FRAN: Hello everyone, I’m Fran Turauskis and this is Season Two of Seize Your Adventure. If you are a returning listener, it is great to have you here again, and if you are new, it is great to have you here. I am currently working hard on editing the first official episode, which you will be getting in a couple of weeks. In that episode I will be speaking to a lady called Becky Sampson about cycling around the world. It was a really fun conversation, Becky was in Australia when I caught up with her and she was dodging some spiders whilst trying to find somewhere to sit and speak to me.
So this is actually a sneaky extra episode, because I wanted to add a little prologue before we get into the season. Most of the interviews in the first part of this season were recorded in a very different world to one in which they are being released. The UK and a lot of the world are on lockdown because of the coronavirus pandemic. And like many in the outdoor community, in some ways seems odd to be releasing a podcast about getting outside, and adventuring, and not washing for days in some cases, when at the moment I am advocating for the opposite - stay close to home, stay inside.
But I do feel that in some ways, Seize Your Adventure is now more relevant than ever before. The podcast has always toed that narrative between access to the outdoors, and being cut off from it. In many of the stories and interviews in Season Two, we talk about losing the ability to drive to our favourite places, or being stuck in hospital when Mother Ocean is calling. This series dives even deeper in the ways epilepsy has limited adventurous people, and more importantly, we talk about how they have adapted to these limits. A lot of my guests talk about the long path to acceptance of living with a condition like epilepsy, including the fluctuations in amounts of seizures and the way that we are capable on some days and we are not on others. And we also talk about the mental health difficulties that can spring upon us even when seizure-free. Things like anxiety and depression are sometimes difficult to attribute to either physiology of our brains, or the psychology of circumstance. I want to normalise epilepsy in adventure, rather than tout these stories as some kind of triumph through adversity.
But Seize Your Adventure was also a way to live the adventure lifestyle vicariously. There are times and legitimate reasons we cannot always adventure, whether that is lack of money, times of physical ill health or mental barriers or, as is the case now, global pandemics.
And from here on out there will be very little mention of the coronavirus. My hope is that the content gives you a good balance between an escape from the news cycle, and some skills to help navigate this new normal. If that sounds like something you need, hit subscribe now so you don’t miss any of the episodes. In the meantime you can check out the brand new Seize Your Adventure website at seizeyouradventure.com. There are some blog posts on there about trying to bring the outdoors inside.
And I have, finally, after much prompting, set up a new Patreon account. If you appreciate the work I do, you can support me with monthly payments. They go from as little as $3 a month, so that’s less than the cost of a drink. You can sign up at patreon.com/seizeyouradventure. It is a strange time in the world at the moment, but if you are in a position to support, please can you consider doing so. For those of you listening to this, now, thank you very much for letting me into your life at this point as well. That is it for the moment, so for now, more than ever, Safe Adventures everyone.
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