Challengers

It’s time to talk motivation. Okay, again, but this time I’m not talking about goals, but some of the things that got me started on this path, and one of the means by which I keep myself going...

The first time I did Sport Relief (March 2012) was because of a friend I wouldn’t have met if it wasn’t for The Stick and Twitter. I struck up a conversation on a bus with someone using a crutch, after I got involved (I can’t not get involved - can’t decide if it’s a Welsh thing, a my family thing, or just a me thing) to clarify to her that yes, this bus would get her reasonably close to where she needed to go. We talked only a little before getting off at the same stop, but - on alighting - she dropped the spoons shibboleth and we nattered rapidly before getting to my house and exchanging Twitter handles.

I then took her up, via Twitter, on an invitation to meet up with a bunch of people at a wheelchair-accessible pub after work. At this point I had no idea whether I’d ever ditch the stick and, while used to the vicissitudes of invisible disability, was resigning myself to the fun bits of more visible disability. Years before, the person who’d brought me to England had conceded to a wheelchair, so I was used to a lot of a crap surrounding that second-hand. Being the direct object of horrified pity/ confusion/ penetrating curiosity/ terrified revulsion was yet another brick to carry around in the growing arsenal of This Sucks, never mind the practical considerations, weird shame, and increased expense on top of physically feeling like crap. Meeting some people who could help me shape/ share/ laugh about this was an alluring concept.

I met a bunch of lovely people through a series of nights out, and have roughly stayed in social media contact with many of them. However, one of them was more persistent, and I got to know him better.

Nearly two years ago, he mentioned that he was going to help out with his school’s Sport Relief Mile (he’s a TA), but that doing a mile in an electric wheelchair capable of 8mph felt underwhelming, somehow. He then got a brainwave - he would do it backwards. Suddenly, when taking a heavy machine backwards over grass when you have limited neck movement, a mile feels a lot longer.

I’d been feeling low and sorry for myself. It was coming up to my first birthday with The Stick, and - while I was making a little progress with physio - I wasn’t convinced that this wasn’t as good as it would get, and all these images of sporty and otherwise celebrities doing things like dancing and cycling - two things I dearly loved - when I couldn’t was bringing on butthurt in large quantities. I was getting emails about sport (I support Comic Relief, so was getting the SR emails), seeing posters about sport, TV programmes about sport, the Olympics were freaking everywhere in 2012, and I was filled with waaah.

And here’s my mate, who doesn’t feel like life is challenging enough, so he goes - literally - the extra mile to raise some money and support his students.

What could I do? I signed up for Sport Relief a few days before the event, got some sponsors, had a birthday party, and set off - horribly hungover (my birthday is one of the three times of the year I drink alcohol) - into the muddy sunshine of Milton Country Park to hurple a pained and shaking mile (with an even more heroically hungover partner by my side).

So there’s one of my motivations - the idea that, despite the many challenges life might hand you, there’s little more satisfying than fulfilling one of your own, despite/ because of them. Pretty much all of my personal heroes are friends who haven’t let the terrible crap life has dealt them stop them pushing themselves to new horizons - often ones that are of direct benefit to lots of other people. When I’m feeling particularly butthurt, thinking of him, or any of those other many generous, striving souls I know puts me back on track.

This post was going to go to some other places, but I think we’re good here for now...