Reflections On Turning 51

It’s been a while since my last blog post here, but hopefully you would have seen my previous posts, videos and interactions in Ecency Waves.

The reason for my absence in this space has been because I was working at an event called the Royal Adelaide Show.

I have a video about it on this page if you scroll down far enough or pop over to 3Speak here:September Update.

My birthday is today, which means that I can sit back and relax while indulging in a little cake.

A chocolate mud cake with cream and strawberries from Woolworths to be precise. It’s a multi billion dollar supermarket chain.

Chocolate Mud Cake

I’m also playing Fallout 76 a lot too. I got my character to level 72. There players I have met at well over 400!

I even bought some new cheap headphones for the game and I have had the rare conversation with players.
They are pretty cool for the most part; you will get the occasional griefer but that’s to be expected.

A griefer is someone who creates grief in the game.

On Turning 51

For the most part, I am OK with turning 51. The fear of turning 50 has long gone and this sits like just another year, edging ever closer to retirement.

I had started a post a few weeks ago, before I got busy, highlighting a lot of the skills that I had learned in the last few months and I am sure a lot of it is in the drafts, but I can’t find them.

It’s OK, I can reconstruct a lot from memory, based on photos stored on my phone. A lot of my thoughts at the time will obviously be lost, but they would have been gripes about how my employers were treating me.

That said, I have every right to air my grievances on my own blog but I digress.

Reflections On Life

The last few months at have taught me a few things about myself.

In a nutshell, nothing is really set in stone. Friendships and relationships are fragile and people can just disappear without a trace at a moment’s notice. Especially online friendships and relationships.

When I say nothing is set in stone, I mean that sometimes we need to let go of who we thout we were in order to become someone new. We think we need objects or ideas or methods to transform ourselves to be better people, but in reality we need to start letting go of things, ideas and ideologies that have been holding us back.

For example, you don’t need to seek self confidence, you need to remove self doubt and so on for all of the negative aspects of our thinking processes and emotions.

A year ago I started working in the hospitality sector. It’s not a field I particularly enjoy, but it’s been part of my survival and I haven’t been able to pivot to something else just yet. The income is sporadic, so I have had to adjust accordingly.

I’ve had to learn new skills and different techniques of doing things and challenge myself.

In doing so I have discovered a deep anxiety whenever I go to learn something new. Scraping the surface a little, I know this stems from childhood trauma, most likely caused by my father. Nothing is ever good enough, and every minor mistake when learning something new elicited a tirade of verbal abuse and put downs.

So, of course, whenever I feel out of my depth I start to have anxiety attacks. My teeth chatter and my fists clench and my thoughts turn tomeither quitting or leaving the situation (As a little aside, “quitter” is French for “to leave”.

It’s pronounced “keetuh”). The self doubt makes it to my mouth and out spouts phrases like “I can’t do that!”, or I start to complain.

There’s a psychological game app called Betwixt that has taught me personalised anxiety reduction techniques that I use in emergencies.

I had a shift where I was asked to take care of the canteen at Arnott’s. It’s a company that makes biscuits / cookies.

My job was to not only take care of the cash register during their lunch breaks, but also cook meals for people.

The idea of cooking for other people fills me with dread. I am not exactly sure why, but the anxiety started up.

I was also going to be on my own and had to remember a whole heap of things that needed to be done before I left.

Invoking a personal mental avatar that the app taught me to create, I was able to calm down and achieve most of the tasks asked of me. I stayed behind an extra 10 minutes to get the dishes done, but I had no idea where they went so I left them on the side to dry.

As an added bonus I met someone I knew from Highschool while I was on a break. This helped me a lot too.

Adelaide is a relatively small place when it comes to meeting people from your past.

I even had the privilege of meeting Patricia Tallman again after 16 years while at Oz ComicCon a few months ago.

Me and Pat Tallman 16 years ago
Yes, I know look like a potato here. I still can’t look at older photos of myself without cringing.

Pat Tallman and myself 16 years later along with another fan
I’d forgotten her name but I didn’t want to crop the photo out of respect.

You can see I look a lot healthier, 30kg lighter.

She reminded me of the same technique in regards to anxiety; to acknowledge it and let it go. It’s a bit more complicated than that, but that was it in a nutshell.

And just so I don’t forget I’ll add this here, she kept tapping my knee for emphasis while talking to me (we were sitting in chairs and there was two other women there) maybe a total of about 3 or 4 times.

Later as we left the room, she blew me a kiss which was not only sweet of her and unexpected, I realised that this was a woman I’d had a crush on as a teenager and it’s one of those moments that would have seemed impossible to my teenage mind.

In general and in closing, I am slowly challenging that internal self sabotaging, fear based voice and taking on new experiences while learning new skills.

Continuing to learn, reassess situations and motivations of others while upgrading myself every so often.

Life is what happens offline and social media is just a very poor imitation of it.

Thank you for reading.

Until next time, insist on being treated with dignity and respect.

Shaidon

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