Trust Tommy

So much of living with a disability, or rather, having a child with one, is assuring them that their life won’t be somehow ‘worse’ than normal.

Yes. I use that word. So many people seem to want to avoid saying the N word. Nah, it’s the R word we’re avoiding, or the V word, if you’re a Windows user. On a serious note, normal is something that exists. I’ve always disliked how people keep fawning over disabled people, always watching their backs in case they say something really bad. It’s a big taboo. If we admit that other people are ‘normal’, that they don’t have the hardships that disabled people will experience, then seemingly, something godawful will happen. Maybe I’ll explode. In a big cloud of

purple smoke

That’d be cool.

Normal (non-disabled) people seem to think that if we even began to comprehend the fact that we aren’t as good as someone else at something, we’ll retract into ourselves, We’ll wallow in our own misery at the fact our lives just aren’t so.

The truth is much less poetic. I’m perfectly OK with who I am. I know I’ll never do a Usain Bolt on it. I know I’ll never be Beckham, but let’s be honest here – who wants to be him of all people?

On the outside, I limp, I use a cane, and I’m slow over long distances.

Inside, I’m the exact same as you.

So g’wan. Come up to me someday, I won’t bite your head off, and you don’t have to watch your words.

I’m OK

*

This post came from me watching the latest House MD episode. (yeah, I know, it’s House, get over it)

The patient is a 14 year old with a disibility – relation FTW.

He’s deaf. He became deaf at age 4 from a complication of MS, but never got a cochlear implant because ‘he liked who he was’.

That’s bullshit.

Being okay with something and not wanting to fix it are two completely different entities.

I’m okay with my CP, that doesn’t mean I’d stay away from a cure if one was discovered. Hell, I’d be on the first lists. I’d be one of the folks who’d take the experimental one. Or I’d be the one who’d be one of 12, one of 6 taking placebos and 6 taking the experimental one, to see if it actually worked.

You’re probably thinking that I’m weird. No, I’m just perfectly okay with who I am. I’ve mastered the skill of being happy with my lot, because I can do sod all about it. I mean, this is something I’ll (in all likelihood) have for my entire life. Am I okay with that? Yeah. Am I happy about that? Hell no, but I put on my positive face and I deal with it and I minimize the effect it has on my life.

As inherent human beings, we all strive for something better. It’s one of humanity’s flaws. However, what I wish to attain, is mere normality.

Think about it.

I wonder… If I started doing this would my English teacher take it well, or find it annoying? (Like everyone else)

Via Ciaran

This Thursday, the school is having a concert, starring all the students of the school who do music. Yours truly is playing drums for them. For the first part, which is a melody of songs on recorder, I’m playing an African Drum, and for two GreenDay (probably not my choice of song, but whatever) songs: Holiday and Time of Your Life. For the GD songs, I’m playing my own kit, which is a DXP kit I’ve all changed around to suit myself. I decided to buy a cheap kit and upgrade, rather than buy a big huge expensive fancy one for two reasons: 1) If I found out drumming wasn’t my thing, I hadn’t invested huge amounts of money and 2) Buying cheap and upgrading gave me more choice.

And upgrade I did. None of the cymbals that came with my DXP are there any more. I have hihats and two crash cymbals. One an alchemy and the other a zildjian (bless you). The hihats are zildjian (gesundheit) too. The drums themselves are largely the same. I have all the heads replaced, the first two because they snapped out of wear, the second two because I knew the same fate would befall them before too long. In fact, the bass drum is the only one that’s really been untouched, unless you count the fact there’s 7 Apple stickers on them.

Oh, yes, that’s another thing. You know the way when you buy any Apple product, like an iPod or a Mighty Mouse? You get a few stickers with them, like in the picture. I raided all our old Apple boxes and stole them. I now have 10 that plaster my drum kit, although one is on my iPhone’s cover. In total, there’s 9 stickers hugging my drums, making them iDrums, (hyuk hyuk!) and one on my phone. Yes. As John says, I’m an odd child.

Underneath the Apple sticker is one saying “Ardteististiméireacht Gnáthleibheal: Leaving Certificate Ordinary Level

Above it is one for CARI, and their hotline. I’ve no idea what CARI is, but I guessed that if it was a hotline, it’s to be called, and where better to keep hotlines than affixed to your phone?

EDIT ~ 16:53 After receiving a wee email, I now know CARI is the ‘children at risk in ireland’ foundation. It’s for kids harmed by sexual abuse. Scary stuff

Two Fantastic Songs:

It’s OK to think about ending – Earlimart

In The Deep – Bird York

On Saturday night, as I was returning from BTW in Cork, when I had productivety running through my veins, I wrote an email to one of my internships, just asking for final details about it. I sent it when I got home on midnight, at exactly 00:13.

And so I went to bed. I was tired after my night in the People’s Republic of Cork.

At 00:27, my phone honked. Honk honk. I was just asleep but decided to see who it was. No one texts me at that time of night save for the person I affectionately refer to as ‘my own personal stalker’. I mean that in the nicest way possible, though. Anyway, I look at the screen. It’s my internship guy.

“OK to call now?”

I’m tired, but I need this info, so I quickly text him back, telling him to call away.

A few minutes later, my ringtone chirrups (yes, mine, I made it in GarageBand) and thus follows a 30 minute business call, lasting from about 00:29 to 1am.

As I tweeted (yeah, I do that alot) later, I didn’t find any less quality in our discussion and the outcomes were exactly what I needed to know. If we’d had that 12 hours earlier or later, nothing new would have been gotten.

Now, when I sent that e-mail, I presumed I’d be reading my response when I got in from school on Monday afternoon. I certainly didn’t expect a text 14 minutes later and a call 16 minutes later.

I think that businesses need to learn from this. We got something sorted probably 30 hours earlier than we would’ve normally got it sorted. By sending a text, we’d done that. If I was able to get to sleep earlier and hadn’t noticed that text come in, that’s fine too. However, because I wasn’t doing anything, and because he was free, it just clicked into place perfectly.

In my experience, businesses are too polite in this respect. I mean, it all led from a text – that’s not too imposing. People seem to have a rod in the wrong place about this. Sending a polite text like the one I got isn’t imposing, it’s not stalking, harassing or badgering either.

Here’s my card:

Front side is a screen cap of my banner/logo, back reads:

TrustTommy.com
Tommy Collison

Blogging Consultant

085 109 4481
{email}

So, I had an english essay to do a few weeks back. I liked the look of it. Got a good response from my English teacher too, what do you think? I did another one over the weekend, I’ll post that one too.

The title of this essay was: An Undiscovered Paradise

March 1954

“You’re mad!” the man behind the counter said, midway through taking a blanket out of a cupboard behind the old mahogany desk. Just below the cash register, the words ‘Walter’s supplies” was emblazoned on the wood

The supply shop had been opened in 1949, when interest in reaching Mt. Everest had become to increase. The name of the man behind the bar was George Walters. He was an experienced mountaineer who had suffered severe frostbite in the thirties, during a mountaineering expedition. The frostbite had claimed his leg but had done nothing to dampen Walters’ love of climbing. He set up the shop at the foot of Mt. Everest so he could help those trying to conquer the tallest mountain in the world, he just didn’t think this guy had it in him.

“Please George! We’re ready for this!” replied the customer. He was tall, almost 6 feet in stature. His beady eyes surveyed the shop and finally settled pleadingly on Walters. That man was Edmund Hillary. He was part of an expedition to climb Everest.
“Fine!” sighed the elderly shop-owner, resignedly, giving Edmund the blanket. “But you’d be crazy to think you’ll get anywhere the top without a Sherpa” he added defiantly. “It’s on the house” he added, as Hillary reached for his pocket to pay. “Think of it as a good luck charm.”

Hillary left the shop and gasped as the cold wind hit him like an icy fist. The temperature had dropped another few degrees. That wouldn’t help the climb.

The next morning, they set off. They were led by John Hunt, a British explorer. At first, the going was easy, with only gentle slopes to deal with. All too soon, however, the going got much harder and after a few weeks, they had to use their oxygen tanks.
All along the first leg of the journey, Hillary had been battling with this conscience. Could they honestly reach the summit of highest mountain on Earth? Could mere humans conquer 29,000 feet of rock, snow and ice? When he confided his doubts and worries in his Sherpa, Tenzing Norgay, he was relieved that the latter was an optimistic sort, with an “of-course-we-can” attitude.

After a few weeks, they got very close to the top of the mountain. Just before the final push was made, disaster struck. With 300 feet to go, one man’s oxygen mask failed and they were unable to complete the ascent. Hunt sent Hillary and Tenzing to go the final distance and complete the climb.

On the 26th of May in 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay made the final push to conquer the highest mountain in the world. They faced only a 12 metre ascent that was to become known as the “Hillary Step”. Could they do it?

Hillary and Tenzing reached the top of Mount Everest, 8048 metres high, on the morning of the 29th of May, at 11:38am local time. They found themselves gazing in awe at a sight that had not been seen by human eyes in the history of the human race. It was a paradise. One that’d been undiscovered until that fateful morning…

I love literature. I love words. I love crafting words into sentences, I love creating segments of my thoughts.

It is definitely a craft, just like woodwork in school or whatever. You have to be able to form these on paper/screen. I mean, it’s no good being very poetic and great with words if you can’t give them a way out of your head and onto paper.

Blogging gives me an outlet to write short articles on literally anything I want to talk about. It lets me practise something I really enjoy and best of all, it’s something I can do whenever, wherever, and on whatever I want.

One of the biggest complaints you hear about when it comes to writers is this ‘writer’s block’. This invisible wall people come up against where the words just don’t come. I mean, if I suffer from verbal diarrhea, this is constipation.

I just don’t get it. If you can’t write on a certain subject, leave it, come back to it later. Alternatively, come at it from a different angle. One of my primary school teachers always said that there are two sides to every story, and it’s true. You can write about a certain subject in so many different ways, so why not approach the problem differently?

Blogs are perfect for people who aspire to be authors or poets, but have a day job and can’t make a living out of it. What happens is you get a free playing field to put your work onto, people can come up to it and read it and review it. If it’s positive, then you know you have what it takes. Obviously the logistics of being a writer would have to be examined. Perhaps you don’t have the right lifestyle to be one. Have a wife and kids? Yeah, they might mind slightly if you’re locking yourself in your garden shed for 8 hours every day. Just something to consider.

I can’t see myself being an author. I did when I was younger, but when you’re 6 or 7, you’re blissfully unaware of so many things, including the fact that it’s very difficult to actually make a living from it. It’s the perfect sidejob, though. I just can’t see myself doing it because it all depends on you being able to deliver quality stuff again and again and again. I mean, the quality of TT would dip sometimes, so I know I couldn’t keep it up!

I mean, basically, blogging is perfect because it’s somewhere I can write as much or as little as I want. It’s somewhere I can write about anything and everything, and unless you’re one of those dunderheads who uses a premium WP theme – it’s free!

OK, some would say that if I do one more happiness post, ‘happiness’ would join the ranks of things I talk about too much. It’d be among the greats – pancakes, iPhones, drums and suchlike. However, I think this is really important, so I’ll run the risk afterwards. Plus, being known for ‘pancakes’ is one thing, ‘happiness’ is one I’m actually okay with!

For new readers, by previous happiness posts are here and here.

Right, so the first happiness post was about how it’s really up to you what mood you’re in, you can take events and things in different ways, while the second build on that and added perception.

This one is about The Little Things

Our life is full of events. Some are big, like weddings, while some are small, like buying a new bedside lamp. Of course, you have good events and bad events. Weddings are good, but eviction notices are bad. Buying a new bedside lamp is good, but burning yourself on the cooker is bad.

Oh, before I continue, I’d like to say that all my philosophies only apply to little bad things, not big bad things.

These events are really only as bad as you let them be. If you go through your day thinking about how you burnt your hand on a cooker, well obviously you’re letting that affect you, and you’re letting that get you down.

Happiness isn’t a physical thing or entity. It’s a state of mind. As Rudyard Kipling says:

If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;

Yes, they’re imposters because they exist only in the mind.

Good and bad things don’t exist. Things exist, and we paint them.

Hmm, the TV’s broken,

Negative person: damnit, we can’t watch [insert TV show in here]!

Positive person: oh well, now that I have 30 minutes to spare, may as well fix that shelf I’ve been meaning to get to! It’s an opertunity!

I think if more people realised that some things were only bad because they thought they were, we’d have a much happier society, and if we had a much happier society, we could get through this rec-[CENSORED]-ion!

So, Tommy’s tip for today, turn that frown upside down and we’ll laugh our way out of this current e-[CENSORED]-mic climate!

P.S: Our drama teacher tells us to make sure we pronounce the little words like ‘it’ and ‘he’d’ properly, and the big words like ‘Seymour’ and ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’ would mind themselves. It’s kind of like ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves’. Could the same be applied here?

My mom, Collison’s newest blogger, and also the one who’s made the biggest splash on the Irish Blogosphere, has moved.

She’s done something I did back in October. I think she did it earlier than I did because I nagged her to do it when I say that she liked this blogging lark and it was getting serious with her.

I urged her to become self hosted.

Her new home is at: lilycollison.com.

If you’re subbed to her in a feed, click here

One for comments

Please bear with her as she gets herself comfortable with wigits, design and the like. Plenty of encouragement and linkies now! :)