For anyone reading my Beeblebrox List, expecting what Zaphod would undoubtedly describe as "excitement and adventure and Really Wild Things", it is probably somewhat noticeable that one thing utterly missing from the list is any kind of bungee jump.
Given that parasailing and effectively falling out of a plane are both on the list, it's probably self-evident that hurtling towards the potential doom and the certain hardness of the Earth is not the issue that prevents me from putting something like that on the list. It's more to do with the bounce. The rapid return to height, and having to do the fall practically a second time. It's going the wrong way, essentially, on which I'm not particularly keen.
Which is why today's news is all the more galling. Given that when I started on this Beeblebrox Year, I weighed in at 17st 10.25 and the goal of losing 3 stone (or 42 pounds - the delicious symmetry of which I've just realised this instant!) over 52 weeks, it's galling to report that as of today, with just 49 weeks to go, I weigh in at 18st 2.75! I'm going in the wrong direction!
That means I'm almost legitimised in saying I should lose 4 stone (56 pounds) in the space of the remaining 49 weeks. That'd take me down to 14 stone 2.75. Ah hell, let's be devils, and say I want to lose 4 stone 3 pounds, to take me down to 13 stone 13 lbs.
Damn, that sounds like a good achievement. Oooh...I've got to tell you, I've been particularly unmotivated on the weightloss goal for a while now - having reached a low of 14st 9. But the idea of going beyond that, of getting to see a 13...oooh, now that makes my fingers itch. That would be a thing to actually say. Right, sod it, let's do that. That's a tweak to the original goal. That still works out to be a weightloss of just 1.2 pounds per week. How hard can that be?? (Cynics and realists, chuckle darkly now...). But the thing is, with the bit between my teeth in any sort of proper manner...well...just stick around and watch what I can do...
I've also decided what two more slots on my List should be. I'm going to add "Learn to ride a real bike" and "Learn to swim, properly" to the equation.
I can swim now - have been able to for decades. But it's not a pretty thing. It's not so much an otter-like slipping through the water, more a kind of "not dying, but flailing" thing that leaves me gasping, red-faced, palpitational and about a few yards down the length of the pool. There's got to be someone who'll teach me how to actually do the thing properly.
As for bike-riding...ahem...I have the sort of sense of balance that can see me falling over just standing up. I've always had that sort of sense of balance - but now I think about it, since I went practically deaf in the right ear on February 12th this year, I've also suffered what's known as "a profound insult to the organ of balance". So, thinking about it, there's probably never been a worse time to try and learn to ride a bike than now. On the other hand, if I manage it now, just imagine how smug I'll feel...
The first and really only time I've tried to learn to ride a bike before now though, I was the victim not of my sense of balance though, but my own stupidity. My mother had bought me a bike, paying a friend of hers over the odds for what was a proper grown-up bike. It was, truth be told, far too big for me, and we lived in a first floor maisonette (oddly enough, as I do now). I decided that the thing that scared me about bike riding was...well...largely the "falling off". So, once I'd mastered the "not falling off" bit, everything should be fine. So I practiced not falling off. At home. Trying to achieve perfect balance on a stationary bike, under the stairs.
People, in fairness, did try to tell me about physics, and how much easier it was not to fall off if the bike was actually moving, but that seemed like errant foolishness to me, so I persevered with my not-falling-off practice. And kept falling off.
Eventually, when it became clear that I was never going to get the hang of it, the bike quietly disappeared from my life and I resolved to become a pedestrian, which I've remained to this day.
Now of course, maybe it's not possible. Maybe the insult to the organ of balance will actually stop me mastering the art of bike riding in my forties, as the insult to the organ of reason did in my teens. But I'm going to give it a go.
What else has happened since I wrote last? Oh, had a great email from my brother - discussion with whom spawned the so-far-most-loathsome of my challenges: the Pink Floyd marathon. He emailed me to say he'd been reading the blog (all views and shares gratefully received!), and felt an intervention was necessary. He admitted, in whispery email tones, that he'd never been much of a fan of Floyd's early stuff, and that I should probably jump in much later in the collected work.
Bless.
Much appreciated, this concession - as indeed was d's practical plea last Saturday: "You really have nothing to prove with this non-Starbucks year, you know!" But the thing is, I'm not actually doing any of these things for anyone else. I'm doing them for all sorts of reasons, not the least of which is to test out my stubborn-buggerness. If I've said I'll do a thing, how far am I prepared to go to keep my word? And what does that say about me? I'm not going to Starbucks, or any other chain coffee store, but a perfect example of how arbitrary the actual tasks on this list are came last Saturday. My mother had suggested a local Cardiff coffee shop where they probably wouldn't throw me out for wanting to sit there all day with a laptop. It's about...maybe 8 or 9 doors up from my favourite Starbucks. Has power. Had wifi. So, as my brother described it early on in this challenge, it's not really about the principle of the thing, it's about a change of venue. Except that on some madly meta level, it is about the principle of the thing....just probably not the principle people think it is. It's about the fact that I've said I'm going to do a thing. So I'm doing it.
That said, something struck me today, as indeed it struck me last Tuesday, just before I did my first "reading to children" session. Some of these challenges involve doing things I actively don't want to do. The Floydathon's the most trivial example of that. The reading to children scared the bejeesus out of me, though it turned out to be staggeringly rewarding. Oddly enough of course it no longer scares me (you watch them all be complete and utter bastards tomorrow morning!). I saw a poster today asking for volunteers to befriend people with physical or mental difficulties, and my stomach lurched. There's an action on my list that says "Volunteer to do something for charity, in a way that takes me out of my comfort zone".
Terrific...
The point about which of course is I'm rarely out of my comfort zone. I think that's what comfort zones are built for. To be comfortable in. Why people go on about going beyond those zones is a genuine mystery to me. But the way I've phrased the challenge means my initial instinct, which is to say "I'm sure I can help charities in better ways through application of my skills..." is not valid. I can do that too of course (given the time). But the idea of doing something that ACTIVELY puts me outside my comfort zone is pretty bloody scary.
Anyhow - as it crawls towards 2AM, it's time to get some sleep. Kids in the morning.
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