Archives: smilethroughit

It’s fair to say I’ve been looking forward to this week for quite a while now.

As I explained on Friday, reaching the 5 year post-transplant mark is a significant step for anyone. It gives a remarkable psychological boost that – for me at least – makes me feel like I may be approaching normal. Ordinary. A regular person.

But, the truth is, I want to be more than normal. I relish abnormality – I want to be as different, as unique and as extraordinary as I have been up to this point. I don’t want to let 5 years pass and think it’s OK to let it rest.

I want to tell the world the impact that my donor has had on my life.

I want to show the world the power of transplantation.

I want to help people understand how important being registered to be an organ donor is and the lives you could save and transform.

I want to be remarkable in the truest meaning of the word.

I want all of these things, but more than anything, I want you to know that extraordinary lives can be lived by all of us every single day. With a deep breath, a smile and a kind word to those around us, we can all have an impact. By signing the Organ Donor Register, we can all leave a legacy. By making sure our loved ones know our wishes, we can all be a part of something bigger.

Tomorrow, on my 5th second birthday, I will be releasing Smile Through It: A Year on the Transplant List on Kindle, closely followed by ePub and physical versions, too. It’s designed to give people an insight into just how hard it is to do nothing but sit and wait.

I want you all to remember that there are too many people in the world with their lives on pause while they wait.

Don’t leave your life on pause; find the play button and let’s make sh*t happen.

Photo: Brian Gurrola on Flickr.

I almost didn’t post today – I wasn’t sure I had anything to say and wasn’t feeling especially inspired – but when I relaunched the blog a while back I made a commitment to posting every Wednesday and Friday without exception, so I now feel obliged to you, my dear reader, and to myself to keep it up.

Actually, as I sat down to write, I realised just what I should be writing about. You see, life isn’t always plain sailing and sometimes things are just downright shitty1. But there’s always a flip side, you just have to find it.
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1. if you’ll excuse the language [↩]

This week has been filled with a lot of thinking and far too little sleeping as I try to work out what I’m doing with my life.

I’m not alone in pondering the big “what next”; plenty of people go through this every day and my fellow transplantee Victoria blogged about it just this week, but for some reason I’m still at a loss.

It wasn’t until I took a long drive with my wonderful fiancée K today that I truly understood what drives me and what I really and truly want to do with myself.

SEEING THE NEGATIVE
For me, my new life is all about making a different, about showing people just what an amazing gift transplant is and why everyone should be signed up to the organ donor register in whatever country they call their home.

But I also realised that I’m currently driven my negative emotions: I don’t want to let my donor down; I don’t want to live a placid, unadventurous life; I don’t want people to look at me and think I’m wasting this opportunity.

FINDING THE POSITIVE
What I’ve realised I need to do above all else is to live for positive goals, to live for things that will drive me through ambition, excitement and joy rather than fear of failure or judgement.

I need to take positive steps forward, not resist stepping backwards.

Remarkable things and remarkable people only happen through their own determined, positive actions towards making their dreams, goals or passions turn into a reality.

We all know sitting around waiting for something to happen doesn’t make it so. But we never stop to think that going forward in fear and trepidation can be just as harmful to our eventual success as apathy and torpor.

A RESOLUTION
From now on, despite the bumps, the hurdles, the obstacles and the setbacks that I know will come my way, I vow to push forward, I promise to live my life in a positive frame, I pledge to smile through it all1 and stop living in fear of what might never be, but instead to fight for how I want things to be.

It’s going to be a long, hard road. I don’t yet know where it will take me, what I will achieve nor how I will achieve it, but I know that going forward with positivity, with happiness in my heart and in the knowledge that I can achieve whatever I set my mind to will see me through.

I want to take you along on the ride with me. Not just here, on the blog, but in the wider scope of things.

NEXT STEPS, BABY STEPS
I will shortly be setting up a Facebook page for Smile Through It where we can all share the things that make us smile from day to day and our own positive steps towards doing the things we really want to achieve in life.

I’m also currently planning a major new documentary film project to help tell my story, but also to understand the psychology behind people given a second chance at life.

Do we all feel a desire to make an impact, or is it just my twisted psyche that drives me to achieve big things? Do we all feel a pressure to make the most of life, or is it just about an appreciation for the little things?

More on that to come, no doubt, but for now, here’s to positive steps forward in the right frame of mind.

Keep smiling.

“In the end, it’s not about the years in your life that count, but the life in your years” Abraham Lincoln

1. I should have listened to myself earlier [↩]

For those of you who have followed from the start, you’ll no doubt have seen the extent of the changes that have come and gone on this blog since my transplant in 2007.

All of these changes, re-focuses and new iterations have been great, but they’ve always somehow fallen short. It’s only in the last few weeks that I’ve really been able to identify just what it is, and it comes down to two simple things:

1. I had never clearly redefined the focus of the blog and what I wanted it to be.
2. I had no idea who I was writing for.

Now, though, I’ve found both.

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