Category: Other (Page 1 of 23)
I like the new channel Randall.
Really Good Talk for those with PTS. There’s no “D”. I was reading through the comments and had to list a few of the good ones.
The “3 F’s”
If someone isnt feeding you, financing you, or fucking you. You really dont have to listen to anything they say.
Listen to my wife about problems and concerns.I talk to my dog about feelings.
I never talk about my problems because half dont care and the other half is happy I got them.
At 55 I only have two feelings left.its either indifference or anger with borderline alcoholism thrown in. Life is good.
Very familiar with this. when I first doing knife reviews on forums I was dragging an oxygen bottle to the local creek and beating up foliage and dead tree limbs testing out blades. Never told anyone about my health back then.
I have a lot of respect for Sara and what she passes on to people through the lessons shes learnt.
The only thing to fear is fear itself. Might be a new tattoo or Fear is the mindkiller.
Embrace the suck. Maybe this is my problem. i get damaged then do rehab. the Suffering never ends.
“Never quit on a bad day”
Is this really what people spend their entire lives working for. Ive had to move into a one bedroom flat for a while. An overpriced, lonely, empty box. A prison box for me.
I have spent 12 years of my life confined to a box while I was on an oxygen hose. Only ever leaving to walk the dog on a mobility scooter or for doctors appointments. They only supply so many bottles of oxygen a month.
Too many hospitalizations this year,my oxygen level keeps dropping to 82% with excertion.They are now putting me back on an oxygen concentrator for using the bike to try and pick back up. Ive had to place my gym membership on hold for three months and Im at the gym everyday.
I cant have a garden or a dog at this new address.I will be truely amazed if I dont cut my wrists in the first two weeks of being there. I just keep thinking all I have to do is stay here for six months,get back on my feet.
I keep watching bushwackerman and dreaming of living in a tipi.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggZe7nC6yGo
I wrote the following letter to my head instructor
https://seratbushcraft.com/aussies-arent-so-tough/
I had two weeks to prepare my self to start training and then promptly ended up in hospital again. I crashed out in the afternoon and woke up with 80% oxygen level .I dropped the van off at a mates place. A mate I had met through AMOK. Luckily he was home ,I was going to call an ambulance when arriving. He rushed me to the hospital and stood in line for me for 15 minutes waiting for the nurses at the front counter to do anything as the line slowly increased. I was almost alseep on the chair, I couldnt wake up.All my energy spent on leaving the van some where safe. He was meant to be getting ready for a date that night.
I only have a hand full of friends,all like this and I constantly try to think of ways to pay them back for the friendship and being in my life. All I can do is buy lotto tickets every week hoping to win enough to pay off their morgages.
Yet I still go to training every fortnight I just have to sit and watch and occasionaly give hints to the beginners. This is so frustrating,I still learn. I see the patterns and come up with ways around the techniques, stratagies to overcome my limitations.
I now focus on the reply letter Tom sent me,Ill post below. The last few weeks Ive been feeling tired, not tired in my body but tired in my soul.Too many dumbarses to deal with in government departments I guess. That letter reminds me to keep fighting.It came at just the right time. The level of depression that swept over me at having to take the prison box was overwleming.
I have a new thoery about crayons. Im buying crayons and putting stickers on them saying ” Chew slowly,choking hazard.” Everytime I come across a crayon eating window licker that amazes me every time that they are capable of wiping their own backside or tying their own shoelaces. I hand them a crayon. That seems to apease them and they wander off. The crayon gives them something to chew on as they lick windows.Im assuming.
It seems more appropriate then saying walk away from me before I dislocate your neck you fuking dumbarse.
I constantly try to think of ways to control my temper.Im not good at making friends,not good at peopling. Ive always been better with animals.My dog always made friends for me. I wasnt able to raise my voice for 12 years while I had her. She had been abused so much.
Shes been gone almost three years now. I still miss her. I cant open a garbage bag loudly even now. The sound would make her run under the table and hide and shake until I crawled under there with her and hugged her till she calmed down.
I pushed my self through several levels of hell just to make sure my animals were taken care of.All that mattered was out lasting them. I still dont know what Im doing here now, that theyve gone.That wasnt the deal I made.
Back to my prsion box and my thoughts, too much time, not alone more isolated. I can barely see the computer screen from the glare as I wait for eye surgery. I have to enlarge the font to write.
Ill be writing more. The hospital will be regretting ever asking to put down my thoughts about organ transplantation.
Tom Sotis Reply Letter.Its amazing how afew words can turn your day around.
Brother Zac,
I read every word of your message — and I had to sit with it for a moment. Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I wanted to say it right.
What you’ve lived through… what you’ve fought through — it’s staggering. I don’t say this lightly: I have the deepest respect for your spirit. Your grit. Your refusal to let hardship define you. The world is full of healthy people who find excuses. But you, Zac — you found a way.
You’ve trained through pain, through surgery, through oxygen lines, walking frames, and setbacks most people wouldn’t survive, let alone fight through. You didn’t just survive it — you chose to show up. You chose to be forged by it.
That kind of courage humbles me.
I admire the way you’ve carried yourself, not with ego, but with sincerity and respect for the art and those around you. The way you speak about your training partners, your instructors, your dog, and your fight back to life — it’s a reminder of what this path is truly about. Brotherhood. Purpose. Inner fire.
You’ve earned your place in this tribe ten times over — and I’d be honored to share your words with others if it can light a fire in them like it did in me.
I know this: anyone who trains beside you trains with a warrior. You might move slower on the stairs, but there’s nothing slow about your heart.
Much respect, brother — and when you step back on the mat next week, know that I’m standing with you, even from across the world.
Your friend and brother,
AMOK!
Tom
To
Tom Sotis
Hi Tom.My hospital wanted me to start and write down a few of my experiences with Organ Donation Week approaching. I wanted to start by writing to you about my journey in AMOK and what it has meant to me.
I first started training in my backyard with privates. Peter would turn up at my home to train me. I was still on an oxygen hose at that stage and Peter didn’t charge me. He just saw how much I wanted to train.
It was some time before I managed to start training at the club with Paul. Many years in fact however I had became addicted to blade work.
What I wanted to write to you about is when I first started training with the club. My lung capacity was shot. I had to sit down all the time during training,but I turned up every lesson even if I couldn’t train. It was how the guys treated me. With patience and respect,never putting me down or becoming frustrated with my efforts.
I had just spent ten years of my life on an oxygen hose, the last four being pushed around in a wheel chair and was determined not to miss out on any more of my life.
A four month stay in hospital receiving my second bilateral lung transplant. 58 days in ICU,I had to drag my arse around in a gutter frame trying to get my legs to work again. However six months after returning home I was training in private lessons within several martial arts for rehab.
It was very difficult for me to rejoin society after that amount of time house bound. My staffy would drag me around the park to keep me walking. I would never have made it out my front gate with out her insistance of walkies.
However it was the guys at the club and their friendship, support and comradery that had helped me to rejoin life.They took very good care of me and my injuries. I finally had to hold up my shirt one day and say Ive been cut from arsehole to breakfast.Your not going to hurt me, half my back and chest are numb. Before they would train any harder with me.
It was several years into training that we had two special forces guys from South Africa turn up at class, they only made it through the first hour. My teacher came up to me after classand said “You last longer than those guys even with your injuries”. It was then he found out I had still been using a walking frame for the first three months of training.
At the time of the operation I required a 90 litre blood transfusion, the aorta was too short. This however left a very nice 14 cm scar in my groin. The scar tissue blew up to the size of a large german sausage,needing to be cut out. I was helping the doctors remove foam from the vac drain one day when they decided that knocking me out anestetic so many times had become dangerous. The hole was the size of my fist. This then needed cutting open again and sewn upin stages to reduce the possibility of herniating at a later stage.
I was going home from training and taking an endone and sculling two beers from the pain in my side and hobbling around on a walking frame. I was on that diet of pain killers and beer for two years.
I must have trained for something like four years before writing to you to ask permission for an AMOK tattoo. I said Id get it in my arm pit so you knew I was serious. The tattoo wasn’t to say I was a knife fighter or anything to do with ego.It was about saying how much support and friendship I received from the guys at the club and how much they helped me to become human again.
I took a break from the many martial arts I was training in to travel and study bushcraft and wilderness medicine. During that time I had several other surgeries. Recovering from throat cancer and had shoulder cancer cut out twice. All this while in a leg brace from a ruptured quad tendon. I still have trouble walking up stairs.
I returned home to have a PET scan to make sure I was clear of cancer and in the last year have had 20 hospital admissions from chest infections or fluid in the lungs.
It takes me two months to recover from one week in hospital. Starting with two minutes intervals on the bike at level one to build back up to my base of 20 minutes at level 6.
I wanted to let you know that next week I go back to training. I may have to sit out the sparring for a few months but can still do the static exercises.
My instructor still worries about me training, he always has but I have no fear.I have complete trust in my friends.
Cheers %^^&& from Australia
PS If you think this can motivate anyone else to train after they’ve had an injury please feel free to use in anyway you feel necessary..
When ever I get slack I think of my friend Kylie and push myself harder.
Rule 1: The RIGBY
Rule 2: Reframe setbacks
Rule 3: Rig the game so you always feel progress
Rule 1: Nobody’s coming to save you
Rule 2: Embrace the crisis
Rule 3: Like the person you see in the mirror
https://www.youtube.com/@threerulespodcast/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@struthless/videos
I was awake at 5am in hospital and Andrew Hamilton came up on my feed. I kept meaning to watch this video. Being an OG crew fan.This led me on to watch several other vids from the same channel, The other main one was from Struthless.
These effected me enough to post the interviews up on my blog. What would be my three rules for life ? I had no idea !
Rule 1 : Embrace the journey.
I fought for a very long time not to do this. I was fit and healthy to a very high level and damaged my back which almost crippled me. Not long after I was told I was terminal and required a double lung transplant. This failed after two years and I spent the next 10 years on an oxygen hose. Before all my other injuries and a second transplant.
When I was on oxygen I had my dogs and cats for company and I began writing. i had learned to live in the moment. I had started to embrace what was happening to me and looked upon it as the only way I was ever going to learn anything about myself. Ive always learnt the hard way.
I read a book that said after we cross to the other side we choose the life we need to come back as to learn. I thought i was a dumbarse for picking this one but I stopped being angry all the time.
Rule 2 : Adaption. (Learn to adapt)
Everytime Ive had a new crisis in life Ive had to learn to adapt and learn new ways of doing things or I would have sat there and never grown or accepted what was happening to me. Ive seen to many people with injuries that have never accepted them and have never learnt how to work around them. Mental adaptivity is even a more powerful skill to learn than to physically adapt.
Rule 3 : Find a purpose.
I went from being very highly qualified in security to not walking. At the end of the ten years on oxygen i had spent four years in a wheel chair. Writing became my purpose at the time. I then built a bus to travel in where I became interested in bushcraft before starting this blog. I now do voluntary work gardening, which gets me up in the mornings. The last six months Ive become involved in political activism Id guess you’d call it. Its more trying to educate people as to how stupid politicians are. Id like to start a social media page for people to put up their stories on the NDIS to let others know what a shit show it is.
Without a purpose I see too many people give up on life and see no reason to get out of bed.
Ill go into more detail of these if anyone is ever interested.
After watching this I decided to embrace the suck. Ive been sitting in hospital for four days with possible rejection after 12 years post transplant. Id been two months out of hospital and it took that long to build my lung capacity back up to restart my rehab on my knee. I spat the dummy at three hospitals on Thursday and almost gave up caring. I didnt want to deal with it anymore. A mate reckons I have built up more resilience than most people can dream of and yet it didn’t feel like it last week. I dint want to be back in hospital, deal with doctors,, the NDIS is a shitshow to deal with. Ive been putting pressure on myself to get back to doing my training courses and martial arts and just thought it was never going to happen. The pain has flared up with the torn tendon in my bicep to four more tears in my deltoid , bursitis and rotator cuff injuries. Im back on tramadol every day and a couple of light beers to help it work. Im waiting on a CT scan to see if theres any change in the lungs and a broncosopy tomorrow. The MRI on my pancreas showed the 13mm lump hadnt changed but the second 3mm lump had grown to 6mm. I decided to take one day at a time, focus on getting settled down in a house and not worry about anything else. If it happens it happens.
Ive been posting a lot of political rhetoric lately due to be screwed around by multiple useless incompetent departments. Ill eventually get back into bushcraft. They’ll be a few posts coming up. Ive been trying to work on my van and furniture with a damaged deltoid and bursitis. So heres something hilarious to have a good laugh at.
