My Crazy Day

No one in my family does well with change. Like, really. We get panic attacks and medications need to be adjusted. We have to have pans and routines constructed to detail what’s going on down to the half-hour. We don’t do well with change.

I’ve never done well with change. Which is no surprise seeing as no one I grew up with accepted change with anything less than panic. I’ve often chastised myself as lazy because I don’t do some particular things, but whenever I try to do them I get panicky and scared. I can’t even pin point what the fear is exactly, but it’s there, along with the butterflies in the belly.

But I’m trying to change this. I’m trying to look at change as a cool thing, that doing something new can be fun and rewarding.

Yesterday was ANZAC Day in Australia, the day we mourn our fallen soldiers, pray for the ones in active duty, and pay tribute to those left behind. The day is also commemorated with a dawn service just about everywhere in the country. People drag themselves out of bed to their local RSL (retired servicemen’s league) or the beach and stand in silence as the sun rises. Wreaths are laid by fires, the last post is played, and sometimes a prayer is given. While I’ve been to ANZAC Day services before, I’ve never been to a dawn service. See, besides being terrified of change, my family also loves a good sleep in. None of us kids were ever the type to get up early on the weekends to watch cartoons, unless by early you mean 9am. But recently I was thinking that I might as well go to one. This year the stars aligned and not only did I not have to work yesterday but I didn’t have to work today either which meant that if I was overly tired I’d still have a full day to reorient myself before heading back to work.

I almost talked myself out of it, thinking about the cold of the early morning as well as the traffic and parking problems, until I saw Hank Green’s YouTube video where he talked about adulthood. One of the things he said was an XKCD quote “we’re the adults now, we decide what that means”. I’ve seen that quote many times before, but that time it finally clicked. I am an adult now, screw doing the norm! I can get up early if I want! I can be tired the rest of the day and drink too much coffee!

It’s like a light switched on and suddenly I realised how just doing something different can be fun and an experience in and of itself.

The service was very moving and even educational. And while the kookaburras hadn’t stopped their ‘dawn is coming!’ chirping throughout most of the service they all seemed to shut up during the minute of silence.

To keep with the ‘change is good’ song of the day, my friend/roommate and I were watching Sunrise (morning breakfast show on channel 7) and noticed that they were filming just 20 minutes from our house. Not only that, but they brought along one of our favourite local celebrities; Grant Denyer!

What else could we do but hop in the car and drive down. After getting turned around and stopping at the wrong place we finally found a parking spot and started operation: find Grant. As it turns out, operation: find Grant lasted all of ten seconds as we found Grant and a bunch of his PA’s walking towards us. They stopped to get something that was left back as base camp, and I quickly jumped in, telling Grant that we were big fans of him and asking for a photo. He volunteered one of the men with him (Tom?) to take the snap, and my friend and I quickly positioned ourselves on either side of him.

I’ve gotta say, I was quite nervous. Sure, just the other day I got a photo with Wil Wheaton (more on that to come), but that was in the controlled environment of a convention when this was real life. Grant could easily have said no.

That was just the beginning of my amazing day. At 1:45pm I went to see The Avengers in Gold Class 3D at my local cinemas. I’ll write more on that later with an actual review.

I don’t know if there was much of a point to this post. It certainly wasn’t to brag (but it kind of was). I guess if you can take anything away from it, it’s that challenging yourself to do something different can work out to be a very rewarding experience.

Have you had a similar experience to me? Did you go to an ANZAC Day or other commemorative dawn service, or act like a crazy stalker person to track down a celebrity? Please tell me I’m not the only one in the comments!
Thanks,

Kathy