Tweet Saves Our Club

Just over a week ago I got onto Twitter, dubious and nervous about how to use it. About 4 days ago, however, our hobby club was saved by one single tweet from the President of the Gaming Club Network. I suppose I need to explain a few things so that you can get your head around how big a deal this was for us.

KIA Gaming Club was set up by a bunch of volunteers about 4 or so years ago (my memory is really bad with dates!) by three friends, of which I was one. I was originally the nominal leader and, to make life easy for ourselves, we opted to join the Gaming Club Network (aka GCN).

The GCN is a national volunteer-led organisation which provides small hobby clubs like us with several benefits, such as really low-cost public liability insurance and free Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks on people who join the Committee. That adds up to giving us the ability to only charge £1 per 6-hour meeting, plus ensure that no one with responsibility in the club has any previous criminal convictions that we should be aware of. I’m sure you’ll agree, that’s pretty important stuff.

The only thing we are required to do by the GCN is to annually renew our membership (free!) and bi-annually re-check our leadership via the CRB system. If you don’t do these things, the GCN will revoke membership – which for us would mean a massive cost increase, and the viability of the club long-term would be under serious threat. We literally would be hiking meeting costs, which would lose us members, and so on.

Sometime towards the end of last year I received a renewal letter and form to return, which I dutifully filled out and posted. Turns out, however, that my form never made it… and I didn’t know. I have since discovered that three emails and several phone messages also never made it to me – probably because the contact information the guys at GCN HQ had were out of date. The plot thickens.

This is how it happened. We were on the brink of losing our GCN membership. The GCN Secretary posted a message into their website forum (which I helpfully rarely check!) asking if anyone knew whether a list of clubs was still going. Our was on that list. I would never have spotted the message. We would have lost our membership.

Richard, the President of the GCN, had also just joined Twitter. We had literally just decided to follow one-another. For those of you not on Twitter, this basically means we were connected and communicating openly.

Richard saw the forum post. Richard tweeted me the link. Within seconds I was on that forum, posting a response. Within an hour I had confirmed the club details and emailed an electronic copy of the form to the GCN Secretary. Within  a day the whole matter was dealt with and apologies were accepted.

Twitter saved our club.

Gonna Run a Mile

Having just got my training shoes dusted off last week, I’ve taken the rash decision to enter the Sport Relief Nottingham Mile, aiming to fund-raise £100.

Sport Relief takes place from Friday 19th to Sunday 21st March, as the UK receives the clarion call to get active and raise some money to help change lives. All the money raised by the public is spent by Comic Relief to help transform the lives of poor and vulnerable people, both at home and across the world’s poorest countries. The Nottingham Mile is on the Sunday, and I’ll be in Wave 1A @ 10.30am.

What’s this all about then? Well, to be honest, it’s an opportunity to bring two good things together: setting myself a challenging goal + supporting Sport Relief at the same time.

Let’s not hide the fact that March 21st, 6 weeks or so from now, is an excellent timeframe for me to train towards my 30 minutes continuous running goal. Running the mile is a good and fun way to celebrate my move from zero exercise towards some measure of fitness and activity within the first 3 months of the year. If I can add £100 to the charity coffers at the same time, then so much the better for everyone!

That’s not to say that I am not totally nervous about the whole thing. Having filled out the online forms and entered, I sat there, staring at the computer screen thinking, “What are you doing?!” I’ve not run any kind of distance since I was a teenager – some 20 years or more – and running a mile is no mean feat. It’s going to be a challenge of the mind as much as anything else. Perhaps the sponsorship will keep me focused and encouraged to carry through on the promise to run.

If anyone out there would like to sponsor me, you can do it online really easily – either with a card or Paypal. Please click through to www.mysportrelief.com/che and stick a pledge in the pot.

Just £100 will make a difference to a lot of folk, and your £1 can help me reach that target.

Thanks for all of your support!

Walk-Run Begun

About three months or so ago I went out an got fitted for a lovely pair of Mizuno Waverider running shoes. This week I finally got off my lardy backside and started to run. Well, more accurately, I re-started walk-run training… but it is better than warming the sofa.

Drastic though this sounds for me, it’s actually been a really good fun thing to do. Putting on my running shoes and heading out into the evening air after work gives me access to some clear-head time as I start to work towards my first goal: 30 minutes of continuous running.

For anyone who’s interested, the short explanation of what walk-run training is goes something like this:

• You start out by training for 30 minutes (plus a little extra for warm-up / cool-down).
• You also start out by running for 30 seconds, and then walking for a rest period.
• The most basic interval would be 1x 30 second run, with a 29.5 minute walk.
• The idea is to build first towards 12x 30 seconds run, with 2 minute walking intervals.
• Then you aim to stretch the 30 seconds running until you can remove the walking intervals – presto, 30 mins running!

I guess to anyone who knows about running it’s all very basic and passé. For me, it’s been a doorway into a new fitness activity, and it feels great to get started. As of today, I am completing 7x 30 seconds run, 3.75 minutes walk intervals, and pushing it up one level every two runs. Doesn’t sound too impressive, but believe me 12 years of office-working and zero exercise takes a little time to tackle.

Why am I blogging this? Well, one of the key motivational elements for me is that if I share what I am doing I can keep myself focused on continuing. If I stop running, everyone who knows me gets to boo and jeer and generally remind me of my goals. In that spirit, I’d ask anyone who reads this to bug me if I don’t blog the odd update from time-to-time.

Now, where are my Waveriders?

Photography

For my wife’s birthday we went out and bought her a new digital camera. The last couple of days have, therefore, been filled with photography. This is nothing slick or professional, but rather the experimentations of a couple of enthusiastic amateurs.

What is it about photographs that so inspires and delights us? I suppose, from my own experience, it has a lot to do with the power of a visual image as it stimulates the right-brain. In a single moment, our minds can process the image and attribute meaning, accessing memory if it’s a personal photo. We connect with emotions, memory, imagination and ideas in a mere instant.

This week, rather than blather on, I have decided just to post a couple of photos from our experimentations. Enjoy!

Imaginary Sky Fairy?

I was recently told by somebody that their view of me had been diminished because they had come to realise that I worshipped the, “imaginary sky fairy”. At the time, even coming from someone I didn’t really know at all well, this struck me as a very dismissive attitude. I didn’t have the words to respond, something for which I am grateful in hindsight. Yet, the incident has left me wondering just why people feel the need to be so aggressive towards people of faith, especially if they genuinely believe that our God, gods and goddesses are “imaginary”.

I am led to believe that the vast majority of human beings profess some kind of belief, or faith, in religious or spiritual beings, realms and powers. It is significant that so few people, perhaps only 10% of the global population, don’t. As I have grown up, here in England, I have noticed the steady and powerful growth of “spirituality” movements. What does this tell us about our need for spiritual fulfilment?

As a young man I was raised to believe that there was no God, in the Christian, Judaistic or Islamic sense of the word. I remember seeking spiritual sense and reaching out for some way of not only understanding the world around me, but also of giving it some value.

For me, the world of no meaning, where we are but souless vehicles for our genetic material, and in which there is no purpose to life except that which we make for ourselves – that world was cold, dark, and somehow, to my young mind, unacceptable. I remember that my searching turned towards trying to gain some control over the world. I gained an interest in magick, the power to influence and change the world to make it conform to my will. I now see that desire echoed in the behaviours and words of many people around me, even if they don’t express it through magickal practices.

The God I worship, the Christian one, does not live in the sky. He transcends the creation he has made. He is above it in the sense of being superior to it. And he is also beyond our classification in the human sense of things. To help us understand him, he came to live as Jesus of Nazareth, personalising his revelation.

The God I serve is not a fairy. He is not a means for me to have magickal wishes granted, or some creature that can cast a glamour over the world around me. I serve him, not the other way around. My spirituality begins in service, to live as best as I can in conformity to his wishes.

The God I serve is not imaginary. He touched my life in a direct and powerful way, a personal way, so that I could recognise him. Since then, he has influenced and directed my life in ways that probably number more than I am aware, and yet which are eminently practical and physical. Real change in my life, my personality, my actions, my attitudes, my emotions, and my mind.

I was blind to all of that for my first 18 years. I couldn’t see the God who called me. I couldn’t hear him. I don’t think I really wanted to either: I was too busy trying to control the world I lived in.

If you are against faith, just ask yourself why. For me, I was believing what other people told me. I was emotionally hurting, and not taking the time to search out the truth of the world. Reality is not as rock-solid, factual, and simple as you might think.

There are more things…

Not really done a lot…

Christmas 2009 turned into New Year 2010 (at least, as someone said to me the other day, New Year by Gregorian standards) yet I have to confess I’ve not really done very much. I mean, I can honestly admit to having suffered a pretty icky dose of the Common Cold… but is it really an excuse?

That leads me to ask the question: what are you meant to do over Christmas and New Year? I mean, let’s be honest, in Britain and most of the West, it’s a holiday… right? What, then, is a valid way to spend your holiday?

Why, you might ask, am I even asking such a dumb question? And why do I keep using all of those comma-laden sentences? Deep questions indeed.

It’s a question of purpose. It’s also asking, “when is it appropriate to take a break from your purpose?”

If I believe or decide (depending on my world view) that I have purpose in life, then does that purpose define every waking moment? If my purpose was centred around my work, I sense that most people would say that it was sensible and responsible to take a holiday from my work. Yet, when our purposes are not centred around our work… then do we ever give ourselves appropriate rest?

Surely rest starts within and can only be really experienced once you genuinely rest from all of your efforts? For many of us, our purposes in life are not things we can easily walk away from in a physical sense.

Is it, then, appropriate to put aside, for a few days, those things which are important to us, to our purposes, and to embrace restfulness? I believe that it is… yet I find myself tempted towards guilt for doing so. Certainly, if every day was without purpose, I sense that I would feel wasted and lost. I find it interesting, however, that the busy-ness of life and purpose leads us into an inability to sit still and quiet for even a few minutes.

I was challenged a few months ago: I was asked to sit quiet and still, saying nothing, making no movement save my breathing, for one hour. No thinking either. Just quietness and stillness.

I found that to be one of the most difficult and agonising trials of my recent life… at least at first. If you don’t think it’s hard, that I am exaggerating, then I suggest that you just try it. Maybe it’s just me… but to sit quiet and still was not an easy task. It felt unnatural. I could hear my mind telling me I was wasting time. I wanted to fidget. I wanted to solve problems that came to mind. I had to stop myself… physically and mentally shut down my habits. And yet, in that quiet solitude and stillness, I began to unlock something good and peaceful. I began to gain control on the inside of my being. I suspect that one of the secrets of personal freedom lies in solitude and silence: if you can sit still and silent for long periods of time, then I believe you will learn the discipline to endure many things.

So… I’ve not really done a lot. I am actually quite pleased about that, in a weird way. I’ve had a genuine rest (despite the horrid cold) and I have had time to recover from the stresses of last year. Tomorrow is a new day in a new week in a new year at work. Whatever lies ahead, whether from my work or my “greater purposes”, I feel I have had the space to prepare for 2010. Of course, in a week I’ll be feeling tired and pressured… so perhaps this year I need to go back and practice that place of silence and “do-nothingness”.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!

Well, as the Muppets would sing, “There’s one more sleep ’til Christmas day.” I’m in work until lunchtime and then it’s home for a warm drink and something tasty for lunch. Excitement and anticipation is building.

For me, Christmas is very much a celebration. My wife and I both love the whole Christmas affair, and treat it with both the sincerity and the good humour required. As my father once said to me, “Christmas is a time for feasting, merriment, and silliness.”

This year, we’re spending it with friends. A meal shared on the big day, then Boxing Day to recover. Sunday sees the “Big Day of Games” at our house, with different friends visiting. No doubt we’ll be off to the movies on Monday – we quite fancy that new Sherlock Holmes film. Yet, the highlight is a time shared in the spirit of Christmas celebration.

To be honest, we could both do with the break. It’s been a challenging year for most people I know. More than anything, folk seem tired and jaded. The “R-word” has loomed large for too many months. Yet, 2010 holds out (as does every New Year) promise and hope for something greater, something better. It is hope that fuels my Christmas: hope for the years ahead, and hope for the greater future to come.

Bacon, mushrooms and fried bread for breakfast. Roasted Turkey lunch. A bottle of red wine for supping. Oh, and praise for the gift from God, Jesus.

Merry Christmas!

Are we ready?

Christmas is four days away. This is the time of year when we nominally celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ. This is the northern hemisphere’s winter soltice festival, first Christianised and then Commercialised. Are we ready?

As a Christian, on the fourth Sunday in Advent, I have been thinking about my own readiness to receive what God seeks to give me in the person of Jesus. It has led me back to not only the story of Jesus’ birth, but also that of his last instruction to his followers: “…go out into the world and make disciples of all people, teaching them to obey everything I have taught you…”

Sobering stuff, as I am not convinced that we Christians really know what it means to live as Jesus’ followers – his disciples, doing everything that he taught us. Yet, until we receive his words and act upon them I fear that we have little chance of convincing others of the value of this unique life. That is what is at stake: life, in all its fullness and richness.

I am really excited about Christmas 2009: it is the time in which I can accept the gift sent to me and begin living in a fresh, Jesus kind of a way. I know that I will stumble and fall over and fail… and yet, I know that this won’t matter in the long-run. It is the living that counts. It is God who will pick me up, fill me with his courage and Spirit, and send me on again… and again… and again. Like the child who falls, skins a knee, cries, gets picked up, and then is sent on to run again… once more smiling and shouting with the joy of it all.

What is Christmas to you? Is it mere shopping and food and alcohol, family and parties, arguements and regrets? This is not what Jesus came to give us. This is what we’ve reduced it to, returning to our pre-Christian roots. If that’s your kettle of fish, your kind of Christmas, then I wish you well. Yet, I hope you won’t complain to God about how it turns out for you. He wants something more for all of us… if we will but accept his gift.

There is more – so much more – to life than any of us has ever dreamt possible. And yet I know, given the chance to let it happen, I will be falling back down to the life we choose with a bump so very soon. We are the inconsistent ones. It is we who limit our vision and who long to stay in our own, safe conception of how the world should be. And soon enough, sure enough, we will be blaming God when it all goes wrong.

Are we ready to take a long, honest look at ourselves in comparison to what Christ offers? Actually opening Luke’s Gospel this week and reading the words, absorbing the story of Jesus’ birth, I was struck by how little that I thought I knew matched what Luke actually wrote.

Here is a young couple in a country under the shadow of the world’s mightiest Empire. The woman with child, despite being a virgin, no doubt struggling with what the people all around them would be thinking: “Yeah, sure… like she’s not been sleeping around… Poor Joseph.” She goes to visit her cousin, Elizabeth, and in spite of all that must be going on around her, this Mary sings a song of thanks and celebration for the gift of the baby in her womb. She believes what angels tell her – as irrational as that seems to the rest of us – and she looks forward to what her son will go on to do. What a faithful, simple and wonderful attitude she displays.

Are we ready for Christmas? Or have we given up before we even start?

Living in Circles

This last couple of weeks, I have been re-visiting the work of Stephen Covey – notably, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People”. One of the most compelling ideas, right in the Private Victory section, is the difference between our Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

I was talking to someone this week about an interview they had attended. It was one of those really long days when you get grilled by multiple people, with different exercises that culminate in a personal interview. This particular lady told me how, after each section of the day, she found herself worrying about whether or not she had done enough. There was a constant sense of looking over her shoulder which would then impact, probably negatively, her ability to focus on the next task. I found myself reflecting that her situation was probably not uncommon, and was entirely relevant to this matter of Circles.

At the moment we are doing any activity we have the power to direct our abilities and influence that situation. As Covey writes, between the stimulus of the situation and the actions we take there lies the freedom to choose our behaviour. With practice and concentration, we can expand our powers of choice and exercise our freedom in an upward spiral. We cannot control other people, but we can influence their choices through choosing our words and actions with care.

In the situation of the lady I mentioned, she had absolute control over how she would react during each exercise of the day. She could choose to contribute to the discussion at hand, and also choose how she would behave. The words, tone, and movements of her body were all within her Circle of Influence. Actually, the whole event was inside that Circle of Influence. Until, that is, it ended.

Once each activity ended, then it entered her Circle of Concern. Those things she can no longer influence lie in this space. Her challenge was to choose to let go of that which she could not control and continue to focus on her Circle of Influence – the next activity. By focusing on the decision of the interviewers about the last activity, she was allowing her Concern to usurp her Influence. This is a critical problem to overcome.

We all do it – we worry about the things we cannot control and influence. I, for one, am concerned about all those nukes that I grew up worrying about. Yet, we cannot change those things until we gain influence over them. As I am not the Prime Minister, I have no power over the nuclear deterrant. Equally, our friend in the interview lost the power to influence each exercise the moment that each particular activity ended. It was irrelevant whether or not she had done enough – now the challenge was to focus on doing enough in the next activity. Once the day was over, worrying was going to do no good: she must exercise the discipline of patience and waiting. Pass or fail at that interview, her next choice would be how to react to the outcome.

This is a lesson for me and one that deeply questions how I live each day. I worry, as I suspect do many of us, about countless things. Yet spending time on those worries is time away from acting with influence on my life. Instead of focusing on my concerns, perhaps I should focus on the things I want to achieve, the commitments I have made or want to make. Perhaps I should look at the lives of people around me and seek to turn my worry into action that will positively benefit those lives. I don’t think it’s as easy at it sounds, but I choose to give it a go.

Driven Crazy

Now I am driving, I have come to realise that the roads are filled with people who seem to have a deathwish. From cyclists with no lights at night, through to van drivers who act as though the Devil himself is on their tail, I have been amazed at how little regard these people seem to have for both their own safety and that of others.

We bought our first car back in March this year – doing our bit to help the automotive business out of recession, some have suggested. Actually, we just finally felt there was enough need to warrant buying a car, after 15 years of married life without one. As a driver getting back out there it was a slow and steady start for me, admittedly nervous having only ever driven hire-cars for about 21 years.  Yet, 8 months later, here we are merrily driving to work daily.

This morning, tootling along one of the main roads out of our town long before dawn, I observed yet another cyclist with a deathwish: a lady on a bike on the left of the road pulled across the traffic (a couple of cars ahead of me) and then turned right down the junction peddling blithley down the right hand side of the road. There were no hand signals, there was no warning of the maneouvre, she had no lights on the bike, and she was dressed in dark clothes.

The other day, driving home along the ring-road on the outskirts of our city, I witnessed a car essentially weaving through the fairly heavy traffic. This fellow was undertaking cars in the outside lane, then whipping across to that right-hand lane to overtake the next car, and so on. As the car didn’t sport any emergency service markings, I can only assume that this person had somewhere they needed to be dreadfully quickly. Enough, obviously, to risk life and limb.

Last week, again driving out of the city, we passed a small family car impaled on the wall of a residential garden. I do mean impaled: it was a good 2-3 feet off the ground, the underside torn and having caused the low wall to partially collapse. The front was mangled. Looking inside, we could see a child seat in the back dislodged slightly. We could see the air bag, limp in front of the driver’s seat. Broken glass and, no doubt, broken people involved. From the scene, it was clear that the driver had turned left at the junction too fast and had needed to avoid something in path… and then veered across to the right-hand side of the road, and  up onto the wall. A sobering sight, especially assuming the child seat had been full.

This week, writing to help people who need to find new jobs, I have been reminded about our own personal responsibility. Translating Stephen Covey’s “First Habit” of Proactivity out onto the road, I realised that we all are responsible for the choices we make each second of the journey to and from work. The consequences of our poor choices, whether they lead to a near-miss or our own death, are entirely the consequences of our choices combined with the choices of the other road-users around us.

Even if everyone else is ignoring the rules and driving like insane devils, do we not bear the responsibility to slow down? Should we not remember and act upon the adage, “mirror, signal, maneuvre”? Do we really owe it to ourselves to ride out in the dark dressed in black and without a single light on our bikes? Should we not practice courtesy and respect for others while in our little warm boxes with wheels?

Imagine you are waiting in a queue and someone walked along the outside of that queue, ignoring everyone else, and then pushed in ahead of you. How would you feel? Probably pretty annoyed. Yet, night after night on the way home, I see people do just this very thing in their cars. All for the sake of a few seconds gain in the traffic jam.

I’m far from being a good driver. I make mistakes. I probably irratate the heck out of others when I let someone slip out of a side road by slowing down. I do, however, encourage myself to remain focused and calm. It’s the best way, I’ve discovered, to stay alive and get home safely – calm, focused, and patient.

Happy driving!