Project BBTA

Project BBTA

Forgive me blog for I have slipped, it’s been many months since my last post.

I did start a draft on 100 happy days, but felt no urge to complete it.

Lots of this year has sucked, there have been some awesome moments but on the whole… very sucky. It’s time to change that.

Just after I finished 100 happy days I got sick. The arthritis came back in a big bad, I’m struggling to move, kinda way (I won’t bore you with the back story but it stems from food poisoning some years ago – see Reiters posts).

For a couple of weeks my feet and knee were so swollen I could barely stand and had to work from home.

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BTW This isn’t a “oh poor me, give me sympathy” post I just need to write it down as part of my process for moving on.

When the symptoms have flared up before it’s only lasted a week, steroids, boom back to normal. Not this time.

Mentally it was hard but it was some of the stupid things that really got to me: my feet were swelled to the point i couldn’t fit in any of my shoes without severe pain… I had to buy special wide fit old person shoes. Nooooo!

I found the uncertainty challenging. At times feeling like maybe this was it, this was how my life would be now, pain.

Some plans had to change, I wasn’t able to train for Land’s End to John O’Groats and took the soul destroying decision to postpone (I WILL do it next year).

But after months of tests, drugs by the bucket load I’m coming out the other side. I owe a great debt to the team at the RNLI who were so supportive, especially Emily and Nathan.

So, what is project BBTA?

This is the fight back. Time to Bring Back The Awesome!

Now I’m mostly better, my feet and index fingers being the only bits really affected, it’s time to take it up a notch.

There are a few small changes to my life like the medication I’m on means I can’t drink.

I’ve got a list of new things I’m going to try as part of BBTA (post to follow).

I’m also going to make more time to say thanks. Where I encounter people being awesome, I’ll write to their head office to spread the awesome.

Bring it.

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Surfing as a therapy for Reiters?

I’ve had a couple of small relapses of Reiters recently (see Reiters Syndrome for the history) and found something odd…

Surfing seems to make it better.

No, really.

My reiters causes swelling of the left knee and right ankle (that’s the worst affected parts anyway), previously a moderate does of steroids for a week kicks it back into touch… but on Thursday surfing did the job.

Now I thought this had been the case before, but I dismissed it as a co-incidence.

Wednesday I had a bad flare up while I was away with work, so I had no access to the emergency steroids my doctor left with me. Upon my return to Bournemouth I spotted some good swell, despite the pain (visible swelling and heat) in my knee I really wanted to go out.

I surfed for an 90 minutes or so and I’m sure the combo of restriction from the wetsuit plus the cold sea water sorted my knee.  Wow!

Is that even possible? Next time I get a flare up, I’ll be heading into the sea!

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week 5 making progress!

Finally making some progress in cutting down the sugar intake… just the 5 this week, but that’s including 2 days where I had to disrupt my sleeping pattern and then get up early, so I”m happy with that.

Have made the move to dark chocolate, that has to help… and tea I’m now a 1/2 a tsp man (down from 2) so I think I can say the trend is going the right way!

Reiters has declined a bit, knee still gives me grief; Have to wait for a specialist appt (4-6 weeks) to try and figure out the triggers. (What if its a lack of sugar? that’d be hilarious!)

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so how much sugar is that…

so how much sugar is that…

350g sugar

wow. ok when you look at it like that, it’s even worse! Must… drink… less… SUGAR!

I have started to cut back on the sweet stuff generally, eat the odd bit of dark choc as a treat… must.. eat… BETTER!!!

In other news, the Reiters is back and I seem to have an intolerance to dairy, god… I’m a bundle of health. Sorry folks. On steroids again (prescribed btw!) so makes my brain a bit crazy.

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Is anything worth anything anymore?

This is a post I made earlier on dontstayin, it tailored to clubland, but i think it’s very true for culture generally:

DJs – often reduced to glorified ticket agents…

Web Design – I saw someone offering site builds for £50 and a flash “hot box” for £20!

Dancers – I could have a different troop of “dancing” girls every night if I wanted.. for free.. which is actually tempting…

Photographers – any pro-spotters still able to charge more than a few beers n petrol money?

Producers – there’s so many wannabe producers with a whole cracked studio in abox, you can get them for £75 a track now, no wonder beatport is full of clone-a-tracks in the latest electro-tech-hard-mnml-grime-bassline-bouncecore or whatever this weeks cool genre is.

The sad thing is, I haven’t even had to exaggerate to make my point, you can find all these things on DSI without much effort.

Here is my question…

What is worth anything now?

I’m worried everyone is working shite jobs they don’t really like, sitting on facebook and dreaming of being a Dj/dancer/photog/web-designer/cat tamer/reality tv star/singer* (*delete as applicable) when really its only ever going to be a hobby.

Kinda sad, I feel like everyones deluded… or am I talking shit?

/ramble-ends

Problem is, the plan was to work and just enjoy DJing (as above – kinda)… make some tunes and work on the ebook site in evenings… job market = shite still :: agency rang me about a job yesterday, put my CV forward, got a call asking when I was free for interview, I gave dates/times… call back 2 hours later, no longer hiring, MD has made 3 people redundant. 2nd time this has happened – kinda.

Gaaaaah stupid illness, messed Plan A up… now Plan B isn’t working… I kind of have a Plan C forming… pppfffft

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