Paul Garrigan's Blog, page 41

Finding My Path in Ireland

It is hard to believe but we have already been back in Ireland for 10 days. It would be nice to slow this holiday right down because there is so much more that I want to fit in. I’m so enjoying spending time with my family and sleeping in my childhood home. I don’t even mind that it is cold, dark, and wet most of the time – it is a pleasant change from the constant heat of Thailand. In the evenings I go for long walks, and this has given me a great opportunity to reflect on my past, my current situation, and where I want things to go in the future. I’d been hoping that this trip would give me the chance to re-evaluate my life, and this is proving to be the case.

My Struggles in 2012

I can see now that 2012 hasn’t been such a great year for me. There were definitely plenty of highlights and nothing really bad happened, but I just haven’t been feeling right internally. At times it has even felt like I’ve been sliding towards depression – something that I never believed could happen to me after giving up alcohol over six years ago. The truth is that I’ve somehow lost my way and unless I can get back on track my life will continue to be a bumpy ride. My long walks here in Ireland are given me the opportunity to see where I’ve gone wrong. The fog that has been clouding my thinking is lifting, and I’m beginning to feel excited about the future again.

This probably sounds naive, or even egotistical, but there is a path that I’m meant to follow in life. I’ve no idea who or what decided that I should follow this path, but I do know that when I go off track my life begins to turn to shit, and it stays that way until I find my way back. When I’m on the right track I still have bad days, but these are just the normal ups and downs of life. I can have good days when I’m off track but overall there is a downward movement. I was on the wrong path for almost two decades of my life, so I’m fairly expert at how it feels. The obvious sign that I’m on the right path is that I enjoy a great sense of inner peace – an inner strength that means I can deal with anything that life throws at me. I enjoyed this sense of serenity for the first five years of my recover from addiction, but during these last few months it has been mostly replaced with doubt and worry. I still have my good days but serenity is no longer my normal mode of operation.

Getting Back on Track

One of the most significant things in my life occurred during my mid-twenties. I was living in a third stage alcohol rehab facility, and the therapist cajoled me into doing some voluntary work with kids with severe learning difficulties. I reluctantly agreed to do this, and it turned out to be completely life changing. I took to this type of work like a duck to water (sorry for the cliché). The most amazing thing was that it was the most powerful therapy I’d ever encountered. One of the reasons the therapist suggested this work was that she felt that I was about to relapse, and that I needed to do something drastic to get me outside of my head. Who would have thought that getting me to focus on other people would turn out to be the thing that saved me?

When I returned to the rehab after my first day volunteering my fellow ex-drunks were shocked. They kept on asking things like, “what the fuck happened to you?” My face was literally glowing, and it was the happiest I’d ever been in my life. I felt such great inner peace, and I knew that I’d found my path. It was because of this that I decided to go back to college and train to be a nurse. It seems that I’m only truly happy when I’m trying to help other people. It was shortly after this that I had this amazing spiritual experience that has also had a huge impact on my life.

I loved working as a nurse, and I do get days when I really miss it, but my path has led me to working as a writer. For a long time this has felt completely right, but this last year I’ve become less satisfied with this way of life. The work that I get from clients is what puts the food on the table, but I spend most of the time writing about things I’ve no interest in. I’m happiest when I’m writing blog posts about addiction and spiritual things, but by the time I’ve completed work for clients there is little time for this type of writing. This has led to me feeling a bit down about my career, and this further saps my energy for writing. I no longer even feel like a writer – just a small business owner who happens to write.

I have had people question my need to keep talking and writing about addiction. After all, I claim that my alcohol problems are behind me, so why do I need to keep banging on about this issue? The reality is that I need to do this because it makes me happy. It gives me the chance to focus on other people, and try to help them out. I get emails every week from those struggling with addiction problems, and I never look upon writing my replies as a chore – I’m honoured that people would consider me worthy of offering them advice. I do believe that my experience as a drunk and as a nurse puts me in a good position to offer advice. I’ve faithfully tried to deal with my problems in an open way, and maybe my experiences can help other people. From my side of things it might not even matter – the selfish reality is that it is trying to help other people that gives me inner peace and not necessary the fact that my efforts do ultimately help them. Of course, I do genuinely want to be of service, and I believe that I have been, but I’m just being honest here.

The solution to getting back on track is obvious. I need to find more time to focus on writing content that is going to be of value to other people – particularly people who are struggling in life. I know what it is like to live in a world of shit, and I know how to escape this world. I want to spend more time sharing my experiences – that is what makes me happy, and that is my path.

Thamkrabok Temple – Meditation from Buddhist and Christian Perspectives Meeting

There is going to be a one day event at Thamkrabok Temple (Saraburi Thailand) on Saturday January 6th 2013. I will be one of the speakers, but the star attractions will include the abbot from Thamkrabok (Phra Ajahn Boonsong) and the director of the world community of Christian meditation (Father Lawrence Freeman). Other speakers will include; Mike Sarson, Dr Vanessa Crawford, Julian Gryp , and Sarah Sowinska. The focus of this forum will be on how the vow of recovery can lead people to a full and flourishing life.

Here is the pamphlet for the event – please click on it so you see it more clearly.

Christmas in Ireland

I’m starting to feel excited about this forthcoming trip to Dublin. It will be so great to watch my son enjoy his first Irish Christmas – he was there as a baby at this time of year, but I don’t think that counts. I’m going to enjoy taking him to see Santa, and he is sure to have a great time with his cousins, granny, and aunts.

Going Home for Christmas

I wrote on here a few months back about how I can still get homesick for Ireland (I can also sometimes feel a bit homesick for England because I spent so much of my adult life there). I left Dublin almost a quarter of a century ago, but this stretch of two and a half years has been the longest I’ve ever gone without a visit home. I will always think about it as home no matter how long I live in Thailand.

One of the scary things about reaching middle age is that it becomes harder to take things for granted. I might always consider Ireland to be my home, but that does not mean that I’ll always have a home to go to in Ireland. Who knows how many more times I’ll be able to return there to the house where I grew up? That thought sort of scares me and it can make me feel sad. For me getting older is a process of watching all those things I took for granted being taken away from me.

Twenty-four years is a long time to live away from your home country. In many important ways the place I left no longer exists – Dublin has moved on, but I can only relate to it as it was in the eighties. I don’t regret my decision to leave, but it has certainly had consequences both good and bad. The downside is that in a very meaningful way I no longer have a home. I will always feel like a bit of an outsider in Thailand, and I can also feel like a bit of a stranger back in Ireland. I never knew when I was eighteen that this was the decision I was making by leaving.

This Christmas in Ireland is Going to Be Special

This might be the only chance that my son Timmy has to experience an Irish Christmas as a child. It is the middle of the school term here, and so he will be missing out on some of his education. I feel that it is justified to do this now at his age. It will be harder to justify such a break from school as he gets older. So who knows when/if I’ll get to enjoy another Irish Christmas – it might even be the last one that my family has together. This is why it needs to be special. Maybe that is the benefit of no longer taking my home for granted – it means I appreciate it more.

I Feel More Comfortable With Criticism than Compliments

I feel uncomfortable when people pay me compliments. I don’t even particularly like it when people wish me “happy birthday” – or anything like that. I find this all a bit strange given that I engage in a fair bit of self promotion. Compliments are a wasted on me. I either ignore them completely or I quickly change the subject. When people criticize me though, I can be like a dog with bone.

Discomfort with Compliments as Low Self Esteem

If I was playing the amateur psychologist I would suggest that my aversion to compliments is due to low self esteem. I wouldn’t be able to agree with my own diagnosis though. I don’t believe that I suffer from low self esteem – I used to. It is also not that I usually think the compliment is wrong. It is more that I just don’t like to be the certain of attention like that. I don’t remember compliments but a criticism will bang around in my head for days.

I’m sure that my discomfort with compliments says something important about me, but I don’t know what that is. I suspect like other areas in my life the answer will become clearer to me in the future.

Blowout on Day 10 of My Juice Fast

I had hoped to make to complete a 15 day juice fast, but I decided to end it yesterday on day 10. I don’t regret that decision. The last three days were tough, but by yesterday afternoon I was starting to feel physically ill. I was driving to pick up my son from school, and I felt weak and unable to concentrate. It would have been reckless for me to continue because my body was sending plenty of signals that it had enough by that stage.

I can’t even remember why I picked 15 days for this juice fast – it just seemed like a reasonable amount of time. My goal here was not weight loss – although I did lose 2.6 kg (nearly 6 pounds). I just wanted to give my body a bit of a detox, and I could have probably achieved that in 5 days. I’ve heard of other people who’ve managed 100 day juice fasts, so I didn’t view my 15 day goal as particularly ambitious.

Lessons from this Juice Fast

I had planned to do another 15 day juice fast in January, but I’m no longer so eager to do this. I don’t want a repeat performance of the last few days. I’m convinced that the reason for why things proved so hard at the end was the ingredients in my juices. I wanted to keep costs to a minimum so I was buying the cheapest vegetables available rather than figuring out what I actually needed nutritionally. I can be quite pig headed, and the fact that I felt good for the first week made me overconfident.

As I say, I don’t regret ending the fast early, but I do feel like it’s been a bit of an anti climax. I had this vision of ending the fast with a real sense of achievement. Instead I ended up having to stuff food in my mouth so that I wouldn’t crash the car while taking my son home from school. I do feel physically better as a result of the juice fast, and it is great to be back eating again.

Almost One Week of Juice Fasting

By the end of today I will have been juice fasting for one week. That means that I’m almost half way to my goal of 15 days. It has certainly been an interesting experience so far. I never really understood how much what I ate played a part in my mood. I’ve had plenty of ups and downs during this first week, but it has mostly been a positive experience. I haven’t once felt hungry, but I do get moments when I miss proper food – especially when I smell my wife cooking something.

Juicing and Tiredness

During the first few days of the fast I did feel more tired than usual. I ended up going to bed before seven o’clock in the evening a couple of times. I usually go to bed early but that’s just ridiculous. I’ve notice the last few days that I feel much less tired than usual. I no longer experience that afternoon crash in energy after eating my main meal of the day. I always look forward to eating my dinner in the afternoon, but I usually feel good for nothing afterwards. It is getting worse as I get older, and I tend to feel tried for about three hours after I’ve eaten. The fact that I’m juicing means that all that energy that would normally be devoted to digesting large meals is free to be put to other uses.

Noticeable Improvements as a Result of Juicing

There have been some noticeable improvements already as a result of this fast including:

• I haven’t been weighing myself but it is obvious that I’m losing weight. My tummy is definitely flatter than it was this time last week, and my clothes feel looser. I expect to put at least some of this weight back on in the weeks after the fast, but it is nice to slim down again.

• My thinking was a bit fuzzy for the first few days, but I notice a definite increase in clarity today. My concentration levels are improved and this is particularly noticeable when I mediate.

• My skin feels softer and just healthier looking. I did have a bit of a pale complexion (anaemic looking) on the weekend, but this is the same as having a tan when you live in Thailand.

• I do feel physically fitter and there is an added bounce in my step. Maybe this is just psychological because I feel good about doing something healthy.

• I’m a fairly good sleeper normally, but there have been improvements here as well. I’ve also noticed that my dreams have become a bit more intense but no lucid dreams this week or out of body experiences.

I’m confident about completing the 15 days juice fast but a lot can go wrong between now and then. I suspect that the most enjoyable moment of this whole trip will be when I get to put solid food in my mouth again.

Channelling Your Own Bible

I enjoy reading spiritual books. One thing I’ve noticed is that most of the information that is transforming tends to be similar to things I already knew – or at least strongly suspected. It is like the wisdom was there inside my head, but I just needed a trigger to remind me of it. If this is true, it means that I don’t really need these spiritual books at all. I just need a way to tap the wisdom that is already there. By getting in touch with this inner wisdom I will be able to channel the perfect guidebook for my life – my very own bible. In this video I discuss how it is possible to do this.

Press play below to listen to the podcast

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Day 3 of My Juice Fast

I mentioned in my last post that I was attempting a 15 day juice fast. I am now on day 3 and so far so good. I haven’t felt hungry at all, but I do miss solid food. I smell something cooking, or see something in the fridge, and I feel like I’m missing out. Overall I’m enjoying the experience, and I just feel better for doing it. I’m not going to bother weighing myself until the fast is complete. It would be nice to lose a few kilograms, but this is not my motive this time.

Feeling Moody on Day 2 of My Juice Fast

I did feel a bit moody yesterday evening. I was expecting this, so it wasn’t such a big deal. I just went to bed a bit early. It is much easier for me to deal with a bad mood when I know that it is just my body adjusting to the diet. The fact that I was able to observe the emotion objectively is further evidence (not that I need it), that I do not have to be a slave to my emotions. During the last juice fast my mood took a nosedive on the fifth day, so I’ll have to wait to see if this repeats. I’ll be prepared for it if it does.

15 Days of Juice Fasting and the Gateway Experience

I’m going back to Ireland on holiday next month, and I’d be only kidding myself if I resolved to eat sensibly. I experimented with my first juice fast last month. That time I only managed to last four days, but this time the plan is to go for fifteen days. I just want to give my body a good clean out, so I can feel a bit less guilty about any Christmas food overindulgence in Dublin. I also plan to do another 15 day fast when we return to Thailand in January. This will help to get 2013 off to a good start.

Excited About 15 Days of Juice Fasting

So far November has been a complete washout in regards to healthy eating. I stopped my 5:2 intermittent fasting diet, and I didn’t replace it with anything. Surprisingly, my weight hasn’t gone up that much, but I just feel yucky because of all the junk I’ve been eating. I enjoyed my last juice fast, so I’ve high hopes for the next 15 days. I did hit a bit of a wall last time at day 5, so it will be interesting to see what happens this time.

Back to the Gateway Experience

One of the benefits of fasting is that it allows me to go deeper into meditative states, and it increases my dream lucidity. Earlier this year, I devoted three months to the Monroe Institute Gateway Experience, and I feel that this was time well spent. I managed to trigger a couple of out of body experiences, but I must admit that the second half of the course was a bit of an anticlimax. I’m going to try to do 3 – 4 sessions a day of the Gateway Experience so that I can repeat the course during my juice fast. I’m not expecting too much to happen (which is a better approach), but I just enjoyed this journey so much last time that I want to repeat it.

I’ll add some updates on here as the juice fast progresses.

Will My Lack of Business Savvy mean a Mediocre Freelance Writing Career?

I get frustrated with my inability to think like a business person. I have developed some skill in self promotion, but I don’t have much to promote. My lack of business acumen is holding me back, and it means that I’m destined to a future of just getting by in life. I’m a repeat offender of the cardinal sin of the modern writing profession; I write about things that interest me and not necessarily what other people want to read.

My Lack of Business Savvy

I’m envious of those writers who are able to make a good living from their own projects. These are often entrepreneur writers who have found a place in the market, and they now cater for this. They provide what their readers want, and they get to reap the rewards – and so they should. I suspect that some of these go-getters might be sick to death of their niche, if they even had that much interest to begin with, but they know what works and they can keep on replicating this. I’m jealous. These guys can even pay somebody like me to take on the writing duties for them, and I’m usually delighted to offer my services. I’ve learnt a great deal from these successful writers, but there is something holding me back from trying to emulate them. I can write about practically any topic for a client, but when it comes to my own writing it has to be something that interests me.

If I was still a teenager I could probably make my lack of business savvy sound cool. I could talk about staying true to my vision. I might even make a big deal about how I refuse to sell my soul for profit. This type of talk might sound acceptable from the mouth of a teenager, but at my stage of life it smells a bit too much like a bullshit excuse. I worry that my lack of a killer instinct has more to do with not having the balls for it (metaphorically speaking) than anything else. My hope is that this lack of a ‘go get’em champ’ attitude is just part of my path, but on my darker days it is hard not to worry if this is just an excuse for my ineffectiveness.

I Am What I Am

I remember what it was like to struggle as a writer. I would strain so hard to produce even one paragraph of readable text. It was obvious to me that I had no talent for writing, but there was this inner voice that would not allow me to give up. I kept at it, and I eventually found out where I had been going wrong. I stopped trying to write for other people. I began to write only for myself, and the irony was that I ended up with material that I felt happy to show to other people.

The reality is that I’m lacking in the ‘entrepreneurial spirit’ department. I just don’t have the same motivation as those writers who are able to keep pumping out the stuff that is profitable. I respect them, and I even know how to do it, but every time I attempt to follow that path my energy levels plummet and I start to dislike myself. For me, it is like trying to swim upstream. Maybe I just have to accept that this is not a path for me, and that my instincts will take me somewhere that is going to suit me better. It seems pointless to beat myself up for being who I am.