My story

Copied from “Foundations for the Spiritually Inclined“

Here’s a far too exhaustive summary of some of my pivotal life moments, and some formative experiences as well, if you were at all curious.

Background

To start things off, I was born in Palmerston North, New Zealand, on the 25^th of January 1971.

My parents Mike and Joyce were born and raised in Guernsey, a small island that’s part of the Channel Islands, located in the English Channel.

Dad’s ambition to play top-tier football in England, for Portsmouth FC to be exact, didn’t come to fruition as he chose to abandon the idea, even though he was all set and ready to go there for goalkeeper trials.  That worked out well though as my parents decided to emigrate to New Zealand in the 1960’s to settle down.  Along with my older brother, my older sister, and myself, we were a family of five.

Most of my family live in New Zealand, while I have other close relatives back in Guernsey, as well as Australia, Germany, England, and even Scotland.  We mainly use online chat to keep in touch, nothing unusual there of course, although I have been known to courier my creative items to the other side of the world.

I have been all the way to Guernsey three times, first with all five of us when I was six (Disneyland was a highlight, as was Star Wars at the cinema), aged sixteen just with mum and dad (and a badly sprained ankle), and twenty-one on my own for just a couple of days while on holiday in Europe with a couple of friends.

We lived in my birthplace of Palmerston North until I was five, and then we all moved to the Wellington region to a valley named Wainuiomata, where I went to my first school.  Then dad started a new job, so we moved to Christchurch, and we lived there for three years.

Dad’s work then took us back to the lower North Island again, for a couple of years, specifically Lower Hutt, then Christchurch again for a short amount of time, then returning to Lower Hutt for seven or eight years from the age of eleven, then moving not far away to Upper Hutt in 1990.

Education

I have a lasting memory of a school in Christchurch where for the eight months I was there I had absolutely no friends, and I was desperately lonely.  Lunchtimes sitting by myself in the library drawing and passing time.  Not a huge trauma to speak of, I guess, but I was only about nine, it was heart wrenching, and my heart goes out to any girl or boy of any age, even adults, who find themselves in that situation.

In Lower Hutt, part of the Wellington region, we lived in Kelson, a hill suburb, and I usually walked to school unless it was raining or unpleasant, or maybe if I was running late.  It was a 40-minute walk, and I struck up a couple of wonderful long-term friendships along the way which made school, and after school, much more enjoyable.  I had quite a few other friends as well.

Coming home from Naenae Intermediate and then Naenae College was quite arduous going up the hill, especially on very hot days, but we were never in any great hurry anyway, and there was a dairy halfway up the hill to enjoy a treat or two if we had some money.

Sometimes dad picked me up from school too, which was a real treat, and I remember with absolute clarity one occasion as I hopped in, in the back seat I saw the VHS video tape for the first Star Wars movie, which sent me into raptures.

At one stage a friend and I even spent time running up and down the hill just because we thought it would be a good idea, and it was definitely his idea, but that didn’t last long.  I owned a bicycle too that saw quite a few adventures, but it ended up being stolen.

Time in intermediate school was spent attending classes, looking forward to lunchbreaks where we would play tag-ball, sports in general, and when the fad was there, to see how many marbles we could win off each other.  I was useless and lost mine in minutes, and decided to never play again.

My teacher in form two (year 8, 1983) was married to an All Black, a member of the national rugby union team, although she had to leave halfway through the year to have her baby, who turned out to be the very talented singer songwriter Brooke Fraser.  Special moment!

During my school years I was obsessed with drawing cartoons, from school projects to complete multi-page comics, which continued for four or five years, from intermediate school into college.  Looking back on it as I write this now, I have no idea how I managed it.

I drew scores of pages which I still have to this day, but I eventually let that go for an interest in computers.  I even drew one complete book of cartoons to help fundraise for the 24-hour televised charity event Telethon, and it made it onto TV!

I can honestly say there was some “divine intervention” happening as dad won a wonderful Commodore 16 computer through his work for being New Zealand’s top vehicle salesperson for his company.  It was such a special moment for me.

Perhaps it could have been a gaming machine, but it was something far more useful, engaging, educational, and exciting, and learning to code in BASIC and later Assembler (Machine code) became my new passion, coding my own games and so much more – before the Internet even existed.  I was thrilled to discover that two doors down a boy had the same computer as me, and he soon became my best friend.

It set me up for life to be honest, from there becoming pretty much obsessed with computers.  All my other friends had computers as well, mostly different makes and models to mine though, but that was a blessing as otherwise I would have wasted too much of my time on nonsense, copying cassette tapes and playing games until 2am, and I would have got nothing constructive or creative done.  As it turned out, me and my friend two doors down spent a lot of our time coding and comparing each other’s efforts.

It was probably one of the reasons that I wasn’t as focused at school as I should have been, just scraping through most of my exams.  My mind was often occupied with the computer games and graphics that I was designing, carefully drawn with the limited computer colours available on quite nifty graph paper (you will probably need to be a nerd like I was then to grasp the meaning of all that).  But at least it was something creative and intellectually stimulating I guess.

I studied the usual obligatory classes in forms three and four (i.e. Maths, English, Science etc.), and also Tech Drawing, and in the fifth form I began taking Computer Studies which I excelled at.  I didn’t get on that well with my Computer Studies teacher actually, it has to be said.  I was good at my work, but he knew my ego was a bit inflated with me thinking I could help out my classmates just as well as he could.

I also took fifth form art, and I passed my fifth form School Certificate qualification with a little bit of room to spare, but then most did.  In the sixth form (year 13), I failed to pass the Sixth Form Certificate, so naturally I was disappointed when I found out that even with my best efforts my results were pretty average.  The exception was that I was second best in the school for Computer Studies.  Ahh, those assembly hall exams and BBC Micro days…

I had various sporting interests during my college years.  I won a tennis trophy at my club for the most improved junior, and I often played tennis with a friend or two during lunch breaks, bringing our tennis rackets from home, with inter-school and club competitions as well.  What we referred to as “handball” which we played during lunchbreaks was a favourite.  It was so simple as you didn’t need anything other than another player or two, a tennis ball, and a wall, which I think is why it was so appealing.

I was also part of the school badminton team and would sometimes be driven after school to various other schools and locations to compete, thanks to my wonderful maths teacher who was also our coach.

I think I managed one or two games of outdoor cricket, even though I wanted to play much more, but then I couldn’t see very well as I was so self-conscious I was terrified to wear my glasses.  I still managed a six though!  Staying overnight at a friend’s house he told me basically to get over myself because I couldn’t stop talking about how far the ball had cleared the boundary – and thank goodness he did, but then I was just an excitable teenager after all!

I enjoyed playing table tennis when I could, and I played backgammon and belonged to the school backgammon club which I enjoyed too.  I still have that backgammon set even now, which I’d love to dust off and be inspired to play once again.

I wasn’t very athletic, and I wasn’t that keen on contact sports either as I was always a bit chicken, afraid I would come out second-best and be squashed, so it’s all probably just as well.  Signing sporting equipment in and out on lunchbreaks happened occasionally.  Ahh, the simple school days!

I wanted to leave school before I began the seventh form (year 14), as my heart wasn’t in the whole “structured education” thing anymore.  I applied to do a computer course at Wellington Polytechnic, and even though my exam results were 98% for year 13 computer studies, I wasn’t accepted.

This was perfect, so perfect, as better things were to come, even though I have no idea to this day how someone who is second in the school for computers, scoring 98%, could be rejected for a computer course.

I was told that my maths and English results weren’t good enough, and I imagine they had set criteria, but I prefer “divine intervention” as an explanation…  If I had been accepted it would have been an absolute nightmare!

Work

In 1988 my father found a job vacancy notice asking for trainee computer operators for the Government Computing Service (as it was known then).  I applied for the job, and along with several others was given an aptitude test to see if any of us would be suitable.  The building was daunting, an absolute monolith.

I received a letter not long afterwards saying that they would keep me on file, which was so disappointing, but there was nothing I could do about it.

I knew I would have to get a job otherwise I would have to return to school for the seventh form, and my father basically mandated that school was the only other option.  Job or school, it was as simple as that.

I think it might have been dad again, he was (and still is looking down on me) a Godsend.  He found a job vacancy for Westpac Bank looking for trainee bank-officers.  I applied for the job, went for the interview, and was successful.  It was in the big city, Wellington, on Lambton Quay, and at seventeen with train travel every day I took it all in my stride.

Initially, I found the days long and very tiring as I wasn’t used to working full time, but the people were great and after a few weeks I was reassigned to the “ledgers” department and the job became much more interesting.  I got used to the hours, and I continued to learn – and I got paid!

I made some great friends, and occasionally a chocolate fish would be sent through the internal mail to say thanks for something, all good fun and everyone always seemed to be in good spirits – each of us young and full of the joys of life.

The social aspect was “interesting”, good fun again, with cheap (and too many) drinks every Friday night, and a group of us even travelled up north to Whakapapa, a world class ski area, which I barely managed to survive after having a minor mishap or two, but it was such an incredibly memorable experience.  I can sense the snow even now.

The whole time I worked at Westpac no one knew that I wore glasses.  I was so self-conscious that I never put them on, let alone take them to work with me.  God only knows how I managed to get away with that, microfiche and everything!  A miracle for sure.

My bad eyesight was identified when I was eleven, quite late in life I think, and as a result I never felt comfortable with the whole “four eyes” thing.  I tried contact lenses when I was about nineteen, crikey that’s nine years of being completely self-conscious, but I discovered while I was at the optometrist that I had an eye condition which meant that contact lenses weren’t an option for me.  It’s a different story these days though, all those insecurities are gone, thankfully.

Eight months into the job at the bank I was thrilled to receive a letter from the Government Computing Service (GCS) asking if I would like to meet for an interview, as my scores from the aptitude test must have been quite good, and they had an opening.

After the interview I was offered a job as a Trainee Computer Operator, which I eagerly accepted.  I was in heaven!

The period before a Trainee Computer Operator lost the “trainee” tag was twelve months, but my enthusiasm and interest in the job meant I completed my trainee period in just eight months, the first time that had been achieved.  I used to take 300 page manuals home to study and then take notes as I went through page by page – I just loved the whole thing.  I wanted to learn, and apply what I had learned.  It would be fair to say that I amazed some people.

Eventually, thanks to a really good friend who “sang my praises”, I was approached by the programming team upstairs and was asked if I would like to apply to become a Systems Programmer, as I showed such promise and enthusiasm.

I was excited, to say the least, and after a brief and very informal interview I landed the role and found myself upstairs as a Trainee Systems Programmer, with my own desk and computer screen which was wonderful!  The operators who I used to work with were delighted with my promotion, not just for me, but now they had someone who could champion their causes and give priority to their needs, where perhaps they felt in some way that I was still one of them, and in many ways I felt that I was.

The first year was training to use the systems and learning to code in the core language called ALGOL.  The team around me were very supportive and my enthusiasm never waned.  I created my first Unisys “A-Series” computer software system called POX25 (Post Office X25) which would be used for many years.

After that first year, again I lost the “trainee” tag and became a fully-fledged Systems Programmer.  A few years later GCS transitioned to be owned and operated by the American computer giant EDS, and my title changed to “Systems Engineer (Software Advanced)”.  Very flash!  Business cards too!  Although I think I might have only given out three.  I even wore a suit, although I’m not sure I looked that good in it, but it seemed like a good idea.

The work was always interesting, I loved it.  I achieved a great deal, and helped a lot of people.  I even came second for one of the company’s employee of the month awards thanks to being nominated by my operator colleagues.  Being runner-up I received a voucher, which was a nice acknowledgment, and our family had a lovely dinner out.

At one point, myself and two friends from work took a holiday and travelled around Europe for a month on a tour bus, something that was geared towards younger people, travelling from England to France, through parts of Spain (with the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona and the World Expo in Seville), Portugal, as well as Morocco.

After the tour finished, the three of us made our way to Belgium, the Netherlands, and finally Vancouver, with the adventure lasting two whole months.

My friends had done most of the organising, and they looked after me in a lot of ways, in fact in more ways than I can possibly ever appreciate.  The trip was a wonderful and enlightening thing to have done.  I even managed to hop over to Guernsey from London for two or three days, staying with my nana which was so special, and catching up with family generally.  All in all it was definitely a once in a lifetime experience, knowing that my international travelling days are over, now being happy to live out my life in New Zealand.

I made some big mistakes at work though, but then everyone did – that was just the way it was.  I never held any kind of leadership position, the closest I got was when each of us had a week as the team leader to see how we would get on, but that led nowhere and I never heard anything more about it.  In fact it was obvious even to myself that the way I tried to keep an eye on things was a bit annoying for others.

I stayed in that job until the middle of 1998, having to leave because of my mental illness flaring up (which I explain further on).  It was the best job I could have ever hoped to have.

In 2001, I worked for Unisys (another American company) doing the same kind of work I had done at EDS, but I was a little out of my depth as it was a completely new area of expertise, one that I wasn’t that accustomed to.  Being a contractor brought with it a number of new and important responsibilities as well, including looking after my own tax.

Because I had been out of the picture as far as the technology was concerned (I hadn’t been involved in those systems for three years), I was a bit rusty.  However, I worked there for eight months until my contract ended.  It must be said that I didn’t actually achieve that much!  And even though I was very well paid, I didn’t manage to save much either, in fact pretty much nothing at all.

In 2005, I started working doing general (and sometimes exhausting) duties at a printing firm (owned by my then brother-in-law).  It was pretty much manual labour, driving from one place to the next, delivering heavy boxes etc., and running machinery.  I’m glad I took the leap and did it though, but it was really just a stopgap until something more suitable for me came along, and eventually something did.

Later that year, I landed a job as a web designer for a small local Russian owned company and worked there for about six months.  The job came about because of a work scheme run by the Ministry of Social Development to help people with disabilities get back into work.

I have bipolar disorder and was genuinely grateful for the opportunity.  While I was there I worked with someone who was deaf, and it was great finding solutions when it came to communicating, and working with computers really helped in that regard I think.

We were both highlighted as a success for the MSD initiative, with both of us being featured in a video presentation that was shown to dozens of government and other influential people, which was all very interesting, but quite nerve-wracking too.  For the most part I have been on the benefit because of my bipolar since I was twenty-eight.

That job was perfect for me, and I learned some fascinating and very useful web design techniques such as PHP, MySQL and JavaScript, to name a few.  Even though I was on the minimum wage, it was like paid training, something I would find beneficial in the years to come.

In 2008, I started my very own small-scale web design endeavour, gaining work through word-of-mouth and the occasional newspaper advertisement, where I am most grateful to a property developer I helped who gave me work opportunities for many years.

I first became interested in web design in 1997, but these days, along with writing my books with a word processor and Microsoft Publisher, I tend to use online tools to help with my creative projects, as well as blogging every now and then, nothing that unusual.  Thankfully I no longer need to do any coding whatsoever – my capabilities just couldn’t manage that anymore.

My experience with mental illness

At the age of twenty-four I suddenly left my well-paying job at GCS and travelled to the South Island, with no thought of how I would support myself afterwards.  I felt as though I could “hurry up” my spiritual progress, but it certainly wasn’t altogether rational.

After I returned from my unplanned excursion, I felt utterly lost, and after contacting my manager, hoping things could go back to how they were before, I was able to get my job back.  He was delighted actually.  I didn’t realise it then, nor did anyone else, but this was a sign that not everything was how it should be with my mental state.

It would have been about six months later that I experienced mental illness for the first time, and went downhill rapidly, quickly going into a state of psychosis and what I would describe as “serious mental trauma”.  I ended up in Wellington Hospital on the mental health ward where I needed to stay for three months, being diagnosed with a psycho-effective disorder.

I didn’t recognise the importance of medication thinking because of my spiritual interests it was a chemical that would be bad for my spiritual and physical purity, so I chose not to take it, with no-one being any the wiser.  This was the reason I was in hospital for three months, even though thankfully everything worked out in the end.

My parents were incredible.  They drove thirty minutes there and thirty minutes back nearly every evening and on the weekends to see me.  On one or two occasions I turned them away thinking I would give them some sort of terrible illness if they were near me, which was traumatic for me, and it would have been hard for them too of course.  It was an indicator of my unwell mental state, being completely out-of-touch with reality.  It was awful.  The whole situation was so incredibly difficult for everyone, as you might imagine.

After coming out of hospital I returned to work.  I decided to start taking the medication that I had been prescribed, strangely enough for the first time ever, trying to do the right thing, but this only lasted one day as the side-effects were so awful I could barely function, with no real ability to work.

The medication was totally wrong for me.  I needed an alternative.  But rather than talk this over with my psychiatrist, I chose instead to come off that medication completely, meaning once again I was on no medication whatsoever.

I was fine until 1998 until I became unwell again and chose to leave my job once more, never to regain it, and as a result I ended up back in hospital, this time at Hutt Hospital, suffering from delusional thoughts and having some very strange ideas.

In 1999, when I was twenty-eight, I experienced my first depressive episode where I often thought of taking my own life, and feeling worthless for much (if not all) of the time.  I was like that for eight difficult months.  My psychiatrist was incredible though, and she and my wonderful mental health support team helped see me through.

Gradually I came right, but I was sneakily avoiding taking my medication even though everyone thought that I was.  In 2001, I landed a job with a computer company in the city, Unisys, like I mentioned earlier.  I was there for eight months and then became unwell again.

This time I experienced mania – a manic high.  I was readmitted to hospital, and my diagnosis changed to bipolar disorder.

Between 2001 and 2003 I must have been admitted to hospital six or seven times, every time with mania or psychosis.  On two occasions I even disappeared from the ward and somehow ended up in Auckland, with some stories to tell from those episodes as well.

Let’s just say I had everyone including the police looking for me, not that I had done anything terribly wrong, but I was a bit of a risk, nonetheless, more to myself than anyone else, and having the police trying to track you down is standard practice if anyone “gets away” while under the mental health act.  I was even chaperoned on a plane on two separate occasions from Auckland to Wellington, straight back to the mental health ward at Hutt Hospital.

I was still deceiving everyone and not taking my medication, but finally the doctors caught up with me.  Realising I wasn’t taking my meds they gave me an anti-psychotic injection, and for the first time in three years, I saw clearly.

It was like looking into a mirror, where I could see all my inappropriate, somewhat out-of-control, and what might well have been embarrassing behaviour as well.  It was a revelation.  I can remember even now the exact moment that “reality, clarity, and sanity” took hold for me.

Since 2003 I have had three other admissions, one of these for going against everyone’s advice and not taking my medication, the choice to do so being rooted in delusion for a reason that I can’t even remember, and the other two admissions weren’t really related to my mental illness, but rather life events that severely affected my mental state.

In 2010, I had the good fortune to listen to a podcast where I realised that for the seven years since 2003 when I first started on my anti-psychotic injection (600 “jabs” administered up to now), I was suffering from depression, and early on in that time with clinical depression.  I talked to my psychiatrist, and she recommended that I try an anti-depressant tailored for people with bipolar, and this helped a lot.  Even though I still had my “ups and downs”, I was much more settled than I was before.

It is difficult, and it has been traumatic at times, but I wouldn’t want to change anything that has happened to me.  If someone was to say, “Jason, I can take it all away as if it never happened”, I would say in return in no uncertain terms, “No thanks, everything that happened was perfect for me, and I wouldn’t want to change a thing.  I have learned so much, especially about myself, and I’m a better person now than I could have ever been without it.”

I have understood though that not every person who has a mental illness would say this same thing, as I am sure that a lot of people would rather have had no trauma or illness whatsoever, and I can appreciate this too, especially where there appears to be no silver lining, or when it seems that nothing positive has come from it.

I have seen a different side of life that I feel fortunate to have experienced.  It has taught me a lot about compassion, tolerance and understanding, and of course I’m not alone in feeling this way.

My interest in spirituality

I have been interested in “all things spiritual” since I was twenty-one, when I became involved in an eastern-style meditation group through a friend.  I was captivated by the stories of Indian saints and so on, the mysterious powers that they had, and a whole new world of wonder opened up for me.

As I wrote in my story “Ganeshpuri” earlier, I even travelled to India to meet the leader of this eastern spiritual group, the guru, and spent a month there in the ashram.  I worked while I was there, if you could call it that, fortunate to have an easy task, which I had to do at night, so I had plenty of time during the day to do what I wanted to do.  It was an unforgettable experience.

In 1994, I moved away from this yoga-based teaching partly because I had grown out of the whole “bow to the guru” philosophy, but also because my life and spiritual situation had changed, and a new spiritual opportunity had presented itself.

Between 1994 and 2001 I followed a different teaching, and it was quite challenging on occasions, and I learned, grew, and unfolded spiritually.

In 1998, I had one of my most powerful spiritual experiences, my “Stargate” experience, which I describe in detail earlier on in this book.  It was where I gained a new way of seeing, understanding, and appreciating life, experiencing and understanding God’s true nature, and discovering some of what lay ahead in the future.  Basically, it was a short amount of time of being in a high state of consciousness.

From 2005, I began to travel my own spiritual path, for the most part without any sort of formal teaching or spiritual support.  Since then, I have had many profound, sacred, and beautiful experiences which have kept me moving forward spiritually, and I have gained more confidence as I found an inner strength, where God was in my life in a much more personal, relatable, and noticeable way.

Noticeable to myself that is, because in all honesty, no one else had any clue about what was unfolding within me, my inner journey, and how my personal relationship with God was influencing my life and moving me forward.

It would also be fair to say that the handful of people who had read my writing, even though they all liked it, believed it would go nowhere, especially considering that I had no resources, notability, or money behind me.  That was perfect though, and it was always how it was going to be, and everything fell into place perfectly, even though everything from start to finish was all completely unplanned and spontaneous.

Importantly though, not having those resources or any way to publish what I had written and created served as a good way to make sure that I didn’t get too far ahead of myself!

Still, dare I say I always had the will and determination to complete this project, and the confidence and knowledge that it would be of interest as well, all of which helped give me the impetus that I needed.

Knowing that I had God’s guidance and support behind me throughout, just as He is here for each and every one of us, I have to credit Him for this book becoming a reality.  In many ways I just did my best to be open to whatever my “inner life” and everyone around me was guiding me to know, learn, and understand, in the mysterious and serendipitous ways that that was happening, along with calling on everything that I had learned and understood on my spiritual journey, and just with life in general.

Exercise

For so long I never really made any concerted or deliberate effort to exercise, to my detriment I imagine.  The closest I got to really trying to improve my fitness was when I belonged to a gym in the 90’s, going on and off for a year or two, so I guess that’s something.

Getting up two or so hours before work to work out was a challenge at times, but I enjoyed it for the most part, although I struggled to stay motivated towards the end. Paying an annual subscription for what became infrequent visits didn’t work that well for me, but nowadays, where I live at least, that seems to have changed, and I imagine it’s much more accessible and affordable than it was decades ago.

I did feel better for it, although I wasn’t too interested in the weights, rather I loved the idea of being as fit as I could be if I ever needed to run for any reason, so I focused on the “circuit”, a variety of different exercises which suited me much better.

Sitting behind a desk for a job and not having too much time to spare meant I never really got to put the fitness I gained into practice, but I’ve seen people really enjoy their gym sessions, which makes me wonder if I shouldn’t have persisted a little longer.

If you exercise or keep active yourself, you will know what works for you, and I have what works for me, but for myself I enjoy getting out in the fresh air when I can, which I like to think most of us like to do.

I found myself doing a lot of walking in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, which I really didn’t think too much about, I just did it.  I felt like every day was an adventure, I just wanted to get out and about, do things that inspired me, have experiences, and see where life guided me.  I loved travelling on the train too, and the car was often left at home, in fact at one stage I didn’t use it for a couple of months.  It was a very spiritual time for me, and feeling like I was connected to something greater than myself was a real motivation.

From 2004 my mental health went downhill significantly, so I didn’t do much walking at all, although I’m sure it would have helped if I had made the effort.  My wonderful mental health support team tried to get me motivated, but I found it all too difficult.

Part of that time I was suffering from clinical depression, which would have been the main contributing factor towards my lack of enthusiasm I think.  During those years I stayed at home most of the time, and the world moved on.

I put on weight too.  In the end, around 2010, I made a concerted effort and lost about 17kg.  Some people remarked how much better I looked for it, and I felt ten times better for it too.  I still wasn’t making any concerted effort to exercise though, but I was walking without thinking about it as part of everyday life, which was positive, but still choosing to use the car, which was dad’s car, everywhere I could.

In essence, a couch potato, that was me for so many years.  It changed around 2016 when I found myself motivated to explore the region once again, just like the good old days of the 2000’s, with the train being the main form of transport.  I loved it, and I still do, and walking and public transport became a real interest for me, and I had the enthusiasm to go with it, although I’m a bit slower nowadays!

I started off by struggling even to walk just around the block, but by building myself up to 8km circuits that I try to do as much as I can, albeit a little less frequently these days than I used to, I like to think I can manage 10-20km’s spread over a single day at the cricket, and I don’t feel too tired at all, and from there, all around Wellington’s CBD to make the most of the outing.  A little bit of resilience never goes amiss, I feel, even though I can still be a bit lazy from time to time.

So yes, I may not be able to manage a marathon quite yet, but I’m doing better than I used to, and on top of that, daily walks with my 86-year-old mother, which she absolutely loves, is wonderful to be able to do.  Knowing just how beneficial it is for her is heartwarming too, and it’s good fun at the same time.

From what I have heard, walking is the best form of exercise, and that there is so much to be gained, and I wouldn’t argue.  I find it quite meditative too, a chance to clear and refresh my mind, and new ideas and insights arise from seemingly nowhere on occasions as well.

There are often people to say “hi” to as well as you pass by each other, and sometimes something quirky or unexpected will happen which I will try to contemplate to see if there’s anything mystical about it that I can learn something from.

Considering I’m fifty-five as I write this now, that and the fact that I wasn’t overly active for most of my adult life, these might be the two main reasons why walking suits me so well.  Saying that, I know I could do something more intense, and I’d love to, if it wasn’t for a slight niggle, and there are certainly times when I struggle to find the motivation and determination, but then having a reason, finding a reason, or being open to a little bit of a “divine push” always tends to help.

Having had another health issue for six months where I wasn’t able to do much walking at all, walking for the most part isn’t something that I take for granted as much as I did in the past.  The treatment I received was another example of where the healthcare system, my GP, and the nursing team worked wonders to get me up-and-going again.

Finally

Why not write down your own pivotal life moments and memorable experiences that helped shape you as a person, and perhaps share these to inspire others? If you feel comfortable to do that of course, and as your inspiration moves you.

Your story is as important as anyone else’s, and mine is no more important than yours.

Thank you for listening,

Jason