half years ago, we decided to start a family. 18 Months ago, we found out we were going to be parents. This was a golden period for us. We settled into our house and jobs. We both earned a couple of promotions, and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was starting to become at least a fraction of what a grown-up was. But this was also when my inability to cope with stress and deal with my emotions made my drug and alcohol use get out of hand.
Fifteen months ago, we were given an opportunity to move back to the coast through my work, buy a second home and raise our son at the beach. Thirteen months ago, I had my list line of cocaine and drink of alcohol. Ten months we moved to the coast, and nine months ago, we met our baby boy for the first time.
STOP!
Read on from here.
Letting Go of Control
I’m someone who has never felt like I am enough. I Never feel a sense of accomplishment. Whenever I achieve something I set out to achieve, I feel relief more than anything. I know it comes from low self-esteem. I focus on the negatives because I don’t like myself. I compare myself to others without knowing their whole story. Maybe it comes from when I was a child feeling like I didn’t matter enough to others. Feeling like I, or what mattered to me, didn’t matter as much to others.
My partner will attest that things have been pretty fuckin’ hard since she started trying to fall pregnant. It’s been an emotional rollercoaster. The monthly reminder that you’ve fuckin’ failed, yet again. Me being me, I would instantly assume it meant there was something wrong with me. It was my fault that we weren’t getting pregnant. Even though it’s normal to take as long as we take, the emotional brain doesn’t rationalise like that.
At the time, I didn’t deal with my emotions adequately. I didn’t know how. All I’ve ever done to deal with my feelings is run, drink, and take drugs. I don’t mind admitting that, in hindsight, we definitely bit off more than we could chew with moving towns, having a baby, buying another house, starting a new job and whatever the fuck else all at once.
I was not in a good headspace. I wasn’t capable of thinking things through at the time. I could do anything. Maybe it’s an ADHD thing. We either do nothing or every single thing all at once.
I know it seems fucking crazy to base things on waking up with a feeling, but I woke up the other morning, and I just had this feeling of contentment. Like I’ve never had before. I felt like I could finally breathe. I felt like. It’s finally over. Like we’ve made it.
We’ve been to hell and back over the last little while, and there have been periods when we have had to throw our big boy/girl pants on and have some tough, grown-up conversations about what our family's future looks like. Some real “all cards on the table” type conversations.
It felt like almost all the stress of the last two and a half years was gone. Like when you go to bed in a thunderstorm and wake up to sunshine.
I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why? What happened? What was the catalyst to make me feel so different over such a short period?
I realise now that almost all of my long-term plans haven’t come to fruition. How I pictured my life as a 16-year-old looks nothing like what my life looks like now, which is a fucking good thing because there is no way I would want a 16-year-old controlling what I did and didn’t do now as a 34-year-old.
Learning to be malleable and fluid with plans has been life-changing for me. Letting go of needing to control absolutely everything that happens. Almost all of the most incredible things in my life have come through an opportunity I didn’t plan for. I think the same would apply to most people.
It’s fucking hard for someone like me to accept, but rarely do things go to plan, and we need to learn the ability to adjust on the run. I’m learning to have faith that no matter what happens, everything is going to be OK. And if it’s not OK, we’ll sort it out, and then, once again, everything will be OK.
Trying to control the future is stressful. I’ve spoken before about how 85% of the things we worry about never happen, and it would seem I’m still sitting here teaching myself that same lesson, but it’s so true.
In professional sports, you’ll often hear coaches or players saying, “We just need to focus on what we can control”, and it gives you the shits because it’s just another footy head giving the media a generic answer to fending off the media instead of giving us some of the juicy shit we’re after. But there is a reason sayings like this stand the test of time.
The only problem is, it’s much easier said than done. I’ve found for myself over the years that, theoretically, I understand so much of what psychology experts say. It all makes perfect sense. But I’ve always struggled to implement it into my life. I believe understanding why things are the way they are or how things work is half the battle regarding solutions, but I think I’ve been missing that you need to practice these skills.
Of course, we shouldn’t try to control things we can’t. That’s stupid. Of course, we only worry about things outside our control because if they were inside of our control, we would control them and then stop worrying about the fuckers. But having an understanding of this alone is not enough.
The challenge is finding a way of putting these things into practice and then practising them without compromise. I think it all comes down to trust and faith. Whether you believe in Jesus, The Spaghetti Monster, the universe or yourself, I think the most freeing thing you can do is have trust and faith that everything will work out.
For me, I choose to believe that the universe has got my back. I don’t even know if I genuinely think that or not. But I accept it because if I don’t, I have to worry about a lot of shit I can not control. It’s like a little mind trick I play on myself to help me release stress. It’s almost like handing those problems to someone else, so I don’t have to worry about it like the universe is my assistant. “Here, deal with this shit, would ya!?”
I’ve spent years trying to control the long-term outcomes of my life, and I genuinely believe that I would have missed so many opportunities right in front of me because I was too stressed about the future to be living in the present.
Maybe it’s because I’ve always been so anxious. I have always catastrophised. I always think worst case scenario. Perhaps that comes from missing out on some secure attachment as a kid. But I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.
I think through things like my sobriety, breathwork, exercise, and practising increased presence with my family; I’m learning to trust things more. I don’t do breathwork every morning because I enjoy it. I don’t run because I enjoy being out of breath and sweaty. I do it because I know that I am looking after myself by doing so. I understand that the benefits come later and in a more general, over-arching way.
These things help me to have blind faith in the universe and trust that it will have my back. Letting it do what it needs to do instead of nagging it with a million questions about what’s going on all the time, trusting it’ll come to me when it needs something.
I think this has been a revelation for me. I’ve finally learned that I don’t need to carry the weight of things I can’t control around with me. I’m far from an expert, and I think it’ll be something I need to practice continually rather than a lesson I learn only once. Still, I’m feeling good about refocusing my energy on things I can control and focusing more on how I react to something rather than wasting energy worrying about things.
EI’m excited for the next stage of our lives and whatever shit sandwiches and amazing opportunities this mother bitch of a universe throws at us.
Have a fuckin’ cracker, legends.
X.
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.
It’s been a quiet week of running. My son shared his first-ever cold with me, and it’s been lingering for a week and a half now. It’s on its way out but still won’t quite piss off.
On Friday, I had five injections in the base of my spine to relieve some inflammation and stress around my L5, and S1 vertebrae and disc caused by pars defects. Was a bloody weird feeling having needles poking around on my nerves, and I was bloody sore the next day, but I woke up a few days later feeling amazing. I’ve even been sleeping better. I remember the chiropractor I saw said something about freeing the nerves up will help send clearer messages to the brain, improve sleep, reduce stress, etc. I don't know about all that, but I feel heaps better and am excited to be running again! I’ve been for a couple of short runs, and I’m feeling great so far!
I’ve wanted to do a 100k for a while now, but I also want to raise as much money as possible for Beyond Blue. A fantastic 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 fantastic work.
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Great read mate. And worrying about things outside your control is life’s great energy waster