Transitions

A cou­ple of weeks ago, my friend, Gavin Heaton, tagged me to write a Man­Week post. He wanted me, and the oth­ers tagged, to dis­cuss what we thought it meant to be a man, and why. I didn’t respond then, because I had too many things bounc­ing around in my head to say any­thing coher­ent. But I think I have it sorted now, so I’m hav­ing a lash.

This blog, com­pletely sep­a­rate from my busi­ness blog at acid­labs, will be the jour­nal of my jour­ney. It will be a dis­cus­sion of some­times painful things. A place for me to reflect and a place for me to look to you for support.

Begin­nings

But first, let’s go back to the beginning.

I never had what you could describe as an espe­cially close rela­tion­ship with my Dad. I still don’t know why, and I still am not espe­cially close to him. But today, we have a rela­tion­ship that fits, even if at times we neglect it more than we ought.

Back in 1985, at just 43, my Dad had a seri­ous heart attack. Fol­lowed by months of hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion and ribs-​​cracked-​​apart open heart surgery, his road to recov­ery was long. Just a year later, he had a stroke. The after­math of that left him, for a time, unable to com­mu­ni­cate and resulted in years of phys­i­cal and occu­pa­tional ther­apy for him to recover to where he is today — pretty good, but not the man he was.

In fact, the heart attack, the stroke, and the changes both phys­i­cal and men­tal that those events wrought upon my Dad destroyed his career and mar­riage. Pre­vi­ously a ded­i­cated edu­ca­tor and assis­tant prin­ci­pal of the high school my sis­ter and I both attended, Dad was com­pul­so­rily retired. He was no longer the man he used to be, and the pow­ers that be run­ning the career he’d ded­i­cated his life to didn’t con­sider him capa­ble of doing that job any more. All of this added up to drive he and my Mum apart. No blame, it just was.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Dad’s not too bad and he’s rea­son­ably happy in him­self.  He lives inter­state. We talk a few times a year and see each other at Christ­mas. It’s all good. He even talks to Mum.

But I believe my his­tory with my Dad, his ill­ness and its con­se­quences, and the things that have hap­pened between us have not all been help­ful to me as a man. They have pre­dis­posed me to cer­tain behav­iors and beliefs. And those pre­dis­po­si­tions have not nec­es­sar­ily been helpful.

Tran­si­tions

So what has that all got to do with me, except for it being history?

Well, it’s this. In two days, I turn 41. That’s just two years younger than when my Dad got sick. And if I keep doing what I’m doing, I’ll end up like him. Or worse. So I need to get fit again.

I’ve never been either a par­tic­u­larly tal­ented ath­lete at any­thing, nor found it easy to be espe­cially fit and lean. I’ve said on more than one occa­sion that I can walk past a patis­serie and osmose the calo­ries. My adult life has been a series of yo-​​yo cycles where I have a han­dle on my weight and fit­ness to one extent or another.

But not today. Today, I’m heav­ier and less fit than I’ve ever been. I’m 20kg heav­ier than when I met Alli and 15kg heav­ier than my fittest ever con­di­tion. I haven’t exer­cised seri­ously in at least three years. Maybe longer. I keep blam­ing events and cir­cum­stances — none of them par­tic­u­larly valid excuses, but cer­tainly valid rea­sons (at least in my mind). I’m busy. I broke my leg (and wrecked a knee and ankle at the same time) two years ago. Blah-​​de-​​blah-​​blah.

And it affects every­thing. Deeply.

I don’t, and can’t, give enough of myself to my wife, Alli, and our daugh­ter, Han­nah. I don’t focus on them nearly enough. And it has knock-​​on effects. Despite being together nearly 15 years, we’ve had our ups and downs. The downs have mostly been attrib­ut­able to stu­pid­ity, arro­gance or igno­rance on my part. And I keep mak­ing these mis­takes. They’ve come close to destroy­ing my mar­riage at times.

It’s those per­sonal things which are the most rel­e­vant with respect to the call­ing cry from Gavin I men­tioned at the start of this post. The most impor­tant things I have ever done as a man were to meet, fall in love with, and marry Alli and to cre­ate our incred­i­ble daugh­ter, Han­nah, with her.

But I haven’t always done right by them. And that lessens me as a man and as a human being generally.

Far less impor­tantly, but still note­wor­thy, I also some­times strug­gle with the busi­ness I started nearly three years ago now. And that’s incred­i­bly fool­ish. It’s my liveli­hood. It sup­ports me and my fam­ily. I should be giv­ing it my all (within reason).

The change

So it’s time to change. Everything.

It’s time to get fit again. Because I know when I’m fit that I cope much bet­ter with every­thing — life, rela­tion­ships, busi­ness, the inside of my head. That needed ten­u­ous bal­ance is infi­nitely eas­ier to achieve.

It’s time to focus — on fam­ily, on friends, on life and on work. Far, far bet­ter than I do now.

I used to do triathlons. In fact, in 2001, I com­pleted a Half Iron­man triathlon (for those of you that are curi­ous that’s a 1.9km swim, 90km cycle and a 21.1km run). I’ve never been espe­cially good at them. Rather, I was a back-​​of-​​the-​​pack enthu­si­ast. I’m cool with that.

Chat­ting to my friend, Derek Feath­er­stone, on Twit­ter over the week­end, I com­mit­ted to doing the Can­berra Half Iron­man with him in 2010. That gives me a lit­tle over a year to pre­pare for the event.

Like me, Feather has made the tran­si­tion from fat bloke to fit bloke. Only dif­fer­ence is I fell off the wagon and got fat again. And it’s made a dif­fer­ence to my abil­ity to do any­thing and everything.

The fin­ish

So, it’s time to focus. To get fit. To give a shit about things and to care prop­erly for the peo­ple and things in my life.

And, since I’m going very pub­lic on this, I’ll be look­ing to my friends and fam­ily to help me out here. To be my watch­ers. To keep me on the straight and narrow.

Can you help me out?