Voting, Vaccines, and Vegetarianism

 What do these three things have in common?  They are all about making informed decisions and then doing something about it.  Each decision has a repercussion, an outcome.  Even inaction has repercussions and consequences.  

“Informed” is the giant qualifier in the above sentence. It is approaching the information with an open mind and then evaluating it in a non biased manner.  To ask the Why! Then a decision can be made and from that an action.  Be careful, there is misinformation out there that could sway your decision on any of these topics but take heart as there is scientifically proven information also out there.  You just need to dig! To ask questions to people who are educated in the area.

And how do these things relate to Kung Fu? If you are thinking about “To train or not to train?”, either of these paths have outcomes and consequences.  You need to pick through the information surrounding you.  By walking the path of a martial artist, you develop the skills to help you dig deeper to answer those tough questions.  Even more important is that you are aware that an inaction has an impact that is no longer in your control so you work harder at being informed so you can make a decision. You do not quit, no matter how hard it appears.

Voting, Vaccines, and Vegetarianism- get informed, evaluate information unbiased, make a decision and do something about it! (I do not care what your decision is just try to have it unbiased and educated.)

Update - it’s been 9 weeks of Vegetarianism for myself.  63 days so I have surpassed my 50 day goal!  I feel good, I have energy, and my bloodwork is excellent so I am continuing down this path and excited about it.  

Lost my Way

 I’ve been sitting on this post for a week now.  Just wasn’t ready to share it but after our boot camp, I am ready!  

My Kung Fu journey comes with personal struggles.  Whose doesn’t?  For me it’s my medical health.  I do not mean the shoulder or the knee injuries that I am dealing with.  It is the Polycythemia Vera (a bone marrow disease that is treated with a chemo drug that put me on the immune compromised list). It is the Crohn’s disease that resulted in GI surgery that took some of my small intestine, and Thyroid Cancer that was treated with surgery and radioactive iodine.  This year had health issues again rising to the forefront.  Earlier in the year, my bloodwork was showing a change which is the sign that the PV is metastasizing. Luckily it was just a response to an infection and my health team is comfortable where everything is at.  Then last week I got my results from a skin biopsy on my nose and found out that I have micronodular basal cell cancer (a type of skin cancer).  So Nov 1 I will be going to the dermatology clinic to have a MOHs procedure where they cut away layer by layer until they get all the cancer removed.  

I am pretty positive about these things and work hard to have a positive attitude.  I have a plan, I have an action, I move forward.  I need to be positive, it is my coping mechanism.  But can positivity be bad?  I am realizing that I am using positivity as a way to downplay what is happening.  I am not allowing myself to fully appreciate the feelings and concerns that arise. I am not ignoring things, I have a plan and an action and in my mind I think there is nothing to worry about.  It's minor in the big picture of things that could go wrong but this thinking is where positivity can be bad.  It does not allow for the feelings of myself or others to be accepted, to be validated.  That is wrong!  If we don't acknowledge them and process them then it is as bad as ignoring them.  I may shut the door to my families feelings by being so positive, I even shut the door to my feelings.

This new challenge did cause a bit of panic and I see it in my training.  My normal routine went out the window and I started to change my training even though it has been working so well in the past. Thoughts on how can I progress faster because I "think" my recovery outage will be a week but I won't know until the time comes.  My journaling also went out the window, both in my numbers and in the quality of my journaling.   I haven't been sleeping well and I've been throwing PVCs (extra heart beats - I do that when stressed) so there is still more going on in that little brain of mine. My brain and my body are out of sync so I need to figure out how to bring them back.  It might be remnants of the busy week with the upgrade but I don’t think that’s the root cause.  I need to dig deeper and make sure.  I am so looking forward to the meditation portion of boot camp!  For now I am returning back to journaling my numbers, back to forms, back to what I was doing before.

Flexibility at Work

 If I have learnt anything over the last year, it is how to be flexible.  This has been evident in my work, at home, and my Kung Fu training.  I have blogged about my great work team before. Without a great team, my job would be so much harder to do.  I work in healthcare IT and I can tell you the last 15 years have been anything but boring or mundane.  The last 4 years have been the most exciting with a constant whirlwind of activity.  Previously my job was to lead the local team who support the laboratory applications.  Over two years ago, I took over the provincial transfusion application IT team and this summer it expanded to Transfusion, Transplant and Cellular Therapy.  Currently we have deployed the new Transfusion application to 40 hospitals and "only" have 71 more hospitals to go.  This is on top of my old applications that are still hanging around for awhile at least.  

Then change came Covid.  We continue to have delays as our hospital systems cope with the increasing stress of the ill.  Even in IT, there are many additional hours due to Covid.  Adding new ICU or overflow beds (even new treatment facilities) into the systems so patients can have lab work, testing platforms  constantly change requiring new test set ups, reporting of results, the addition of convalescent plasma, and the list goes on.  Flexibility to keep up with the changing times.

And on top of all this is the upgrade/changes that we are doing this week.  Tonight night we have a one hour outage and then tomorrow we have a 7.5 hour outage starting at 21:00.  I will be there with my staff, helping to coordinate, freeing them up to do their jobs, removing their roadblocks.  Never a dull moment!

But the biggest flexibility lesson I have learnt this last year is the balance of work life with home.  I use to be so involved in my work that the stress literally made me sick.  My family suffered, my health suffered.  It took me being hospitalized just before our first roll out to really sink in that I am not indispensable.  I am not that important.  I reorganized my priorities (I admit that I need to reorganize them frequently, especially at times like this week when it is easy to get caught up in the bustle that is occurring around me) and I am constantly reevaluating them, making my family, my health, and my Kung Fu a higher priority then they were previously.  By focusing on what is good for me, I actually improved my work performance with less time.  This is because the time I give is of higher quality, not only at work but at Kung Fu as well.  By focusing on quality work, priorities, and taking control of the things that I can change, my work and my Kung Fu has excelled this year and I didn't even realize it until I stopped to look back. 

See you on the mats!  (Virtually for tomorrow LOL)