Just go for it!

In the last two days I've thinking about something that I hadn't thought of before. In my life, I have a constant that I think is what has helped me doing so many things, and that is that I just went for it. This might sound cliche and a little irresponsible but, it is true!

So, let me explain so you can get the picture of what I mean. If you follow me on social media you might have seen the picture of my car buried in snow in Vermont, that photo was the one that inspired this blog post.

When I made the decision of moving  back to Vermont for the second time back in 2006, I knew this time I wanted to rent a cute little house in the woods, it was pure Vermont, right? When we (my friends and I) started to look for our home away from home, we just concentrated on how traditional it was. Well, as you might know, I do walk and live an independent live, but really there is a lot of things that I struggle with, one of them is my balance and the other one is stairs, I can go up and down them, but they have to have a railing for me to hold on. So if you add snow (lots of it as you can see) to the picture, my struggles become twice as difficult. When we first move to the house, I didn't have a car, and the closest bus stop was about 45 min away for an able-body person to walk to, so for me it would have been about two hours, and YES we still went for THAT house. You see, one of the things that I just realised I've learned throughout my life is that if you are in the situation YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE IT WORK. If you make your decisions based on what you can or can't do, you won't challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone and probably won't find your true potential.

The first few days (even weeks if I remember right) I just worked around it, I found very nice people to give me rides to and from work, Sometimes I had to stand up by the road at 4.50 am in the cold (about 10F - 12C ) waiting for my boss to pick me up, but hey life is all about experiences right? Luckily, I found a great offer on a car that became my best friend for the next 5 months. Even if half the time I woke up to it looking like the photo above, it was better than two hours walk.

Vermont is just an example of what I'm trying to say, it happens all the time. It happened when I went to University, I knew I wanted to go that specific one, so the infrastructure wasn't going to stop me, I gave my exam, got in and then, the first day of classes I figured out how to deal with it. It  happened when I wanted to go a party, but I had both my legs cast and was on the wheelchair, and the party was on the fourth floor of a club, I just went for it and made it work. Luckily there is always someone willing to help, in this case, was the bouncer who carried me up the four floors and a nice man who helped with my chair. It also happened to me when I first visited my in-laws home, they have the scariest set of stairs I have ever seen, they are so steep that if you are standing up at the top and fall, you will probably land on your feet without touching any steps, and yes I spend my first two week in England at their home, and when everyone went to work it was just the stairs and I, learning how to like each other, in the end I mastered them going up very carefully and coming down them in my bum (butt), and my in-laws fear of finding me with a broken neck at the bottom hasn't happened so far. But also, It has happened in my day to day life, It happened with showers, shoes, getting in the sea, getting out of the sea, It has happened with ponytails and shaving, and it will always happen because if there is something I've learned with Arthrogryposis is that I WILL FIGURE IT OUT!

Where I'm trying to go with all of this is that, even though, I'm supposed to check what I can or can't do, to fit the reality of my body, not doing it has taken me right into amazing adventures and it has helped me live my life to the fullest, things will go wrong sometimes, but who hasn't had situations going wrong in their lives. Life, to me, is about taking chances, enjoying every moment of it, dealing with barriers that try to stop me  doing what I want. If I could recommend something, is not to  be afraid of doing things, if you want to do something do not think in the what ifs, just go for it and figure it out when you are there.