artificial intelligence - be kind to yourself - running 250k
good morning bigmoose blog reader,
firstly, apologies for no blog last week, i have excuses aplenty, but one main one, i physically and mentally didn’t have the capacity, and there’s no point banging on about being kind to yourself, and looking after your wellbeing, and then doing the opposite, and breaking down, so faced with a lot of external forces pushing down on me, i calculated the best thing for my health was to have a week off from writing the blog, i hope you understand.
on reflection it was 100% the right call, and i would encourage you to do the same if you get too much pressure building up, release the steam, and just say no, i think i’m a bit of a people pleaser, and tend to say yes to a little too much, and as a result impose self inflicted pressure on myself, which in my current situation ain't good.
friday saw me deliver a two and a half hour presentation on a.i. to my biggest day job client, ably assisted by chloe, running the slide deck and chat gpt screen from the one laptop as i presented, a feat i literally could not have done without her, thanks chlo.
the absolute power of what a.i. can do when utilised in a strong way is game changing, and i love sharing the knowledge i have learnt.
saturday was a quick trip to n17 in london, to be spoiled watching my favourite football team in hospitality with my mate who drove and lavished this treat on me, and whilst this on the surface seems an extremely stress free environment, my new mate parkinsons makes every social situation tricky, what food will there be, as my left hand sometimes shakes when trying to navigate a path to my eagerly awaiting mouth, and will anybody spot the tremor, and don’t even get me started on eating peas!
the football was great, the result extremely controversial, and the quiche eaten without loss of pastry.
but by pushing myself to talk to fellow guests in the hospitality suite, i have now struck up communication with the hosts of the event, a large construction industry company, an industry they have identified struggles with high numbers of suicides, and hopefully bigmoose can help, and i will report back on progress, as well as a chap who wants to run the london marathon for us, so a very productive day, even if i had to push myself through the social interaction pain barrier.
sunday was an even bigger challenge, the cardiff half marathon.
25,000 runners running around the cardiff bay area, the leafy streets of roath, and returning back to glory in the city centre in the shadow of the iconic cardiff castle.
it is a fantastic race, and the support around the course grows annually, and this year we had 150 runners running wearing their orange and white spotty tops, all fundraising for bigmoose, with a total expected to top £40,000 which is phenomenal.
also, we have worked out via our snazzy new bigmoose software that for every 27 referrals we get come though to us, on average one person graduates and tells us they were on the path to suicide before connecting with us, which is a pretty powerful statistic, of which, one, we are all extremely proud, and two is very powerful when shared with fundraisers, and grant funders.
we told this story on sunday to our cardiff half runners, and we could visibly see how emotionally invested they all were, and it was a very powerful start to the day as they headed off for their 13.1 mile adventure.
on a personal note, i felt somewhat overwhelmed looking at the group of people all running with a story, maybe they had accessed our services, maybe they had lost someone, maybe they just want to help others, but all of them connected by a dream we had those years ago, that is now a reality, and over the day i listened to lots of stories of how our community was helping people, and by end of the day as we packed away the bright orange bigmoose finish arch, i was thoroughly exhausted, completely emotionally drained, but in a way that was thoroughly satisfying and smile inducing, and i think, and hope, our whole team felt the same way.
fluff, me and chair of bigmoose blee
day off on monday, apart from an extremely exciting meeting with our mates and ambassadors craig and aimee, aka ‘kinging it’ details to follow, but 2024 is gonna be biiiiiiiiiig!
tuesday, me and fluff packed up the finish arch in the car and headed west to st. davids for lewis robling’s running event he has arranged as a fundraiser for us ‘why we run’, a 250k five day ultramarathon along the stunning wales coastal path, and with over 30 phenomenal athletes all running over a marathon a day for five days, fundraising as they go for bigmoose, and as i write this we are on day three for the runners, which once they finish will see them over half way along their journey, both spiritually and physically.
whilst we aren’t running, we are crewing, cheering, cooking salty potato snacks, baking cakes, and lifting spirits, and i am convinced this is tougher than running 250k, without doubt 😂
we are doing a talk to everybody saturday night, which i am dreading and looking forward to in equal measure, dreading because public speaking with pd is even more daunting than without it, but looking forward to it, as it hopefully connects bigmoose to our audience even more, so wish us luck, we’ll do our best.
i feel like today’s blog has just been like a list of diary entries, so apologies for lack of storytelling, i must try harder, i think i was just trying to catch up on stuff that’s going on.
and a highlight to finish on, a very high light in fact, congratulations to adri and gelje sherpa for summiting mount cho oyu yesterday, i can't wait to climb with you in february.
and before i go, don’t forget, if you or anybody you know needs help, always reach out, anytime at all, we can help, fast, efficiently and zero cost.
blue skies,
jeff
