❤✈️🌎 2 years ago today @JamesIvings and I sold all our belongings and left the UK to travel for a year. We've never been happier and we have no plans to ever return there 🙂

Thread 👇

Instead of today's thread, let's have some fun

1 RT = 1 Life Lesson

First one is on the house.

-Thread-

Those you trust the most are those in the best position for betrayal.

Active listening is a false God.

Most people will waste your mental space.

If you want to say "no", dont use any other word.

Seeking approval is the first step to auto destruction

Just because.

Here's an interesting story about a man you've almost certainly heard of, think you know stuff about, but probably weren't taught any of the good, funny, ludicrous stuff that makes it really interesting.

It's long. You might hate it. I'll take that chance...

In 1588, Spain launched a huge fleet with the aim of overthrowing Elizabeth I and conquering England (sorry Britain, I'm taking about the "it's still just England" era).

At least in part, they did this to stop our pirates from being such a monumental pain in their arse...

As the 130 Spanish ships approached our coast, the English packed our most ancient and decrepit boats with junk, set them on fire, and shoved them into the Spanish lines.

The Armada scattered, and the weather took care of the rest, driving them towards the Dutch coast...

Thus, the great military achievement of the Elizabethan era was settled by a combination of a typical English summer, and an aquatic bin fire.

But somebody had to come out of it a hero, and that somebody was Sir Francis Drake...

The things you know about Drake are practically all false: he didn’t finish his game of bowls before being bothered to defeat the Spanish – that story didn’t appear until some 40 years after the events, and bad weather kept in in Plymouth: not fannying around with ball games...

I have now been sick with #longcovid for almost a year—below, some reflections on my convalescence. (1/10)

While remaining mostly functional, in many ways, I'm more sick in 2021 than I was in 2020. Two weeks ago, when I last felt well enough to walk outside, I managed only 0.7km before the post-exertional malaise came on: brain fog, fatigue, pain in my neck and arm. (2/10)

I was formerly a (somewhat) competitive distance runner. It's not that I'm ignorant of how to push my body, nor the consequences. During my first marathon, I pushed through hypoglycaemia, black and white vision, before having a seizure just over the finish line. (3/10)

Post-exertional malaise is different, sustained, worse. And it comes just as surely from over-doing it at work, or in researching long covid, as from exercise. I used to have so much energy. Where is that man I was just last year? I miss him. (4/10)

The closest I've come to death was in a single-vehicle accident in the remote Pilbara. In the air, in the desert, upside-down, I remember a moment of stillness, of acceptance, of simple knowing that my agency, at that moment, was subordinate to basic physics and biology. (5/10)