Drop Those Weights!

I know what you must be thinking. This is another abandoned blog, left to languish in the dusty corners of the internet.

It’s been a long while since I’ve blogged. As it is, I’ve barely dipped my toes in the ocean the past 18 months!

At the back of my mind has been the idea to reinvigorate this blog, build it up, get more readership, take it in a new direction. I’ve had ideas, but not the time, infrastructure, skills nor energy to put anything into effect.

Life has been busy sorting through a major issue in my life which has required my full attention.  Throughout this difficult time, and extended diving “surface interval” (*1), a recurring scuba phrase has been running through my mind: 

Drop Those Weights!

Correct weighting is a scuba fundamental. Get your weighting right and the currents carry you along effortlessly, seascapes passing beneath you, much like the way a bird glides above a city sky. 

Get your weighting wrong, and you flounder and flail at the surface while your buddies slip out of sight into the blue (embarrassing) or during your dive you could have an uncontrolled ascent to the surface (dangerous).

Weights are thus vital in diving, and dropping them seems counter intuitive as a diver. Yet it is one of the key things you learn when taking the rescue diver course.

If you are in an emergency scuba situation there is a time and a place where survival depends on dropping them. For example, if you are trying to rescue an unconscious or otherwise distressed diver while battling a strong ocean swell, you won’t get far, and may instead endanger both the diver and yourself. Weights are the first and easiest thing to lose to help increase your manoeuvrability, enabling you to tow the diver quickly to safety.

The three-year battle I’d been fighting came to an ugly head in 2016. It took all my time, energy and attention, leaving me utterly drained by the year’s end. I realised that if was going to survive 2017 and get the outcome I wanted, I needed to drop my other goals and commitments to exclusively focus on the crisis at hand. 

Pretty much everything went: exercise and healthy eating, catch ups with friends. I turned down a prospective career path and only travelled when I needed to. I kept dropping those metaphorical weights, and finally felt my load lighten to a point where I had the energy and brain space to bring those difficult matters to a successful conclusion by October 2017.

With all that behind me, the final couple of months of 2017 have been spent celebrating my success and my newfound freedom, guess how?! No, wait, don’t… let me show you some pictures to give you a taste of what's to come in 2018, when normal blogging duties will resume!

Happy new year

Xxx Nigella

*¹    Surface Interval:

The surface interval (SI) or surface interval time (SIT) is the time spent by a diver at surface pressure after a dive during which inert gas which was still present at the end of the dive is further eliminated from the tissues.[6] This continues until the tissues are at equilibrium with the surface pressures. This may take several hours. In the case of the US Navy 1956 Air tables, it is considered complete after 12 hours,[16] The US Navy 2008 Air tables specify up to 16 hours for normal exposure.[36] but other algorithms may require more than 24 hours to assume full equilibrium. (From Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decompression_practice#Surface_interval )