This morning I was very anxious.  Katrina was going to be out all day and then going out for the night so I had 12 hours on my own.  I visitors coming to see me and that is always something that raises my blood pressure and makes me feel anxious.  As a result I was feeling slightly tense and Katrina picked up on it straight away before going to work.  When she left I lay in bed struggling to get any enthusiasm to do anything.

After a few minutes I pulled myself together and thought small steps.  Previously I would have laid there for hours too emotional to get out of bed and continually over thinking what was going to happen with the welfare officer, work and ultimately my future in the police.  I said to myself there is no point worrying about it.  There is nothing I can do about what happens this afternoon…live in the now and get on with it.

I got out of bed and had some breakfast.  I decided to do several small things that would re-invigorate me and give me some sense of achievement.  Completing one at a time should give me some enthusiasm to get on with the next small task.  I started by getting dressed, I looked at myself in the mirror…that bloody mirror again….and decided to have a shave and make myself look half decent.  Once all done I tidied the house and prepared my evening dinner in the slow cooker, a mix of chicken legs, tomatoes, kumara, potato, carrots, a tin of coconut cream, a curry paste and spices.  Didn’t know what it would taste like but I thought,  does it matter !!

We are going away this weekend and I looked at my two pot plants I bought a few days ago.  I won’t bore you as to why I bought them but it’s safe to say I wanted to test my green fingers because in the past I had been useless and most of my previous attempts were consigned to the compost heap.  I lovingly repotted one and then fed them with water and worm wee from my farm.  Another little job done….

I then walked into the kitchen and looked at a bowl of over ripe fruit.  Nashi’s, mandarins and kiwifruit that, left any longer would have been nothing more than a home for the worlds lowest life form.  I picked the bowl up and opened the rubbish bin to throw them away…they were never going to last until we got back.  As they were about to drop in with all the other rotting left overs I had a brain wave and I don’t know why but I decided to make some jam.

It was at this point that one of my weak points arose from its sleep and began to play havoc with my decision making.  The decision to make jam was easy but my subsequent thoughts threw me into a spin.  I began to ask my self all sort of questions…I have never heard of a jam with those three fruits, I won’t have a recipe, what happens if it doesn’t work and I make a mess of it, what happens it it tastes awful, what happens if nobody likes it.   All my thoughts were focused on the result and I was continually worried about the “what if” and the thoughts of others.  I was doing what I have always done and thinking of the repercussions of the result to the point where I get so worried that I end up doing nothing.

You will find this hard to believe but I stopped and went into the sitting room and sat on my $40 lazy-boy.  I thought about what I was doing and the questions I was asking myself.  I realised that although this was a very small thing it was typical of how my thought patterns have operated in the past.  Over thinking things and concentrate too much on the result rather than living in the moment and enjoying the journey to achieve the result.   I realised that for me I paralysed myself by analysing too much….in the words of a famous golf coach..John Jacobs…paralysis by analysis.

To give you an understanding of how I think…I use to paint water colours.  Anyone who knows the medium will know if you make a mistake it’s very hard to fix it.  Oils and Acrylics you can paint over but water colours can do your head in if you think like me.  I use to always think about how I wanted the picture to look…I had that picture stuck in my brain and I was never happy unless the finished picture resemble what I had in my head.  I never enjoyed the the journey of painting the picture because I was so focused on the result to the point where if I made a mistake while painting it or I didn’t like the finished picture I threw them away.  It was absurd really because it defeated the purpose of doing a hobby in the first place.

I could reel off a number of other things like learning an instrument, a language etc etc.  If the journey got too hard I would give up.  It’s a big no no and it will do your head in if you have those thought patterns….I know.

As for the jam…..I read a basic recipe, threw in the fruit and sugar, boiled the hell out of it and poured in into sterilised jars and hoped for the best.  Enjoyed every minute of it….the jam was crap !!!!

I suppose  what I’m trying to say is …don’t be like me….don’t concentrate on the result, just enjoy the experience of the journey to achieve that result…whatever it is……the result will come and you will enjoy it a lot more.