Breaking news!

We have raised our game to £20,000 by November 20th
(and that just takes me right outside my comfort zone!)

I started this weekend on the Team, Management and Leadership programme, one of Landmark Education's Communication Course programmes and I realised that trying to do it on my own I would be doing some things along with Julian to make £8000 happen however by creating a TEAM we could be really bold and even more crazy than we have so far imagined possible.

Now doesn't that seem obvious but not in my world until now. Our families and friends are contributors but by actually having a team with a deputy and functions we can make our earlier and now this target happen and with velocity. I am so excited about what we can do together.

If you would like to be playing a fun(d)raising game at work or with friends or your community please be in touch and come on board, we will have a team member responsible for out of area games who will look after you and we will hold calls for everyone participating to support their actions.

I also wanted to thank the taxi driver who took £4 off my £9 fare and said give it to the charity. I said I would acknowledge him in my blog. Thank you!

More news as the team comes on board.

Time is going by so quickly

Wow summer really has arrived in the last few days, although today I notice it is a bit overcast. Hope it wasn't just summer in a weekend, like lunch in a can. I have started swimming a few days a week to build up my legs and lungs and it does feel great after I do it. Although curiously the riding has begun to occur as hard work and not as much fun as it was when I started.

It seems to me that I am in a middle stage as opposed to middle age (damn it might be the same thing). I have moved through the euphoria, just like a new relationship, the excitement of the beginning and the creation of a new future. One that didn't exist days before and I'm just loving every little part of it, revelling in the difference it brings to my life, talking about it, planning things to do and just generally enjoying the newness it brings to my experience of living.

Now we've been doing it for a little while and, whilst it still matters, and after all I said I would, it seems a little more like work - sometimes hard work - and I look back at the beginning and wonder why that newness can't be there like it was. This is the time when I know there is just to do the work, be your commitment and continue to choose what you're up to, right? Easy to say...

All across my life I can see the times when I have stopped choosing: in relationships, when it ain't so pretty and wonderful, and I think 'is this it, is this all it can be?' and not remember that I chose it. I am 100% responsible for how it goes, how it turns out. So after the initial excitement wains, that is where the real work and dedication begins. It's easy in those first stages because it has a natural momentum of its own.

Now as I bunker down I can choose it to be hard work or choose it to be just as much fun as it was in the beginning, because every time I get on the bike it actually is a new time. It is only my perception that has changed.

The way I see it, this process only starts with accepting the way that it is right now, learning to be with how something is, rather than forcing it to be something else. Its only in acceptance that the opportunity for a new possibility can arise. When I signed up for this ride I knew it would alter my life, and I thought 'wow, how fantastic is that' and now, as I write this, I have become present again to that experience which has and continues to effect my life and it is wow, and sometimes I just forget that.

I sometimes forget I want to make a difference to a group of children who deserve the same chance for living that we expect for our own children, but knowing that you are out there supporting us, contributing to these childrens' lives, that is a great way to be alive.

Okay I'm over it now and it will be back on the bike tonight or a swim depending on the weather.