Saturday 12 October 2013

#42 Some new things

It was her idea. A way of kindling our friendship perhaps, or the inevitable product of an adventurous mind. For the past few weeks, Lela and I had been trying a new thing each week. So far, she'd ridden as a passenger on a motorbike (for a change, as opposed to riding it herself), been to a Megadeth & Sabbath concert on her birthday and next she was thinking about purchasing and I'm told, wearing, a dress.

I'd managed to get off fairly lightly so far. Things like making a video of myself singing Hey Jude, joining a library, reading an Agatha Christie novel and talking to a stranger. I noticed that these little exercises hadn't hurt my spirit of inquisitiveness either. I now appear to have a smartphone and have tried a couple of new things in the kitchen lately too. Lela doesn't get all of the credit for this but she gets some.

The whole 'try new things and get out of your comfort zone' thing didn't really feel like me yet but my plan was to take ownership of the new things that I wanted to do over the next two or three weeks in particular and pick challenges that I could really identify with. After that, Lela could have some fun with the suggestions again and perhaps the process would have fused better with my identity. Maybe over time, it would help me to adopt a broader outlook. What an amazing gift.

As someone that shunned self help books exclusively, I think my Brazilian friend naturally exhibited a few of the traits that those kinds of authors incessantly plugged. Maybe she never needed the books. I'd tried some of that stuff in the past and I think it helped with my running and my work last year. Then again, I was probably just running because Mark and Tim started doing it. I guess if you've got the right books and the right friends, you're in a pretty good situation.


1 comment

Running on empty said...

The last sentence says it all, kinda. Trying new things is good. Choosing a few of them and adding them to your lifestyle can also be good.