I often find myself coming to my blog because I've had a dash of inspiration, a wonderful short feeling of something that has sparked me into reflection or sprung my imagination into life.
I don't know about you, but I just feel that if you get a feeling like that, use it, keep it and probably write it down.
I've found recently that my condition had affected my memory in the past before my surgery. But it's reminded me of the importance of writing thoughts down. People's mood changes with the wind it seems to me and as a result you can go from happy to sad or upset in a moment. I know that feeling down is far harder to get away from than the precious feeling of happiness or some kind of euphoria. But if you have a place to keep your thoughts, then to some end it could serve as a prompt for why you were feeling wonderful in the first place.
I can't advocate for this writing stuff down thing enough to be honest. Start a blog, a diary, even start to write a book, but if you find inspiration, then just try your best to treasure it.
My job at present, is a roller-coaster ride and I'm not even the person standing for election. Grounded, hard-working and kind politicians are really very hard to come by, but I've managed to find one and I'm seriously lucky to be working for her. It's really quite impressive when someone will let you die part of your hair purple for international epilepsy awareness day and work with it dyed. It shows a level of compassion and empathy that seems to be rare these days.
Last Monday too, marked the official departure of another wonderful politician. Laura Sandys is a real and true inspiration to someone with epilepsy. Only the second ever MP in the UK to be openly epileptic, she points to something that the whole epilepsy and cycling project is trying to demonstrate. Ability.
Some of the things that people with my condition are thought to not be able to do is astounding, but it's through people like Laura, that we can show that we are able to do some of the most demanding things possible. In terms of my immediate friendship group that have epilepsy, I'm not really the brainy one, I'm the sporty one. I have a good level on intelligence, but Georgia and Andrew both have Law degrees and I find them amazing. If I can try and attack the stigma of physical ability, they demonstrate that people with epilepsy can have an incredible intellectual ability too.
I maybe don't hold onto their inspiration enough.
I guess I'm glad I can write posts like this to keep me focused and remind me why I get up in the mornings, why I do what I do and why I want to keep riding or working in the area I do, in politics.
I have always believed, that while people might change political parties to one side of the spectrum or another, if you hold a same core set of values at the heart of a political party, then that's worth fighting for. After all, you can never change something from the outside in, you can only change things from the inside out.
As I go into the final year of being in my 20s, I thought I'd look back at the last 10 years or so and it's crazy to think that about a decade ago, my whole life changed after a seizure which caused me to leave the police force. It's taken a birthday to give me the dash of self reflection to write this post, but it's no bad thing, because a third of my life has gone by and it's been the most eventful decade I could have ever imagined.
Especially with epilepsy, you can never predict the future, but you can always look back at the past and use it, learn from it and reflect on it.
I think it's true that memories are hard to conjure and inspiration is hard to keep a hold of, but I also think it's worth treasuring them and trying to remember them in any way you can when you come across it.
