Hello everyone, long time no write. I hope you are all doing extremely well and that you had a great long weekend. This time between messages is definitely the longest since we have started connecting. Not sure why I’m writing on this specific day, but I wasn’t quite sure what would happen with the e-mail group after Victory party, so I figured I would let it sit for a while. Which I did. And today it feels right to write, so here I am.
The past month or so have been fast and furious in some respects and extremely slow and not-so steady in others. I have spent much of the past two months writing proposals looking for corporate financial support to expand the Challenge this coming November. This is not a process that I have love for, and while it has value I have found it to be quite draining. There are positives in everything and it has allowed/forced me to think through the RealTime Cancer strategy and direction, and why we are going where we are. That said, the past many weeks have seemed more like a game in my mind as I’ve tried to attach required support dollars to corporate recognition benefits within the Challenge. Perhaps the most difficult part has been the fact that we are going to bring the Challenge to new schools and new regions of our province next year anyway, with or without corporate support. Which means I am not coming from a state of dependency, and I feel that is a positive, but it did hamper the process of wrapping my mind around the details of my financial requests.
Finally yesterday I did submit the proposals, and I hope to continue the process and secure some support over the next many weeks. It does feel a little weird bargaining from the position that corporate support isn’t going to dramatically affect how the Challenge is delivered, as we have raised and will raise the required money through our events. Corporate support will affect how we operate as on organization, but it won’t really affect the presentation of the Challenge to students.
I should also tell you that for the first time in my life I have completed a strategy and finalized a direction fully and completely before implementing!! While that may not sound like a big deal, for me it certainly is. This is a significant change from my original method, which was get an idea, think about it for a couple of minutes as I fought off the desire to “do,” and then it was right to implementation! And I would continue to play with an develop the idea in a half-hearted manner as I scrambled to keep up with my ambition. No longer! For the first time ever I have a concept that is well thought out, the purpose and strategy have evolved nicely, which I’m sure they will continue to do, and… I have yet to implement! The concept I’m talking about relates providing a structured environment for youth and young adults to educate and support each other in the fight for life against cancer while participating in the development and execution of cancer education initiatives. It is a concept that I have been playing with since the beginning of the year and made significant progress with. Now we are at the point of implementation, and I’m still holding back, which is not as much of a challenge as I had thought it would be. And sometime over the next 6 months I’ll begin to establish and develop this team of young people, and as always I will keep you updated on my progress.
In other areas I am currently taking a break from internalizing my first Challenge wrap-up speech, as this afternoon at about 2:20 p.m. I’ll be wrapping up the Challenge at PWC. The past 7 months have been quite an amazing experience, and I have been fortunate enough to experience the incredible gifts that have been associated with putting “my Series” out to 2,000 students and having them grab on in their own way. The Challenge has been a great initiative and the best part is it’s only the beginning! To say I’m excited about this afternoon would be quite an understatement, as today I have no other agenda or information to communicate other than the last impression I want the students to take away from our collective interaction over the past 7 months. I have been playing with the speech for a couple of months, and as yet I haven’t managed to get all the way through it as for the first time I find myself struggling to get the words out. It’s been interesting to practice at home alone and still have that trouble. That said I’m really looking forward to this afternoon as all my proposal writing has left me absent from classrooms for too long.
On the health side things continue to progress, my stomach has made a dramatic turn in the past couple of months and, outside of the occasional reminder, it’s nearly normal! My strength has become another priority again and it is something that I will focus on throughout the summer in hopes of finally returning to the ice this coming winter. Still down about 30 pounds, but I have realized that I’m probably not going to put much of that back on for quite some time. As long as the strength comes, I’m fine with the weight.
The other major piece of news that I have to pass along is that I can now add “dancer” to my resume. Yes, for the past 7 weeks or so I had temporarily traded in the skates, as the high school season had ended thus I was no longer coaching, and I put on some dancing shoes. Thursday and Friday past I had my first ever dance concerts. My mom and I had quite a chuckle when I called her last week to ask if she could prepare my dance costume! I’m not sure she ever thought she would hear those words from me. But as I told her, and most anyone else, it won’t be the last time I’ll be asking as I had such a great time and the Cowboys, as we were called, had a great time. Yes, the Cowgirls made us look good, but we loved every minute of it and at present we have committed to reuniting for another couple of numbers!
That’s a little update from me, I’ll be back again, not sure when but you’ll definitely hear from me again soon. Have a great day.
Always…
Live Life. Love Life.
Geoff
