Cycling Maven Update

My big plans for the blog died rap­idly last week when I under­es­tim­ated the work­load and focus my new job would require.

I’m happy to share though — for once in my life, I’m actu­ally going to love my work. Staggering.

In a nut­shell, I’ll spend most of my time in hos­pit­als — in sur­gery — with a vari­ety of sur­geons and other remark­able humans. Even­tu­ally after months of vehe­ment study­ing I’ll be com­pet­ent enough to help guide these people in the use of my com­pan­ies products. Be a source of know­ledge where required.

Over the next few months I’ll be going back to uni’ so to speak. I need to re-learn the ana­tomy and delve deeper into the tech­nical aspects for vari­ous body parts. I’ll need to know my products, com­pet­itor products, who’s who in the zoo, what lan­guage they use in hos­pit­als, where the hos­pit­als are etc etc.

Massive learn­ing curve — and that’s just to keep my job let alone excel at it.

Then in April, I’ll be spend­ing nearly five weeks train­ing with my com­pany in New York. I’ve been given the word by col­leagues who have just fin­ished this train­ing to be well pre­pared. To say the least, this will be a chal­len­ging time.

Per­fect! Bring it on I say. What is life without a challenge?

Now throw this into the mix.

• Three weeks ago, my girl­friend and I par­ted ways after two years so I need to find a new home.
• I have no car, so rock­ing up to home opens on a push bike is slightly amusing.
• I have next to no fur­niture and need to buy — everything.
• My won­der­ful car­bon Orbea Orca road bike got crushed, not fault of my own — don’t ask.
• I know very few people in Mel­bourne so I’m pretty much on my own — def­in­itely my own fault.
• I have this won­der­ful blog with a sur­pris­ing amount of read­ers which I want to continue.
• I don’t want to get fat — so I need to ride my bike at some stage.

Under­stand­ably, I’ve been a little stressed as all this dawned on me at once — until I saw this video. Gab­ri­elle left us in late Janu­ary 2010, not long after this inspir­a­tional performance.

In the big scheme of things, life is good.

Seth Godin shared this link. If you’re look­ing for a mentor to push you bey­ond what you think you’re cap­able of, I strongly sug­gest you make his blog a ritual in your daily reading.

Which brings me back to Cyc­ling Maven.

For a while last week, I had a fleet­ing moment where I con­sidered ramp­ing down the blog, if not stop­ping it all together whilst I focussed on my new job.

Then I thought to myself — what would Seth do?

Here’s a guy who runs one of the most pop­u­lar web­sites in the world, speaks on a reg­u­lar basis, writes inform­at­ive and inspir­a­tional con­tent almost daily and still finds time to do other things.

He would tell me to man­age my time more effect­ively. Harden TFU!!

So I will. As of today, I’m out of bed at 4:30am daily. I’ll focus these early hours to both train­ing and writ­ing con­tent for the blog, whilst the day­light hours will be for work.

This’ll be a great test to see what I’m cap­able of and some­where in there I’ll ride my bike.

Stay tuned.

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photo credit by Snugg