Adrian Flanagan set out in October last year to sail around the world via the polar regions. I set out in November to row across the Atlantic. I was out there for 103 days which felt like a REALLY long time. Adrian has had to temporarily abandon his mission due to Russian red tape, but even so, he has been out there, mostly alone, nearly 3 times as long as I was at sea.
His story is too long to tell here - look at his website for the full tale.
Adrian helped me out with my weather when my original weatherman let me down. When Adrian was pre-occupied with rounding the Cape, he handed over to Ricardo Diniz, his weatherman from Portugal. I hadn't spoken to either of them since I was in mid-Atlantic. Today I saw them both in Chearsley with Adrian's ex-wife Louise and their sons to celebrate his birthday.
[photo: L to R: Ricardo, Benjamin, Adrian and Louise]
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As I embark on writing the book of my Atlantic adventure, a few sobering thoughts from the great and good of literature:
The profession of book writing makes horse racing seem like a solid and stable business.
(John Steinbeck)
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
(Robert Benchley)
Critics are to authors what dogs are to lamp-posts.
(Jeffrey Robinson)
And that is my cop-out of a blog for today. I am saving myself for the book. (Or to tell the truth, after a few weeks of haring around giving my energy to people and places, I have suddenly slumped today into a jelly-like blob and can barely string together a... one of those long wordy thingummies....)
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Further to the Full Plate Problem, I am going through a painful period of re-prioritisation at the moment.
My priorities are organising the Pacific row, writing the Atlantic book, and producing the Atlantic documentary. But where does this leave launching the speaking career and dog-mushing in Minnesota? Alas, it looks as if they are going to fall off the edge of the plate.
I am gradually learning the art of delegation. There is a 'Team Roz' coming together - a loose group of people on both sides of the Atlantic who generously give of their time and energy to help me out. This backup team will be invaluable in the future. But at the moment I'm on a steep learning curve in the art of man management, which is nearly as time-consuming as the old days when I was a one-woman-and-her-mum kind of organisation.
I WAS going to finish with this thought: 'Ideally I need to figure out how to:
a) clone myself, or
b) be in more than one place at one time, or
c) give up sleeping altogether.'
But then I found this quote from Andrew Carnegie:
'No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit.'
But on the other hand:
'You have to do many things yourself. Things that you cannot delegate.'
(Nadine Gramling)
If only I could delegate sleep...
[Photo: 4 x Roz - nightmare!]
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Last night I was interrogating Jim Shekhdar about his Pacific Ocean experience. I found myself falling into the same trap as I did before the Atlantic - screening out what I didn't want to hear. I didn't want to hear about huge waves, shark attacks, pitchpole capsizes, running out of water and having to drink their own urine. I remember smugly thinking: 'That won't happen to me. I'm a lucky person.'
Fortunately none of those things DID happen to me, but clearly there's a balance to be struck. Forewarned is forearmed, but it's easy to get hung up on things that are either statistically unlikely, or which are so totally beyond my control that there is no point in worrying about them.
On the Atlantic, my expectations were definitely too optimistic. Even though there were no major crises, I had expected the experience to be enjoyable and life-changing. It wasn't, and I was disappointed. It was a disappointment entirely of my own making, because reality was unlikely to live up to my excessively high expectations.
So I'm trying to implement two lessons learned:
- if I'm going to do something crazy, do it in a sensible way - hope for the best, but plan for the worst
- keep my eyes and ears open for the bad news as well as the good, so I have more realistic expectations the next time around.
I was sure there was a quote about this. I couldn't find it, but while I was searching I did find these fantastic quotes from Andre Gide, French writer, humanist and moralist. Food for thought...
Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore
To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one's freedom.
There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.
He who makes great demands upon himself is naturally inclined to make great demands upon others.
(this one especially relevant to anyone in my 'team' of helpers!)
[photo: Jim Shekhdar at the Eddystone Cafe yesterday evening]
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