Anyway, I fell ill. I won’t bore you with the war story. When all said and done, I probably lost a month to my little issue, which required a small operation. The NHS are amazing, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Yes, they’re human, yes, mistakes get made, but where else can you put yourself in the hands of total strangers and let them heal you to the best of their ability? Exactly.

It’s during illness that you find out just who your friends are. You find out the extent that the friendship will stretch to. You need to learn from that experience if it befalls you. Who will travel to make sure you’re ok? Who’ll check in once they’ve feasted on the drama? Quality over quantity when it comes to friends.

However, despite being ill, post-op, I was travelling in a very un-tethered way. I have got very used to the feeling of being untethered. Previously I was travelling North to attend various meetings and was spending a lot of time in trains, cars and hotels and a stable location was not part of my experience. This was at first unusual for me as I would describe myself as being a typical “home body”. I loved being home, but now I was loving the feeling of being untethered. Home is my ass on a chair (as PWEI described it in “Home“). That feeling of feeling in control of your life due to the fact that you had all your needs in a backpack, but feeling very much as if you’re in the flow due to the fact that here is there, is anywhere. That feeling of not being weighed down by “stuff”. Just the essentials. The requirements for the job. What you need and not what you want. Maybe that gets more difficult as time goes on, sometimes we might need to just sit in the same place for a little while and reflect, or assimilate what has been happening of late. I’ll let you know.

Of course, the big lesson illness can bring is that everything is so ephemeral. Tomorrow is not promised. You have less time that you realise. Plus when you consider we’re almost at the end of April, which means a third of this year has already gone, then you should be reminded that anything you need to achieve, well, stop putting it off. Time and tide wait for no man or woman. That includes you, also. There is a quote, often incorrecly associated with Buddha, that states: “The trouble is, you think you have time”. So true. So having had time to think whilst on the hospital bed or when having another injection of pain relief, it is time to make more changes. You have to ask yourself: who are you living for? Yourself or someone else? If the answer is someone else such as your job/boss/The Man, then you have the wrong answer. Check your working’s out, you have the wrong answer. You think you have time, you don’t. Go live the life you want.You’re unlikely to get a seconed chance at this. It has become a bit of a cliche, but it’s only a cliche because it is true. The five top regrets of the dying are all poiting away from slaving for The Man and being who you always wanted to be. Wouldn’t that be great, if you were who you always wanted to be? Why would you want to be anything or anyone else?

So now you know what you have to do…