Firstly, an Apology
To all attendees, speakers, volunteers, sponsors & organisers that were looking forward to seeing the session, meeting up & having a natter in the hallway chat, as well as some of the other people that I wanted to try catch up with in Manchester, I can only apologise for having missed the event entirely.
I have been a mixture of disappointed, frustrated and upset at myself that I was unable to deliver a session, one that I absolutely love delivering, on Mental Health, because mine was and has been suffering so badly on/off (in waves) in recent times.
I genuinely believed up until the Friday Evening just before the event that I could manage to over come all the barriers and make it there. To those that in the days leading up reached out & also since, I am so thankful for you doing so, and I won’t let your kindness go forgotten.
So what happened?
Unfortunately, I have been under far too much & differing stresses, and these all ended up snowballing and basically hitting me all at once (which essentially caused me to go into a state of Stress Paralysis.
The big one, is because of literally everything that has been affecting my life as of late. A short summary, I was almost made homeless & job searching is not going well.The Swimming Pool Analogy is another way of expressing where in the battle of trying to keep your/others head/s above the water and my best to keep yourself/others from drowning, so to speak & I’ve been doing my damn hardest to do this lately.
However I’ll go into a bit more detail on some of the other stresses including those above that I’ve been going through in A few weeks downtime - getting signed off sick due to stress.)
What could I have done differently?
Well firstly I know sometimes I can be slow to switch from optimistic to realistic, or even further and be pessimistic. This time I kept the optimism & attempt to push through for just a bit too long.
- Pre plan & book my travel and accommodation weeks if not months in advance.
- like I would previously have done. However, this is reliant with having enough easily disposable income, which being jobless definitely doesn’t give you.
- Set up more Am I sure I can do this? reminders in the time leading up to it.
- These aren’t needed when generally I am in the Flow State, I mean just look at how many events I have attended or presented at over the years.
- Not tried to sleep & powered through the night before
- I have done this plenty of times, so much so that whilst I know I may not end up being at my best, I at least still show up, and do all I can to be at as best as I can be.
What are my next steps?
Well I am both talking and writing more & more, both of these, along with other things do help in letting go of some of the stress built up over the years.
Will I present in future?
Yes I will do my best, especially as this is one of the things that I really enjoy doing, however I think for the time being I will be looking at remote sessions before committing to in person ones, unless they don’t involve too much travel for the time being.