Life Changing

It wasn’t my time

Posted on by fantomwriter

There have been many occasions over the past few years where I have questioned why I am, where I am. Is it because Lady Luck was on my side at that moment in my life? Or was it because, it wasn’t my time.

I keep thinking to myself, my life should have ended on the road that sunny morning. But it didn’t. And I can’t understand why.

It’s not that I’m not grateful that I’m alive. Every day there is something that reminds me of that morning. Sometimes it’s pain, other times it’s when I drop items or can’t pick them up. When I struggle to hold a pick as I play the guitar.

Then there are times when a program on TV brings back memories that should be shelved and not be allowed to see the light of day again. But those memories will only fade, and never leave. Engrained in my mind, forever.

We all need to face our demons at one point or another. Now is a good a time as any. Moving on is easier said than done, and if we don’t, all we are doing is fooling ourselves that everything is OK when deep down we know it’s not.

Second chances are made to be taken, do so when they land in your lap… Its high time I took mine.

Be your own champion

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While watching a documentary on the band Queen, they spoke about the songs, “We will rock you” and “We are the champions”. Both songs are now used at the end of major sporting events. There will only be one champion. One winner.

But in life, this is not always the case. Being number 1 is not something we all strive for in our lives. It’s not that we want to be at the bottom of the barrel, but we don’t feel the need to prove ourselves to anyone else.

The only person we need to better is ourselves. In sports, or at work, I do my best and that’s what gets me out of bed every morning. On the bike I chase down my PBs and strive to break one every time I get on the track. At work, it’s the same, I strive to do better than I did the day before. Sometimes easier said than done.

The only way to be a winner in life is to be honest with oneself. If we can do this on a daily basis we will continue to move in the right direction. It’s the moment we begin to lie to ourselves that everything is OK, then we head down the rabbit hole and never find our way out.

If we want to be a champion, we need to look deep into our own lives and not try to work out anyone else’s life. Our own life is complicated enough without delving into another’s life.

It’s high time to delve into what we really want, and what will make us a champion of our own life. Don’t wait another moment as tomorrow may never come.

Life choices

Posted on by fantomwriter

From the moment we wake up from our deep slumber, to the time we crawl back into our well made bed after a long day, we are forced to make multiple choices.

Some of these daily choices are as simple as what to have for breakfast. And for most people this choice is rather simple. Breakfast can be toast, cereal or just coffee. Personally, I get by with coffee until lunchtime, so I have one less choice to make. Then there is the tougher choice. What do we wear for the day? Jeans and tshirt work for me most days, but that’s not for everyone.

But these choices, as tough as we think they are, pale in comparison to some other choices we are faced with, and the descion we make can impact our lives, and the lives of people around us.

So as I sit here in the hospital waiting room once again in preparation for another operation, I need to make a very tough choice once I have fully recovered. Do I go back to road cycling and possibly be collected by another car, and this time, not live to tell that tale. Or do I stay on the bike path tracks and trails?

I keep getting told how truly lucky i am that I lived through a cycling accident involving a car and my carbon fiber road bike. I guess luck did play a part, and there was also lots of bad luck. But that’s in the past and I try not to dwell on it. Well, at least most of the time I don’t.

Once I recover from this operation, I need to think long abd hard if I will continue road cycling, or head back to riding tracks and trails to stay away from cars. Trucks and buses.

I know many people will say the choice is simple, get off the roads as it’s so much safer. Yes, in some ways it is, less cars and trucks and no angry cyclist hating motorists to hurl abuse and other objects at me as I ride past them.

But riding tracks and trails takes away part of the freedom road cycling offers. If I wanted to head north at a set of lights I could, or I could go whichever way I felt like heading.

On a bike trail, the options are fewer, so part of the freedom is taken away. Not that i can’t use different paths to ride on, it just takes away the one thing road bike had always offered me. Complete freedom.

In the past few months I have ridden some glorious tracks and trails. Some were easy, and in the last week i have discovered some tracks that have left me gasping for breath half way up. That’s all part of cycling.

After the operation I will have time to contemplate my future cycling routes. But right now, that seems like an eternity away.

You never miss the life you don’t live.

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As I sat at my desk surrounded by a few workmates and discussed what we were having for lunch, one of them jokingly suggested a healthy salad. It didn’t bother me as I already had my tuna and kale salad, packed and ready to be devoured with much gusto.

So during the very heated food discussion, the topic of buying pork crackling from Mr Crackle came up, and very quickly had us all salivating at the mere thought of devouring a bucket load of perfectly fried crackling to accompany our salads.

It was then that the healthy side of my brain crawled out from where it normally hibernates and piped up and said ‘That will take off a few years of our lives’.

The response I got back from one of my colleagues was one that made my head spin. ‘You never miss the life you don’t live’. And it did get me thinking.

We live for the future and what we can do with ourselves down the track. We look forward to our next weekend, our next holiday or our next fishing trip. Some of us even look forward to our next 100km ride (Sad, but true).

But what happens if we don’t get to that weekend, that trip or even that ride? We have no idea what lays install for us in the next moment, let alone in a year’s time.

We need to make the most of the very limited time we have while we are living and breathing. Being six foot under doesn’t count as time well spent on this blue/green planet of ours.

The time we do have is time we need to make the most of. I know I have said it before in my previous blog, Two dates and a dash, but essentially, that’s all our lives will be if we continue to look so far down the beaten track, that we don’t make the most of the time we have now. Not next year, not next month. Not even tomorrow. Now is the time.

If there is ever a time to get up and do something you know will put a smile on your face, make you drool with delight, or even make your heart skip a beat. Just do it. Do it now and don’t hesitate for a single second.

Don’t just make plans for what you want to do later in life. Now is the time.

Never be defined by tragedy. Let it shape you.

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When something disastrous happens to us, the very first thing we do is to think, why did this happen to me? What have I done to deserve this?

But in reality, there may have been nothing we could have done to have avoided the situation. Sometimes just being in the wrong place at the wrong time is more than enough for disaster to strike.

So in saying this, I know first hand what it feels like to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just because I wasn’t doing the wrong thing. I still came out second best when a car cut in front of me as I cycled down along the peninsula on a morning ride.

Metal crashing against metal is one of the loudest sounds I can recall. Especially when the action was upon me and not in the distance.

Having survived a serious cycling accident involving a car, I was devastated and very much broken. Not just physically, but mentally. And in many ways, emotionally.

In this time of darkness, I could have taken the easy way out and given up and not pushed through the pain and frustration. I could have stayed in bed, feeling very sad and sorry for myself for the situation which had been thrust upon me.

But I didn’t. I suffered through every single day until I was able to get out of bed on my own and then fend for myself once again. One step at a time. Slowly I wandered out of the house and to the end of the driveway. Then to the end of the street. And finally around the block.

I’m back to a point now that I am able to complete 10km run and not suffer all that much the next day. I still hurt, but its it’s a good hurt.

What did happen to me has changed the way in which I see things, and it has shaped my life in a way I didn’t expect. It changed the way I look at things and the people around me. I see good in people where others don’t see the same thing.

I see a sunrise in ways that some people would say its it’s just another morning. The way in which I see a sunset is also very different now than it was back then.

It’s because I am still able to enjoy those simple pleasures that are taken for granted.

I no longer try to take life so serious as all it does is add to the frustrations I already have to put up with on a daily basis as I continue to recover.

The biggest tragedy would have been if I had given up at the beginning, and not continued with my life journey.

My journey had taken a few detours, and there are more ahead. But I’m happy that I have the opportunity to take on the detours that life throws my way.

A year is a long time

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A year equals 365 days.

A year equals 8760 hours

A year equals 525600 minutes

A year equals 31,536,000 seconds.

All it took was one of those seconds to change my life forever.

With a long and painful year behind me, I can now begin to look forward and set a few new targets as the last of my operations are done and dusted.

When people discover I had a major incident with a car while cycling, i get the standard response of how lucky I really am.

In some ways this makes sense, I am still able to walk and have full function of all my limbs and only with some pain on a daily basis. But yes, I am alive and have managed to get back on the bike and continue with my life in a way I would have wanted.

But, if I had been really ‘lucky’ I would have never been hit by a motorist who was not paying attention to the roads in front of him. I would have never suffered the effects of a broken back and other painful injuries.

Luck has not been the biggest factor in getting back on my feet and eventually back on the bike. Persistence may have had a huge part to play, and the fact I find it rather difficult to accept help, even when I should was another factor.

Unlucky is probably the best way to describe the situation I ended up in. Broken and feeling very sorry for myself at the best of times. Not that giving up was ever an option, even though I have to admit there were times where it was one step forward and two steps back.

Having to go through two separate procedure, shoulder and then my hand, which I was told was fine. I guess the surgeon got that one wrong. So after 11 months, I had surgery to repair my thumb, and the rehab begins from scratch.

So all I can do from this point forward is look forward to a time where I can be happy with my condition and the joys I have ahead in my life.

A second can sometimes be the longest time in a person’s life.

Make every second count as you may not get the next one

It’s not giving up when you know you have lost

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The saying goes ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’. But what happens when you know what you’re after is so far out of reach, that not even a miracle will get you over the line for a win.

What does happens is you understand that not everything is able to be achieved and you need to make the hard call of whether you continue moving forward in a direction where failure is the only outcome.

And while you continue to forge forward, thinking you can win, what are you really achieving? More pain, heartache and unforgettable suffering?

Is it time to cut your losses and accept that this is the one you are going to lose?

At the end of the day, some you win, some you don’t. So I’m glad that I’m here with friends I know, who will always have a smile for me.

It is what it is.

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We all have a time in our lives when we desperately want things to be different. Sometimes very different.

The situation we are in may have been our own stupid fault, or at other times, the situation was out of our control and can’t be changed, no matter what we do.

These are the times we need to understand the choices we have; live with the situation, or adapt so that we can continue living our lives and not stress out about the unchangeable.

The full stop at the end of ‘It is what it is.’ means that’s it, and the final option for that particular scenario. It doesn’t mean you have to like it, but other things can be changed to compensate for the unchangeable.

Many of us are trapped inside a box and need to think outside of it to make our lives better, physically, mentally and emotionally.

When we eventually think outside the box, not only does our outlook change, so does our life.

It all comes back to change, and how we let it impact our lives, go with the flow or sit in the same place and grow moss. And growing moss just doesn’t sound very appealing to me in anyway whatsoever.

I know that change doesn’t come easily to many people, and I’m one of those people who hates change. But to live a better and live a stress free life,  I have had to learn to change and to adapt.

The dinasours never adapted, and we all know what happosned to them. Let’s not follow in their huge footstep and adapt so we can continue living.

Make a few changes and see the difference it can make. It can’t hurt.

You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone 

Posted on by fantomwriter


Every day we get out of bed and expect everything to be the same. Even if not exactly the same, something that resembles what we had and what was around the previous day, the previous month or even the previous year.

It takes a major event to change the way we are or the way we see and things. To see that things have changed dramatically and we had no say in what occurred. We have had something taken away from us without our consent.

The ‘thing’ taken away from us may not necessarily be a physical item, one which we were able to hold in our hands and look at, and feel when we needed.

It’s sometimes easy enough to head down to the local mall and pick up a replacement of what was taken. And if the local shops don’t have what we want, there is always internet shopping. That has all we want, and so much more.


And then there are times that what is taken away from us is either in our mind, or part of our spirit. And these are the things that are difficult or near impossible to replace or replicate. No shopping mall or internet bargain basement can help us replace what has been taken away.

This is the time in our lives when we need to dig deep and pull out all stops to at least try and get back what’s long gone. This may take a day, a month, a year. Or longer still.


Personally, I hate knowing and feeling I am missing something that I always had, and something I worked hard to get and maintain.

But in the past nine months my fitness level has slipped to a point where I hate the person who put me in this position. Not that I had a choice in the matter. I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

So now it’s a long uphill battle to get back to where I once was. Some days I can see where I am heading as clear as daylight. And other days the waters are murky and the uphill battle is a physical and mental struggle.


I know there is no quick fix and what I need to do will take more time than I want to allow, but, this is another choice I have little say in. Even with daily rahab it’s tough going. And this is where I will do all I can to regain my lost ‘thing’. No matter what! 

This song just makes sense. Enjoy. 

Expiry Date

Posted on by fantomwriter


Every time we open the fridge or take a look in our pantry, we find items that are close to or past their expiry date. Milk, yoghurt, pasta and even sugar laced cereal has an expiry date.


All these items hit their end of life date before we had time to make the most of what they had to offer us. We let the opportunity slip through our fingers and then realise we should have made the most of the item before it hit its time was over.

But, as with all food items we can venture down to the local supermarket and replenish the old expired stock with some fresh items. And then we are able to sit down to a breakfast of milk and cereal. Hopefully Coco Pops.


Even after restocking the pantry and fridge with fresh items, there is one item with an expiry date that we should all be concerned about. Our very own end of life. Once we hit our expiry date, there is no trip to the supermarket that will help us in anyway.

So with that expiry period at the forefront of my mind of late, I’ve realised that even the simplest things in life can be the most enjoyable. From sipping a latte at my favourite coffee shop or taking a hike through the hilly terrain of some local tracks.


We never know what tomorrow brings, so when we we wake up every morning we should take every single opportunity to make the most of our lives.

Spending time with family, friends and loved ones is never going to be a waste of their time or yours. It will make our time before our expiry date so much more pleasurable and bring a smile to our faces.


Now that I have the opportunity to look back, I realise my end of life date could have easily been 18 March 2017. But I was fortunate enough to see another day.

And with that second opportunity I want to get out and about and do things that will make me smile and understand there is happiness to be found.


If that involves getting on a plane and travelling the globe or one day getting back on the bike and cycling around to areas I never got to do beforehand, then I will be making the most of second opportunity.


Be sure you make the most before your expiry date us reached.