carambolita

For some years now, B has slowly been helping me reshape my vocabulary and, indirectly, my mindset. The changes are subtle and I doubt anyone besides him would notice them, but I find they do make a difference.

Instead of saying that I will become healthy, I say that I will become even healthier – because I want to think of myself as being healthy already, although there are plenty of things I want and need to work on. Instead of telling him I have been bad or irritable or impatient, I tell him that I have had trouble being as positive and patient as I would like. Instead of claiming to hate or even dislike something, I find softer phrases or avoid the topic entirely.

Mindset is important particularly when it comes to health. For most of my life, I have thought of my immune system as weak, have thought of myself as uncoordinated, and have focused on more things I could not do than things I could do.

That made it more challenging to pick up new physical activities because every time there was a hiccup – and hiccups are quite common when learning new skills – I would see that as an affirmation of everything I believed. Even a good friend who used to be positive about almost everything would say things like, “Geez, I thought you said you knew how to ride a bike!” Part of me would protest silently that I did, and that I really enjoyed riding on footpaths and dirt roads, but the other part of me would think, “Yeah, what sort of sheltered idiot would fail so miserably at jumping the bike up and down curbs on the road?”

B’s faith in me and my experiences over the last few years have changed that. I have all but weaned myself off reliance on medication and even supplements. I have climbed mountains, hiked in altitudes of over 5,000m and travelled to some very remote parts of the world. I have zoomed down mountains on a bike and scuba dived in an ocean still turbulent from a cyclone (three months before that, I did not even know how to swim). I fall ill from colds and flus less than most of my colleagues, and even when I do succumb to the bugs, I recover within a couple of days. And my rate of recovery only keeps improving.

Now, that is a good thing because I also have far more to recover from. I have long since forgotten what it feels like to walk without pain – it tends to be mild when I have hiking boots and orthotics on, but it flares up extremely quickly when I do much else. I have yet to come to a landing on what might be affecting my liver or kidneys. Arthritis in my fingers has deterred me from Bach for the past ten years, and my digestive and immune systems are still working hard to recover from my recent trip. My body spends each and every day trying its best to overcome all of that and a million other things else I am not aware of.

But somehow, it is doing that more quickly and more effectively than it ever used to. I have more to recover from, but I recover more quickly. Does that sound odd? One might argue that, if I really were stronger, I would not have as much to recover from in the first place, but the truth is that I am putting my body through more exertion and challenging conditions than I used to. The bar lifts higher and higher. Instead of going for a walk or a brief jog, I plan multi-day hikes up mountains. Instead of trying to wriggle out of swimming class, I can keep going for hours in the pool and enjoy the ocean even more. And that happens despite the strain – physical, mental, emotional – that work puts on me and my body.

These days, when I am confronted with another injury or a hiccup like having to turn back from a hike, I look at it as a stepping stone, a blip on the path that leads unmistakably towards a bright future. I accept that there may be a dozen reasons why I may need to try again, but that if I heap enough time and determination onto it, the obstacle will budge – and I will level up, growing mentally and physically stronger in the process. I focus on my successes – the dreams I have achieved – like they are badges of honour. I fill my walls with photos and canvas prints from my travels because they remind me every day of what I can achieve. And instead of saying I cannot do something, or that I want to do something, I simply say that I will do it. The question is not “if”, but “when”.

Thank you, B, for helping me realise that I can conquer the world.

I want to start keeping a list of my non-negotiables when it comes to work, jobs and careers in general. It is actually trickier than I thought it would be because there is a helluva lot that I would like to have but could probably go without if necessary, and it takes a certain amount of self-interrogation to block out the noise.

That said, here is a start:

Camaraderie
I do not need to like, respect or work well with everybody in a workplace, but I do need to have a few people who tick those boxes – not just one of them, but all of them. On top of that, I need to be in a workplace that at least allows people the choice to be cooperative instead of competitive, and I prefer to be in an environment where the former is encouraged over the latter. The absence of the first point would leave me feeling rather empty and strip me of one of my key sources of sustenance; the absence of the second point would just leave me feeling profoundly unhappy and uncomfortable. There is a reason why I love volunteer work – not to say that I manage to develop a sense of camaraderie in every volunteer environment, but I do manage it more often than not.

Intellectual stimulation
I am a quick learner. Throughout my school years, I achieved fantastic results in everything from Physics to International Relations to Computational Linguistics, not so much because I worked hard as because I tend to be good at picking things up. In a working environment, I learn even more quickly because the learning occurs at a practical, applied level rather than a theoretical one. If my line of work did not challenge me intellectually – whether it be in terms of solving highly technical problems or managing relationships with an unpredictable client – I would go mad with boredom.

Opportunity for initiative
I thrive when given the opportunity to approach tasks or situations in ways that require some analysis, creativity and drive; where I can act based on need and interest rather than formal position descriptions; and where new solutions frequently need to be crafted because there is no defined or existing answer.

It is hard for me to imagine being in a workplace where procedures and responsibilities are set in stone, where I wait for directions or instructions before proceeding with anything, or where there is so much bureaucratic red tape that every act requires pre-approval. Instead, give me something to solve or respond to and let me come up with ideas on how to approach it. I recognise that it takes some time to build up trust, knowledge and so forth, and I am certainly happy to work with other people on developing or refining an approach, but prescriptive, inflexible rule books are really not my cup of tea.

That is all for now. As I think of more, I will see what I can do about moulding these into a baseline for moving forward.

It is amazing how I can speak to G no more than once every few months, and yet every time we do speak, it feels like I have come home.

I have known her for almost a decade now. For all that we have only ever spent several days together in an offline sense, she is still more a part of me than most people will ever be.