31 Mar 2005, Stratton Audley
"Friend of mine rowed across the Atlantic." My lunch companion leaned conspiratorially across the white linen tablecloth at the National Liberal Club. "Hasn't worked since." And he sat back with a told-you-so look on his face.
So when I rang Damian West, I was half-expecting to find a traumatised recluse, no longer able to relate to the real world. Instead I got a very personable and cheerful-sounding individual. When I told him about my misconception he laughed.
"Yes, M likes to believe that nobody could row across the Atlantic and come back normal. I do work - I just don't put on a suit and tie and get on a commuter train."
It reminded me how I used to filter reality - probably still do. But I used to filter in a destructive way - I'd ignore all the good bits and focus on the negative, and it made me very unhappy. In appraisals from my bosses, I could hear only criticism, never praise, and believing that I was hopeless at my job, I duly lived down to my expectations.
Now I focus on the positive, interpreting everything in the best possible light, and the world seems a much better place. No doubt it's exactly the same world that it was before - it's just that my perception of it has changed.
Objective reality? Who needs it? I'll stick to my optimistic view of life and of myself, and hope that it continues to live UP to my expectations.
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Comments [0]
29 Mar 2005, Devon
Got 3000 to spare? It's 2am, and I'm lying in bed worrying about how I'm going to pay the next instalment on my boat.
I've been working immensely hard on the sponsorship drive, and I have a good number of promising leads. But promises don't pay the bills.
I've read many books on expeditions, to poles, mountains and oceans. I know the sponsorship drive is always the hardest part. I also know the money usually turns up in the nick of time. A kind soul comes up with the readies, and our hero is saved from ignominious defeat, his dream strangled at birth by the cruel hands of poverty.
As a past ocean rower, Damian West, said to me the other evening, 'All you need is one stroke of luck'. And I've been working hard at making my luck.
But right now I can't see where the money is going to come from, and so I'm lying here in bed at 2am, worrying and hoping and praying for that stroke of luck to strike soon.
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23 Mar 2005, Yorkshire
My final word on the rules of expeditions...
...As has been highlighted in the last few days, expeditions are subject to rules just like any other area of life. If every member of the community abides by the rules, then everybody including the sponsors know where they stand.
My discussions with Ken Crutchlow of the Ocean Rowing Society have brought home the potential consequences of breaking these rules. Honesty pays. Not always in the short term, but abiding by the rules is essential to integrity, credibility, and reputation.
The pursuit of the sponsor's dollar is what causes the trouble - in the era of spin, it's all too easy to yield to the temptation to sex up an expedition. It must be marvellous to be a Branson, to have the money to do something simply 'because it's there', or 'for the fun of it'.
I'd love to live in a world that regarded FUN as a perfectly valid objective - where we didn't have to try to be the first or the fastest or the youngest.
Yes, some people (myself among them) find things more fun when we come first, but ultimately, if we take on a challenge and give it our best shot, and learn a few things about ourselves along the way, then we're a winner whether or not we're the first across the line.
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22 Mar 2005, Yorkshire
I'm glad to be an ocean rower (aspiring) and not a polar explorer - apart from the risk of losing minor appendages to frostbite, polar exploration is fraught with hair-splitting definitions that would furrow the brow of the finest legal eagle.
A quote from Misadventures in a White Desert, by Patrick Woodhead: "Despite a desperate need for exposure in the press, they [explorers] soon discover that their exploits are only reported if something goes desperately wrong or a world record is broken. This helps to explain why some of the great names in polar exploration are so pedantic about the exact nature of their expedition. With so many of the big prizes already gone, they have to find harder and more elaborate ways of doing the same journey in order to make it into the papers...
...By aiming to complete the first ever British, unsupported, solo ski to the Magnetic North Pole, they will break a new record and the dollar bills will come flying."
Office politics are stressful enough - if you spend 40-80 hours a week busting a gut for your boss, you want proper recognition for it. Imagine if you were devoting years of your life to planning an expedition - risking life, limb and bankruptcy to achieving your goal - just how much MORE upset you'd be if you felt someone else had stolen your thunder.
So the alternative to being the first/fastest/Britishest is to go for the 'desperately wrong' option. Unfortunately you have to judge this one finely to end up on the right side of death-defying. It also has the twin disadvantages of being:
a) by definition impossible to pre-plan, and therefore...
b) not available pre-expedition when you're trying to impress the sponsors.
It's enough to make you hanker after the simpler (albeit much more dangerous) days of the gentlemen explorers, when anybody with enough money and sense of adventure could head out into the great unknown territories of the world, without having to emblazon their clothing and/or boat with corporate logos.
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