Mike's Regrets

So far, I've written about the lessons I've learnt that I most want to get across. It seemed important to do that first. But, as all of those lessons are positive ones - things that worked well - it makes it seem like, so far, my recovery has all been plain sailing. I can assure you that, unfortunately, that's not the case.

Awhile back, I talked to friends of how, if I wanted to, I could call this blog, How NOT to Recover. One friend asked me what I regretted and what I would have done differently. I've reflected on that quite a bit since. Most of my regrets relate to times I simply pushed too hard - I ignored the constraint of my TBI and more or less tried to do stuff as I had previously done it.

Examples of me doing that include:

• trying to work for four straight hours well before I was even close to being able to;
• almost getting another TBI by trying to body-surf dumping waves on the beach in Rio;
• doing a new piece of work without having regular conversations with my boss about it. I subsequently embarrassed myself by having my work fall well short of expectations;
• falling off my bike because of fatigue during a cycling trip and scarring my chin; and
  
• most critically, falling over and badly breaking an arm whilst out hiking when I knew I had poor balance, but hadn't bothered to use walking poles.

I will write more of these regrets in later posts, but, for now, I want to make it clear that my recovery had had its downs as well as its ups!

Cheers,
Mike