Life is about the experience, after all...

Ok, Ok! I wrote this last night BEFORE the fitness jeer up, so bear with me.

It appears Karen from Misc Mum has posed another challenge; the HELLO GORGEOUS challenge: Find a picture of oneself that one is happy with, and tell the story around it... pretty much.

Initially, I doubted I could fulfill this challenge. I haven't exactly been able to find my "happy place" for a while, and sifting through the photos I have on file, well there weren't really a whole lot of pictures of me in there, and of the few there were, they were GOD AWFUL; talk about a miserable looking so and so. Even a photo that was taken only two weeks ago, terrible! I looked tired, frumpy, washed out, pale, as if Dracula had sucked the life out of me, AND I appeared to have aged about ten years over the past two and a half. I didn't realise, but I have literally been wearing the hardships I have endured over the past couple of years, like a rumpled overcoat.

This is one of the few recent pictures I actually like; there are others that are passable, but I don't have a scanner. This one was taken by Ashley in September 2004. We had just taken Ashley out for a Father's Day lunch at the Port Adelaide Football Club in Alberton, South Australia (a dream come true for Ashley). Port won the premiership that year, if I remember correctly.

After the lunch, we took the footy out and went to an empty field and kicked it around. It was a glorious clear blue spring day; warm, with a gentle breeze, which shifted through my hair in just the right way.

I looked tanned and fit, though we were coming out of winter. My hair looks good, not the hacked to death with a machete, birds nest, I sport these days.

I am holding my beautiful six month old daughter, who has been an absolute joy since the moment she drew breath.

I had stuff going on in my life back then. I was finishing up my International Studies Graduate Diploma, and had just started my numerology course. I had a social life, and good friends with whom I would catch up with here and there, for coffee, a chat and/or a walk. Life was sweet. I was pretty happy....so why the bloody hell did I go and trade that in, for:

-No physically available friends
-No social life
-Isolation, all all its forms
-No decent career prospects... at all
-Bugger all sun
-a very limiting financial situation
-a house that should have been bulldozed
and
-a severely dinged self-esteem?
HELLO
No wonder I feel like a big fat loser!
........................
I was somewhat depressed after doing the picture paints a thousand words photo comparison "this is then, that is now" style (not recommended). Then I thought about things a bit and realised that I had just started trying to reclaim myself; fitness being the first cab off the sluggish rank, and so I thought I would blog about that instead, thinking I would leave my scornful words to disintegrate into frail moth eaten papery rags that no one would ever read.

Later I re-read to Ashley, what I had written about my photo shock, and it was kind of funny to hear it out loud. In fact, we fell about laughing over my harsh words. So I thought I would share it with you and give myself a few lasting words of encouragement while I am at it, so here goes: "Hello Gorgeous, you have been missing in action for a while, but I hope to see you real soon. You are doing well, mate. Don't worry, you'll get there".