Thought Picnic: Licking my wounds

The battles of the mind

And so I sought a place to lick my wounds battered and bruised from the realisation that I am not what I used to be.

Shorn of courage and confidence by reason of time, event and circumstance, each encounter is like I need to tiptoe on the heads of hungry river crocodiles to ford the water from this end to that.

It is hard to be the shadow of the man you used to be – brimming is daring and adventure, out to do feats that angels will shudder to contemplate – now, to be roused comes with doubt and foreboding, the wish for luck and the hope for a win. There must be a time again to lift up one’s head and declare boldly, I will not go down.

Uneasy and unfit

God knows I prepared but never with much rest in body, mind or spirit – I could not concentrate much as I wanted to get things done well and properly. Yes, I took one opportunity to put it off but maybe never with enough time to rethink what might be.

So, restless but not panicked, I went to bed with one last desire to get what I wanted in. It all made sense but I could not make sense of it as sleep came without the rest that should follow.

The die was cast for the deed this day and early in the morn before the cock crew I was wide-eyed, half-determined and slightly bothered – it had to be done.

One is slain and I was beat

There was a time I scheduled 3 tests in a day and got them all done in 70 minutes including coffee breaks that had become the stuff of memoirs to be scripted for legend.

Once, after a heavy night out and literally no study, we are given free vouchers for tests I thought were difficult, I was a somnambulist in auto-pilot as I passed the test half dozing and yawning better than a hippopotamus having fun.

My knees never wobble and I never get to shed a tear when I most need to find out if my tear ducts are still functioning or need a rinse out. I feel myself crying out loud within myself though around me is the deafening cacophony of silence that takes your imagination to the expectation of horror.

It was time to face it; two tests for the prize and thankfully neither your pulse nor your frayed nerves are calibrated for scores. With 25 minutes to spare I scaled the first and with 4 minutes to spare I flunked the second – only just.

Rise!

Back to the drawing board with the hope of more determination and resolve, I have 5 working days to revisit this thing and put it behind me.

I have to appreciate things are harder, I may not have as big a theatre to strut my stuff and thereby for the lack of practice you cannot perfect what you want to show yourself as confident in.

I have licked my wounds enough – Rise up man and go and take the world.