Weeknote 18

Medway paddleboarding, Commonwealth Games in Warwick and more personal reflection

Paddleboarding the Medway

The past weekend I decided to give paddleboarding a try. The nearby River Medway is the perfect location for water sports novices like me to ease into such activities as paddleboarding. Balancing my knees on the board wasn’t too much of a difficulty. For standing up, I managed to do this first time without falling in. Ten minutes in, my wobbling legs had stopped and I was calmly navigating the Medway… until a fellow group member inadvertently collided with me and splash into the river I went! Luckily I managed to climb back on-board quickly and graciously without too much embarrassment. All in all a good experience I wouldn't say no to try again sometime.

Games in Warwick

Ten years on from watching my first cycling road race on the Surrey roadsides for the London Olympics, I followed the anniversary with a visit to Warwick for the Birmingham Commonwealth Games. The three-hour train journey north from my home in Kent was well worth it for the experience of excited anticipation and happy vibes cycling races bring to the people and places they pass.

Location scouting East

Last weekend I continued with my location scouting for potential places to move to. This time I decided to explore East London. Beyond the colourful, spectacle of unaffordable tower blocks in London’s Docklands, I was met with a sprawl of post-WW2 terraces in varying levels of dilapidation. There were a few scatterings of new build flats from the 2010s of somewhat better appeal, but on the whole the area isn’t my first choice for places to consider moving to.

Personal reflection

My weeknote writing energy has taken somewhat of a dip recently, since I’m also trying to put into words a longer article on something that’s been dominant in my thoughts recently. The TL;DR of it is, I'm autistic. I knew for almost two decades I possibly was autistic, but I tried to struggle on without trying to admit it for a variety of reasons emanating from a desire just to be treated as normal and equal to others. Since my life coaching a few months back it's refloated as something I want to be more open about. I hope it will help me to understand myself better and consequently help others to understand me better.