Jared Diamond Books

It’s true what they say: follow your dreams. That is, if your dreams are relatively practical. I think mine are, although it’s taken some recent events to convince me that the saying really is true.

So I figured…people love boxing. People love MMA. And people just love them some golf. And absolutely nothing bad can come from taking two unrelated things and mashing them together, so that was the source of my grand plan: full-contact golf. No, really. JUST THINK ABOUT IT. Both people can hit the ball at the same time, and they can do pretty much anything (using golf clubs if they like) to stop their opponent from reaching the ball. Imagine how the ratings will soar when they both make it to the green at the same time! Think of how crazy it’ll be when multiple people are all in the running!

I never would’ve made it this far, however, without a good little jolt from a motivational speaker. Well, sort of. I work a desk job, nothing special and I don’t feel that much loyalty towards the company. A real ‘just a job’ deal, basically. Anyway, they got in this keynote speaker, one of those guys who stands at the front with a microphone and says things like ‘how are all you guys doing today?’ and ‘I want you to REACH for what you want!’

I don’t usually respond well to that sort of thing, but I know it’s just me. I sit there every time trying to make myself as small and unnoticeable as possible, because group participation terrifies me. But this time, the guy mentioned something about fighting for your dreams. And man…that really resonated with me. I began to think about what it’d be like if I was facing him in full-contact golf. And that made me smile.

I realised that my sport was good. It could give people hope, and a release. As the guy finished, we shouldn’t let fear hold us back from making the world better, at any cost. Wow, when did conference speakers in Australia get so good? I’m bringing my golf idea to the masses! It WILL be a success! I’m REACHING for what I want!

-Fergal

Today I did something that could have been, and, with a bit of hindsight, probably was funny, but at the time it was just cringeworthy. And not just a little bit cringeworthy, either. It was major, pathetic, Three Stooges cringeworthy.

I like to think of myself as a pretty self sufficient kind of a person. I live, quite comfortably on my own and that’s always worked fine for me, but once in a blue moon I come up against something new. Something I haven’t had to deal with with before. As a pretty self sufficient kind of a person, I like to think I’ll be able to deal with these moments as they arise on my own. I guess you could say I’m stubborn like that, but, as I see it, it’s more that I’m fully capable of handling my problems on my own. So when one of the lights in my apartment decided to blow, I decided that, with a quick ‘how to’ search on Google under my belt, I had enough expertise in that area to handle the simple task of changing a lightbulb.

Even though I don’t have an aluminium ladder of my own, I know a mate in the ground floor apartment who does, so I figured it would be easy enough to borrow it from him. Irritatingly, Steve has one of those ridiculously huge Bailey ladders, and it wouldn’t fit in the lift, but that just meant a bit of extra cardio for me, carrying it up the stairs. The problem with that was that I got into a bit of a rhythm, where I wasn’t really thinking about much more than continuing up the stairs, so when I got to my flaw I just kicked the door open and stormed through. Thing was, I was holding the ladder horizontally. The whiplash was mind-boggling, and I was moving so fast that I actually fell down, under the ladder, which then fell on my chest. If there’d been a laugh track laid over the top of it, it would have looked like slapstick comedic gold. As it was, it looks like three broken ribs, cracked plaster, and a long hospital bill.

Oh, and one busted light bulb.