Fear of the Water

I stood on the edge of the pool staring at the expanse of water in front of me.

50 metres might just as well be 50 kilometres, but just getting here was an accomplishment, I thought to myself, trying to buck myself up.

The water was like glass in the early morning emptiness. Trepidation on tippy-toes I prepared to plunge in. As I hit the water shockwaves radiated outward through the water and inward though my now rapidly cooling warm body.

I treaded water at the edge as I adjusted my goggles and my breathing as I prepared for my workout. I took a deep breath; a cross between a gasp and a sigh and pushed off the wall.

I can do this, I thought as I started out. Arms, legs and breathing all finding their rhythm; like old friends falling into step next to each other. It has been a long time, old friends.

I have no fear of water, quite truthfully, I love the water. I think I might have known how to swim before I knew how to crawl. I love the feel of water as I make my way though it, I always imagined it’s as close to flight as I will ever get. When I was young, I loved to do flips and turns and swim deep under the surface feeling like I was floating, weightless, boundless and free; gliding almost effortlessly like a bird soaring on an updraft.

Now, like an old friend, I was buoyed up by its presence (literally) and hoped that the soothing rhythm of my stoke and the presence of my old friend water would buoy my spirits and placate my panic.

But as the workout progressed the panic didn’t wane; and I began to wonder if my shortness of breath has as much to do with my faintness of heart as my farness from fitness.

That was where the panic truly lay.

Though I have panicked in water before; it was murky and something solid brushed up against my leg – I still have issues with murky water (childhood trauma can be so debilitating); I have no fear of drowning. I have been in the midst of hundreds of other swimmers in an open water race; limbs and water churning, buffeting me about and I have swam past the accidental punches and wayward kicks and I have succeeded every time. Water itself is not my enemy.

My panic lay not in the substrate in which I swam but in the subtext that my brain supplied. I had not swum in months (probably 10, my brain chirped in – trust my brain to do the math), and the race was (and is) a mere 6 weeks away. I am (as my brain pointed out) wholly unprepared for this year’s race, so the fear that strikes at me today is the fear of lack of fitness.

Even having said that, it’s not the fear of fitness, as much as the ego that I keep claiming not to have that keeps bopping me in the head when I’m not paying attention; I don’t fear not finishing the race, I fear not being happy with my resultant time. Most people don’t understand that, they see the completion of the race (it’s not an easy race; swim 2 kilometres, ride 90 kilometres and then run 21 kilometres) as an achievement in itself; and maybe it is, but I still see it as not enough. It’s not enough merely to complete the race, but I must better my time, I must improve.

Ah Ego, there you are bud, thanks for the headache.

So I splash out the workout, lamenting the lost months of training and the slow pace I find myself struggling to maintain and I realize I have to let go of my old pal Ego and just embrace my old friend water.

Ego just weighs me down (like the literal excess cargo I’m shuttling around on my backside); I cannot make up for lost workouts, I can’t triple the intensity to rapidly regain my former fitness glory; all I can do is that this year’s race will be what it is, my performance (good, bad, or ugly) will be what it will be. SO I must somehow bop Ego on the head or at the very least, just ignore him and get on with my training.

I must embrace my buoyant friend water and my training buddies, running shoes and bicycle and just enjoy the next six weeks of training and the challenge of the race itself. No fear, no panic, no Ego; just some fun times with some old and SUPPORTIVE friends.

Just Don't Ask, Please

“Excuse Me” is the one phrase that I dread hearing from strangers that I meet on my commute to work. Now to clarify; it’s not the “excuse me” – get out of my way; it’s “excuse me” – do you have a minute and there are several reasons why this strikes fear into my heart.

Since live in one corner of downtown and work, essentially in the diagonally opposite corner in a building on the cusp of one of the worst neighbourhoods in the city (I know the “powers that were” thought it was prudent to put the Police Head Quarters next to what amounts to the Skid Row of this fine city, but I question this wisdom), my commute to work involves walking through downtown or a combination of taking the Light Rapid Transit system and walking. So during my commute, I sometimes get stopped and asked if I can spare any change or smokes, to the latter I reply; “Sorry, I don’t smoke” (which is the truth) and to the former I replay “Sorry, I have no change” (which is usually a lie, for which I generally feel a bit guilty – but my lack of charity is not what I want to discuss here). But maybe the feeling guilty is…

Being stopped for input on surveys or petitions annoys me because my commute, like everyone’s – I imagine, is meant to be as short and as efficient as possible and stopping to do surveys and listen to someone’s petition pitch impede my speed; or if I don’t stop, I feel mildly guilty for ignoring their pleas.

I often find that wearing sunglasses and my mp3 player help mitigate the likelihood of being stopped my thwarting potential stoppers from getting my attention in the first place, but sometimes they still manage to get my attention.

Then there’s the crazy people…

Once, on my way to work, I was stopped by rather dishevelled older man who looked like a cross between Freddy Kruger and Santa Clause and he asked me if spoke any other languages - after replying "No, only English"; he beamed from ear to ear and said "I was right! I thought you looked European" and then he happily walked off, leaving me wondering at his logic (ummm, wouldn’t Europeans be more likely to speak a language other than English??)

But worse still than the those looking for handouts, or those looking for an ear to bend, or even those looking for Europeans are those who stop me seeking directions.

I feel sorry for any lost soul who stops me on the street and asks me for directions, for there are very few times, after giving someone directions to somewhere when I don’t feel guilty after the fact. For generally I either send them in a circuitous route, or provide vague directions that may only get them halfway there, or worse still, I send them off in the wrong direction entirely. I’m just not good at giving directions.

It’s not that I have a bad sense of direction, per se, I think I have a fairly good one (mind you there was the time I got lost in London, oh and in Paris, oh and in Rome), hmmm, maybe that IS part of it; but somewhere that I am reasonably familiar with, I can easily get from ‘A’ to ‘B’ in my head, but to explain it, I miss a few steps; or the picture in my head doesn’t match reality and the trusting traveller finds themselves still destinationless after my dazzling directions.

Are some people just better at giving directions than others; is it something in their nature, or is it a skill they have learned somewhere along the way?

Are more outgoing souls less likely to be taken aback at having to talk to a stranger? Are more spatially inclined individuals better able to create maps in their heads and pass on that knowledge to the passerby?

I’m the first to admit I lack a very refined “attention to detail” and that I have been known to skip steps for the sake of “expediency” (which did not always turn out to be the

I’m not necessarily a step-by-step person; I use instructions manuals as rough guides or reference material to be used for trouble shooting rather than following it by word for word. So I suppose if I don’t use the step by step approach on a regular basis, does that make it harder for me to explain something to someone else in a step-by-step manner?

Another part of the problem is that I don’t think well on my feet, if someone surprises me with a question I get a bit flustered. Thinking that lost souls really want instant answers get’s me even more flustered and instead of hearing the helpful I-can-give-perfect-directions voice in my head, all I really hear is “Think, think faster, hurry up; say something!!”, which is NEVER very helpful.

I also feel that when giving directions you should be reasonably succinct and I tend to be a little more verbose than most (please stifle the sarcasm and the desire to say “Really? We never would have guessed?”)

I also tend to be a bit directionally challenged, in that I don’t always know which direction North is, and I’m a bad judge of distance. So I can’t easily say to someone “go 1000 metres North, then turn and head 500m West”. I have a friend who could easily do that and I have often thought that he must be part homing pigeon or bee.

So to spare myself some guilty feelings and spare others the frustration of getting bad directions, I’ll turn up my MP3 player, put on my dark sunglasses and hope to heck no one stops me and says “Excuse me”.

PUG Hiccupped

Since I missed commemorating Douglas Adams' birth with this, I thought I'd commemorate his all-too-soon-passing. This is a short story I wrote a few years ago in my attempt at Douglas Adams' style.


PUG hiccupped.

Understandable really, given that PUG was upset. Hiccups were often a symptom of psychological stress. Finding out you’re not alive is rather upsetting. And this realization was one that PUG was trying to come to grips with.

Not only was he not alive now, but he had never been alive. Which was quite a shock to him since he had been operating under the assumption he was alive for several years now.

Therefore PUG was upset. But given the fact that he wasn’t alive, he reasoned, he probably couldn’t really be upset either.

PUG sighed. Now not only was he upset he was getting depressed too.

He tried to think logically about his not being alive.

He reasoned that all the feelings he thought he’d had up to this point he really hadn’t. He reasoned that all his jobs and past accomplishments weren’t his – if they had ever been done at all. He reasoned that all his thoughts and plans were now moot.

He also reasoned that he probably couldn’t rightly run around considering himself a “he” since not being alive probably meant not having any gender to speak of.

Actually, he couldn’t run around at all because he didn’t have legs – he just sat there. Come to think of it he’d always just sat there.

He supposed he must just be some gender-non-specific-sitting-around-thing.

Now he was getting really depressed.

He hiccupped and sighed simultaneously.

The most depressing thing about his whole situation, he reasoned, was the fact that, since he wasn’t alive but was clearly depressed, he couldn’t even manage to kill himself.

This being the most depressing thought he’d ever managed to come up with made him realize that if he just stopped thinking that he’d probably be better off.

Thinking had been what had got him into this mess in the first place and thinking certainly hadn’t been any comfort since he had, since beginning to think on the matter, managed to go from being mildly upset to ragingly suicidal.

Thinking had been the cause of all his problems, so if he stopped thinking he reasoned finally, he would stop having problems.

So he did.



Sebastian was sitting looking at Processing Unit Gamma (or PUG for short) with a puzzled look on his face.

“What’s wrong?” Mira asked.

“I’m not sure, the unit seemed to hiccup, sigh then hiccup and sigh at the same time and then it just stopped working. Now it just sits there.”

My Mental Gymnast has a Broken Leg

There have been days (seemingly an increasing number as of late) where I seem unable to think properly. I catch myself staring gormlessly at the computer screen when I should be doing work.
I have to will myself to think and even then willing isn’t enough; I need to perform mental gymnastics but apparently, my gymnast has broken a leg.

Some times, I head down a logic path for a certain length of time before I decide I’m so turned around that throwing out the solution entirely is easier than trying to figure out where I went wrong. Maybe this is less of a broken leg and more of a large cramp.

I don’t know what causes me to have brain-dead days; maybe lack of sleep, lack of exercise, or lack of proper nutrition. I hear fish is brain food, maybe I need to be more piscivorous (turn up the tuna and let the intelligence flow; maybe then things would go more swimmingly).

This psychological paralysis is not limited to my working life, alas, no. It also pervades my blogging and emailing existence too. Many a time I have had an idea for a blog that I have been unable to evolve past infancy due to lack of mental acuity. The idea languishes and dies or, under more ideal circumstances, is resurrected weeks later when my “creative juices” have reconstituted themselves.

I take come comfort in knowing that everyone I have talked to about this has days like these, I am not alone in having this apparent shortcoming.

Yet it still frustrates me. It frustrates me because I like forward progress. I like accomplishing things. Is this desire for forward progress something the majority of people share? Or is it just a few of us who go slowly (or not so slowly) crazy due to lack of progress – or is it just me?

Why do I feel the need for forward progress? Why not be content to just mentally limp through the day, accomplishing little; I’m still getting paid, heck I might even learn something from the faltering pace. And yet it still annoys me.

Maybe I feel life is passing me by – making progress justifies my day – justifies my existence; if I’m just wasting time, what’s the point.

Or maybe I need to redefine what progress means to me – often times I have been told; it’s the journey, not the destination that matters. Maybe looking for constant forward progress is a mug’s game.

Or maybe; like with exercise, sometimes we get fatigued and just need to take a day or two off. Maybe all my Mental Gymnast needs from me is a little patience and understanding while she takes a couple of days to kickback, relax and put her feet up in order to make her fresh and prepared for the next cranial contortion contest.