Pa[(s)]t(ense)

Whenever I have the title written before the blog, I always laugh because to me it seems so clear, but I’m pretty sure 99% of people don’t understand my titles.

A quick side tangent to try and explain the masterpiece. This one was originally going to be Pat(ense). The ( ) are usually the spelling of another word, but you use the first letter beside the ( to make the word. In this case ‘tense’. I put the ( ) there because essentially I want the full word to be pronounced like patience, although clearly spelled incorrectly. Why put tense in there you ask? Well, because that’s what this blog is going to be about. Trying to get through the tense times and learning patience.

As you can see I added the ’s’ in there as a bonus, extra confusion. I put the [ ] to symbolise that you can completely get rid of the ’s’ if you want to. If you keep the ’s’ it is to signify past tense, as in your tension is in the past because now you have learned patience.

Probably not the clearest explanation, but at least there is some insight. Now have fun going back to my other titles and see if you can pick up on some them.

Onto the actual blog now…

As we all know.. life has been rough for the entire world. What have we done with the time? Eh, vastly different things I’m sure. For me, I’d say I’d learned a new level of patience.

Just trying to rewind to the beginning of all of the mess makes me take a deep breath. Weird because it seems so long ago, but yet it also feels like it happened so fast.

Pre-COVID I was on the up. Finally finding my tracks in Aussie. Had a full time contract job that was to last three months, started playing basketball again for the first time in eight years, was making friends, felt like I had my feet planted pretty well.

Fast forward a month, basketball season cancelled, contract cancelled, and friends, well some stayed and some went. For that I am happy because I’m now surrounded by the best group of mates with such a wide range of perspectives that allows us all to learn and grow off one another. A strong bond to say the least.

As great as these friends are though with the lovely restrictions in place and the addition of life, well it’s not exactly realistic to be with them 24/7. Then, there you are left alone with your thoughts. Perhaps the place that you were trying to avoid.

I went through a whirlwind of emotions. The freak out stage of what the heck am I doing, is it realistic to stay in Australia, how long is this thing going to last. The content stage of getting use to ‘the new normal’ understanding that I’m going to be fine and eventually at some point the world will go back to it’s typical agenda, but for now I will enjoy my time at home. The confused stage of it’s been a few months now, am I making the right decisions, am I happy, do I have issues, who am I, what do I want in life and am I using my time to put myself in the best position to get there. The don’t fuck with me stage of I’m the captain now, I’m going to do what I want, I’m going to chase these unknown dreams of mine and work my butt off to get there. Where? I don’t know, but I’m heading somewhere. The exhausted phase of I’ve been working too hard to not see results and feel like I’ve made no progress forward perhaps only sideways. Finally, the payout stage. Everything seems to finally be falling in place and Adelaide at least seems to be returning to normal as much as possible.

I know that seems like a lot of stages, but that’s really probably only a third of the stages I went through in such a short amount of time.

Let’s just say I’m not the easiest to put up with it.

With all these thoughts came a lot of mental timelines that I wanted to be completed. Completed at a unrealistic rate and with an agenda that no one knew except myself.

Yes, now you see the tense part of the title aye.

Tension, anticipation, stress.

I just wanted answers.

Answers for my future. Answers to things that were going on in my life that I did not understand. Answers to what I really wanted to do with my life and how I felt that I would make the biggest impact.

Answers. Everyone loves answers especially when it comes with a good explanation.

For a long time, I didn’t get any.

Restrictions were going to remain in place meaning that finding a job was practically impossible especially only being on a work and holiday visa. Questions that I wanted answers to I was too afraid to ask so those would never come. I knew were my passion in life was, but I didn’t understand how that would be turned into a role.

Honestly, I just couldn’t see the end.

The path of the unknown.

Finally (and luckily) I had enough of myself and decided that I need to stop focusing on all the things that I can’t control and to focus on the now. You know, it’s really easy to try and say the things like don’t give up, you can do this, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, small steps, things like that. When you’re in the middle of it all though, you’re just like that doesn’t mean anything to me.

Don’t give up. What am I giving up? What do I have to give up? What light? Didn’t even know I was in a tunnel. I’m not even sure what direction the light is at this point. Small steps, I woke up and brushed my teeth. I’ll call it a success.

I had to get rid of all the sayings and just analyse each moment of the day. Seems exhausting, but it’s what helped me. I made a list of the things I knew I wanted to accomplish and then did some self check ins to see how I was feeling to see what order I wanted to go about my day.

This too of course was a learning process. I started out with wanting to accomplish a minimum of 5-7 things on any given day because I felt like the more that I accomplished the better I was for it. I soon realised that I was exhausted and feeling like I actually wasn’t accomplishing anything because I was half ass-ing all of my tasks just to get them done.

Quality over quantity.

Reduce the amount of task. Focus on what is at hand. Treat yourself to a morning tea. Switch it up and move on.

Give yourself a good variety for the day so it’s not all focused on something similar or requiring you to sit still.

I use to dedicate days to applying for jobs. I’d wake up and sit down and start filtering though jobs and applying for them, for the entirety of the day. It seemed nice enough to say I applied for seven jobs a day, but there were multiple failures in that process. Firstly, I wasn’t putting enough detail in them and wasn’t catering my CV to the appropriate audience. Secondly, I’d spend so much time doing them in one day that it put me off wanting to even look at jobs for another week (so at that point I should have just applied for a job a day and I’d have the same result). Thirdly, it’s just not healthy to sit and stare at the screen for that long of time especially when you don’t have to.

For me, I learned that I shouldn’t be doing something for more than 2-3 hours max because a sense of fatigue would start to set in, I’d become easily distracted decreasing my efficiency, and I don’t enjoy just doing one thing.

Ahhh, deep breath.

Slow it down… <—Isn’t that funny. I’m such a slow, chill person as it is, but the thoughts couldn’t be more opposite of my movement.

Yes, patience.

A time to let go of the past pressures and forget about things that have not happened as they may never occur.

Learn more about yourself. Learn what makes you tick and how to balance that trigger. Learn what helps you relax. Learn what energises you.

Learn and then teach.

Teach yourself how to do the things that you are currently failing to do that will ultimately lead to a healthier you. For me, it was teaching myself to let go of the thoughts that were not beneficial to me. Majority of these thoughts were thoughts that I had made up in my head and were not true or thoughts about events that were yet to happen and may never happen due to COVID.

It’s easy to write about these things as if I have it all mastered now, but I certainly don’t.

I still struggle.

Something as simple as waiting on a phone call could throw me off for my entire day because the anticipation drives me insane and I just want to know what they are going to say. I have to constantly tell myself don’t let a potential 30 second phone call determine your entire day.

Things take time.

Life has taught me patience.

Here’s to acknowledging the world struggle and that we are all facing battles that may look drastically different.

Keep doing you my friend, you’ll find your way even if you don’t know what direction you’re headed.

Stay true and be you xx