A few small things have happened this week to make me pause and take stock. It may be a good idea to do this every so often anyway. Pause, do a mental stock check of your life, reassess where you’re at. Look at the path you are on and where it is taking you. It is all too easy to slip off your course, ease off the gas, and even to end up merely jogging on the spot though it may take all the running you can do to just to remain on that spot.

Last Sunday I spent the entire day in front of the computer. I was doing vaguely useful things all day; working on SOUTH, searching for much-needed speaking gigs, fiddling with my website. But by nightfall I felt a deep frustration at having nothing tangible to show for my day. I certainly didn’t plan for my life to have become a desk-bound existence merely dreaming of adventure.

On Monday I travelled to Paris for the day to do a talk on behalf of Hope and Homes for Children. It was a trip down memory lane as I last spoke at the American School of Paris right at the end of my bike trip, when the end of the road was but a few days’ ride away. As I kicked my way through the crunch of November leaves towards the school, memories gushed back. I stood for a long time on a windy bridge over the Seine with a feeling of melancholy and nostalgia. Not so much for the journey itself, but for that era, that lifestyle when I really had life grabbed round the throat.

I realise now how desperate I am to get SOUTH off the ground. That I am willing to spend more than a year sitting at a desk in England in return for four months of adventure shows me how much I want it to succeed. But I need to work harder now, with still more determination and desperation. If I am to recapture the feeling I had in those days when every day was adding value to my life, then SOUTH must happen.

Lastly, we went to visit Simon Murray to pick his brains about seeking corporate sponsorship. Simon has long been one of my heroes. He is the author of Legionnaire (one of my favourite books) and therefore a very hard man. He is the oldest man to have trekked unsupported to the South Pole, as well as now being an extremely successful businessman.

Sitting in his very plush office, sharing laughs and tall tales of far-flung lands, I kept sneaking glances around his office. As well as the usual trappings of successful business, the wall bore framed pictures of him in the Legion and at the South Pole. It was an apt reminder of how much can be crammed into one lifetime, so long as you do not lose track of where you are going, how you’re going to get there, and how urgently you need to be on the way.

This is certainly a hard time to be chasing large expedition sponsors. But I found some words from the pages of Legionnaire to keep me encouraged:

“This is the moment when one needs morale; this is the time when it pays to hold onto yourself, when everything is perfectly bloody and conditions are impossible, when one is an inch from letting go completely. Character comes through in moments like this and those without fibre bend.”

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