I fully planned to start a cycling blog today but hey you cant always control where writing will take one.
I am slowly getting bored of that question so let me answer it. No! not now.
Since the start of the year people around me have been asking that question. At the end of last year I resigned from the non-profit organization that I started and I started this year with only one firm plan; focus on my cycling for the first five months. The first two months of the year were unexpected and did not go according to plan with my father suddenly falling ill and passing away. Then I found myself in March and I was playing catch up.
Getting showered and dressed after gym this afternoon I had one question in my mind, haven’t I achieved enough? I finished school, went to university, took part in university life, graduated with my degrees and some awards, have been living on my own for seven years, started a non-profit organization and successfully ran it for nine years. Perhaps that isn’t remarkable for someone without a severe disability but someone with one. . . Well, give me my due. Now I am an international para athlete. What more do you want? You want me to study again? Get a job? Start a new career?
Maybe it’s because I have always achieved that people are confused by my decision to slow down or maybe its because they don’t live in my body that they don’t feel what I feel. From the moment I awake up, even before I open my eyes, I am planning, analysing and thinking. My first task of the day: getting to the bathroom. In the last few years my back has deteriorated and such a simple task can now be an effort. I start sitting up, then do a few moves to warm up my back, then pull myself up using my desk, then walk holding on to anything I can to get to the bathroom and back. Sometimes by the time I get back to my room fifteen minutes have passed and we’ve just done the morning bathroom run or shall I call it the bathroom shuffle. Then I have noticed that half an hour of sitting up in bed really helps to get my body ready for the day.
So we are almost at the hour mark and we haven’t done anything yet. We are not dressed, have not had breakfast or even done my teeth yet! Years ago I started to forgo a solid breakfast for a liquid one for the sake of time. Would I like a yummy solid breakfast? Sometimes heck yes but we are probably already at around nine / nine-thirty and if I take another half an hour to forty-five minutes to get food in my mouth, might be eating breakfast just before lunch.
So now I am at my desk sipping my shake or smoothie and you probably say what will she do all day? Well, for the last hour I have been making mental notes, because physical ones take too long, of what I need to organize. Do I need to organize my next set of medication? From where? Is it paid for or do I need money to buy it? Do I need transport or a person to accompany me because people don’t always understand my speech. Or is it time yet to start strategizing around going to Tygerberg hospital for my next botox session. Have I got someone to take me to the shops this week yet? Am I training this week? How many lifts to training do I need? My maid is late. Is she still coming? Do I have food and drinks if she doesn’t? Shucks if she doesn’t, how will I pour the milk? I only have the two litre container left and I can’t pour it. Maybe I should have left some milk yesterday in the one litre container in case she doesn’t come. Am I bored? I haven’t had time to think of How to spell the word yet. My friend, Anet, pops up on my Skype screen and we say morning. It’s maybe my first human interaction of the day.
Society says I must be productive so let’s start. Oh wait, have I done anything about the above questions yet? I check Facebook to feel like I am interacting with the outside world and can get some news and interaction with friends because when you live on your own and ‘work’ from home you just want some kind of interaction to make sure you are not alone on an island. And after all when you are an athlete looking for sponsors and so forth social media is part of your daily work. Then I turn to my emails.
Before I look we are at eleven / eleven-thirty. The maid is working so I continually interrupt my thought process to ask her to do things because if I don’t ask her now I will forget and I will only have help again in three or four days’ time. So maybe I start writing a blog and I write the first few lines when an email arrives from Cycling SA (or the disability network that I am on the committee for or a friend needing help with a letter) that requires attention. My typing speed isn’t fast so by the time I have settled that I find myself hungry and planning lunch. Thankfully today I can just ask my maid and she will make me a warm bowl of eggs and bacon with a cup of tea. Usually I will either eat something that my maid has prepared for me or I hope that my back pain will allow me to stand for long enough to make my toasted cheese sandwich. It’s time to check on my maid again. What has she done so far? Are my water and juice bottles filled? my fruit, is it cut up? Have I got suppers for the evenings? That jacket I want to wear in two days time, is the zip done up (because I cant do zips)? My shampoo bottle is finished, has she poured shampoo into the other bottle that fits into my grip? Now where was I in the blog?
I can’t go rest today because the maid is here and working so I push through and continue on my laptop. But on a day when she isn’t here my afternoon would go like this, if it wasn’t my gym afternoon.
After lunch I try to get back to my blog but my fatigue is high and I push my writing aside and go for my afternoon nap. About an hour, I am getting dressed to start cycling on my indoor bike and the whole session takes another hour and a half. Then I sit having a sterri stumpie before going for a shower. By the time I return to my computer it is about five-thirty. Spend some time recording my training and planning the next few days, check mails and Facebook, do about half an hour or an hour of writing and then it’s time to have supper and watch some series.
I head off to bed around nine but it’s nine-thirty before I get into bed and as I lie there I try to think of what I achieved today and why I am so tired? I come to the conclusion that by society’s standards I have done nothing today and yet I have made it through another day. Maybe for now in my situation that is enough? Maybe I will be bored tomorrow or maybe I will be so busy getting through MY day that I won’t have time to get bored.