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Part Two: The good news!

1. Pen Pal and I seem to be crafting a very useful friendship. She is back in Germany and suffering from a rather spectacular form of hay fever and very much still grieving over the Liaison who was like a brother to her, and really not getting out much. For her sake I am looking forward to the end of hay fever season where I will then get aggressive about her making progress in certain areas of personal prosperity (which I think is her plan). Meanwhile she is on board with helping me with my own struggles around time management by trying to hold me accountable to my own intentions. I am so easily overcome by laziness, procrastination and the setting aside of projects when they become challenging, in favour of newer more accessible projects. Perhaps one day I’ll make you a list of all the projects I am supposedly working on! Few readers would make it to the end I think. It’s bloody ridiculous.  

2. One of my current projects is very important and I am doing a passable job of keeping up with it. I have a… client of sorts; an apprentice of sorts, who has an amazing mind but came to me with tales of emotional struggle and who I am now guiding through the program of personal evolution which I once concocted based on my own robust journey of discovery. This is something I attempted with Neo long ago but (quite knowingly) with a compromised method. Both of us were far too eager. The Client and I are not. We are proceeding methodically and I am approaching it entirely Socratically. I am only asking questions. I am selecting the most pertinent question one at a time as he puts together the products of his own valuable observations (for he has done extremely well in this area throughout his young life) in such an order as to make similar discoveries very attainable. This is very satisfying for me and key to the purpose in life which I interpret for myself.

3. I’ve been receiving plenty of very useful help from a dedicated dietitian on a monthly basis and from her team on a weekly basis. The approach is very useful in that it pursues health regardless of size; is not numerically oriented and looks hard at the approaches to good eating and good health and not just the obvious matter of food choices. Unfortunately health issues forced me to miss many of the team sessions recently and that program has almost run its course (perhaps I can get in on a future roster and make up the missed sessions) and also my lovely dietitian is going on maternity leave shortly. “Why are all my medical professionals so fertile!” I cried when she broke the news. I imagine ‘congratulations’ might have been more appropriate but oh well. I am hopeful her replacement will be as open-minded as she. We worked together very respectfully and effectively.

4. My volunteering with Circles has expanded much. I’m on two more circles as well as an official volunteer driver for Soul Man who has become an excellent and inspiring friend and mentor. One of the new circles centres around an excellent fellow I will call Theatre Guy who has so much in common with me it’s freaky. And what a pleasure to work with someone who has an excellent functioning mind and who seems to understand nearly everything I throw at him. Tomorrow I am spending the day at the board game cafe with he, Aqualad and Girlfriend-of-Aqualad (alias pending!). He is hugely looking forward to this escape from the great challenges of his life currently.

5. I got pressured by Doc Lock into accepting a back-up roster position with the Bourbon Creams Trivia Team who play their home matches out of a Brew-Ha-Ha pub in Toronto. This is due to Lock’s brother, the Eloquent Potter leaving for the entire season to flit about Vietnam in search of himself. Apparently he was the superstar who led the team to championship victory in their recent rookie season and his shoes are intimidating to fill, in this case by committee. I’ve been called on a few times and finally found the means to participate the other night. While the beastly Intrepid awaits repairs I took the train into the Big Smoke. Thank Gord the train and subway stations feature elevators these days or I’d still be lying in a heap somewhere underground.

As I tried to suppress the team’s expectations I found myself saying, “Oh I have a head full of information all right, but none of it’s trivial!”

To my surprise I performed well thanks to a lot of good guesses! Calypso, sulphur, yttrium, spam (the meat) and Tolkien were among my correct answers, along with “1800” in response to “Any year during the life of Marquis De Sade?” The opposing team were cordial and fun. I would do it again some time or even full time if there is such a league here in Scooterville. ‘Cause Gord knows I need more commitments.