Belted in and Fuming

I remembered something today. It was an incident on a plane. There are always incidents on planes but this one was a little humbling, and deeply buried within my psyche. Which probably explains it’s surfacing about four or five weeks after the event!

I climbed aboard this particular flight, found my seat, and gladly settled myself for the last of a three flight homeward trip. A woman sat down a couple of seats away, which was unremarkable, apart from the deep chesty coughing fit she was having. She must have coughed up half a lung in the next few minutes. I sat there thinking, brilliant, smoked herself silly, and now the rest of us have to suffer. Can she not get herself under control? I must admit that I got rather irritated and annoyed!

Eventually after frightening most of the passengers, a flight attendant asked her if she was OK. He then fetched a bottle of water. And guess what, it seemed to do the trick.

So simple, yet not one of us morons sitting on the plane gave a moment’s thought to the poor woman unable to breathe. Instead it was all about us and the dire irritation she was causing.

That flight attendant is my new hero. With a dumpy bottle of mineral water he thoroughly quenched my always do good attitude, by actually doing some good!

My new challenge to self, turn irritations into opportunities to assist, instead of self indulgent blame.

I have strayed from my writing path. I have followed other paths, other ways. I have failed to blog as a good blogger should!

There has been some theory to my lack of writing. After writing a whole heap of good chapters, I moved onto some of the more serious aspects of my book. Reading this serious stuff again, I discovered that I was writing drivel. No, it was worse than that, it was slimy, boring and nonsensical muck! I had lost my groove, my exultation, my plot. I was unsure if I had any plot to begin with.

And so I have taken a complete break from writing with the hope that this is all I need to start again refreshed, energised and with a serious plan in mind. I am sort of back! I have decided to dabble a bit with some blogging, the proverbial dipping my big toe into the waters of wordiness.

It seems to be working. I have some more ideas and styles that I would like to play with and a certainty as to the message that I want to communicate. At long last I am getting the idea that this book is the purging of my soul and that this is a book for me. If you like it too, that would just be a bonus!

My son shocked me this evening. I turned on the computer to get busy on this piece and he asks me if it has Microsoft Paint. I was a little surprised and so opened the program and let him get on with his stuff. In a couple of minutes he had drawn the following:


Just so you understand, he is six! His grannies would be proud....

In a whole different direction....

I have always been the ‘well planned’ kind of guy. My life was so full that I did not like things to change my plans. In fact those little things were irritations to be avoided by even better planning. Hmmm, I was possibly a little boring. These days, I have to say that I am just as busy but the real joy is that all of my busyness is driven by stacks of opportunities that arise on a daily basis. All opportunities that involve food and surfing go immediately to the top of the list, closely followed by photographic shoots. A combination of all of these is a jackpot!

I have discovered spontaneity! Something that I possibly frowned upon in the past, is now something that moves my world. Life does happen now and there is so much to learn right now. There is also so much to give back right now and so much joy to give and to share.

Just this last weekend, my wife and I decided to change our Easter plans in minutes. We ended overnighting with family a mere two hours drive away. And what a wonderful family Easter Sunday we had. And we almost missed out because it was such a mission....

I have resolved to take everything as an opportunity, to relish their difficulties and rejoice in their possibilitities!