Checking In
It’s been awhile.
It would be easy to create excuses for the lack of writing, but the honest truth comes down to me not making the time and adapting to the changes that occur in life. I had intended to write this before now. I woke up with a major headache earlier in the week from the forest fire smoke sinking into the Okanagan valley from Kamloops and other areas of the Interior. Last week, during the most somber Canada Day I have ever experienced, work appointments get shifted to first thing in the morning rather than the afternoon, and then other things came up with work. By the end of the day, I was too worn out to write and put it off.
The previous days- well, you get the idea. Other things come up to derail my plans and then instead of putting off other things in order to write, I put off the writing and make other things priority. Of course, the other things tend to be less important than writing (watching too much hockey and basketball, or watching the sequel to The Corporation) which is not a blueprint for success. So, instead of putting off the writing, yet again, I finished another drink to put my fingers to the keyboard and quit delaying things.
It’s been a long time since I wrote something. Nearly three months have gone by from my last blog post. It feels like a lot has happened but when I think about it, nothing of real significance has happened apart from one unexpected event.
At the end of April, I was finishing a SkipTheDishes shift coming down from a residential area of Kelowna by the airport. I was driving along a road to an intersection that had previously been a four way stop. It was only a two way stop and I had the right of way. A van drove through the intersection well ahead of me. As I reached the intersection, the truck behind the van was driving through the intersection. Next thing I remember was me spinning, coming to a stop then driving to the side of the road to assess the damage.
At first, I chalked it up to an honest mistake of the driver thinking it was a four way stop like it had been for a long time. When the driver came over and presented an Ontario drivers licence, I had to shake my head. His carelessness derailed my next month. I was physically fine, thankfully. The insurance agency in BC declared my vehicle a write-off though. They offered a cash settlement that I thought was reasonable so I accepted. It was only afterwards when I was researching a replacement vehicle that I had the choice between taking an older SUV, a car, or take a chance on a newer SUV that was priced to sell. I took the latter option and it’s been a bit more expensive with the extra work that has been put into it. There will be additional expenses to come too with new tires and brakes.
It’s funny how life happens in an instant that changes your plans for the immediate future. The only reason why I have been working as a SkipTheDishes courier is to pay off debt. It’s slightly ironic that this accident happens while I’m working on Skip, and will set me behind later this fall.
The last few months after the accident have been spent adjusting to driving a rental then a new vehicle, and planning on how to cover the future costs. I keep working hard to get further in life and hate how things keep happening to knock me back a step or two. I know I have to double my efforts to get back ahead, and I keep working at it, but man, is it ever tiresome. I never would have thought in my late 20s when I was in management at two hotels that over ten years later I would be working three jobs to break even.
As I enter July, I think, “This month will be the tipping point.”
Of course, I said the same about June, and May before the accident happened. The lesson through all this has been that I can’t allow myself to be comfortable and take my foot off the pedal. Every time I ease up, something happens to push me back. The only solution is to harness that momentum to keep pushing me forward so when life does happen, it only slows me down a little bit and isn’t discouraging me from taking further action.
While the summer heats up here in Kelowna, hitting record highs in the mid-40s last week, I need to use the sun as fuel to propel me further ahead in life and stop creating excuses for myself. The excuses, the over-analyzing of “what if’s,” need to stop if I am going to get anywhere in life.
