Free State of Jen

Today my adventure was suspending my unfounded belief that crowd funding is a load of crap and is only out to rip people off. Where do these crazy ideas come from! Anyway, I’m looking into hosting the Women’s’ Adventure Film Tour in Bundaberg and wanted to come up with a way to make the tickets more affordable. I tossed around a few ideas until a small voice said: crowd funding.

“Sounds dodgy,” I heard my mind telling my brain.

“Ugh, you again. Really? Don’t you know when to keep your trap shut? We both know you’re risk averse. I’m the boss here and I say we look into it,” my brain said.

After I bit of research I had to concede that I’d been a close-minded twerp. Oopsy! Crowd funding is in fact a legitimate way to get an event like this off the ground. I felt pretty good about learning some new stuff, not only about crowd funding, but about my own tendency to unconsciously absorb ideas from unreliable sources. In doing so I got a good ol’ pat on the back from my brain. This is the photo I took:

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The film tour is an adventure in itself. I’ve never done anything like this before and it’s a huge project. If I can pull it off it’ll write on the wall of who I am. I like the sound of that. Crowd funding will be a great way for me to reduce the price of tickets down to almost nothing, which means that the event becomes a totally inclusive one, which is what I’m driving at with the whole adventure thing in the first place.

On the 17th of September 2019 I set off on a 450km solo and unsupported hike from my home in Woodgate to the Brisbane CBD (itinerary). I did this to raise funds and awareness for Brain Injury and also because I wanted to have an adventure. During the hike I raised in excess of $5000. My target is $40 000, so I still have a ways to go and the best part of the year to get it done. All that money will go to The PA Research Foundation and STEPS, which are collaborators in providing rehabilitation for those struck down with a traumatic brain injury. Please contact me if you are interested in collaborating with me. I’d love to hear from you!

Having a brain injury myself, I am a member of my local STEPS support group who meet in Bundaberg every month. Brain injury is known as the invisible disability and I got to talk to a lot of people, including the Minister of Health (Hon. Dr Steven Miles) about what it means to live with such a disability. “Gees, you look fine.” “There’s no way I’d ever think that you had a disability.” “Yeah, but there’s nothing wrong with you though.” Were some of the responses I got from people I met along the way.

This was the second big hike I’ve done. In 2016 I walked almost 400km to raise money for brain cancer. Since I completed that first hike I’ve been training pretty hard, which made my hike to Brisbane much easier than the 2016 hike. My attitude has probably shifted a fair bit too because on that first hike I came to learn that I am an amazing person who can achieve unbelievable things, but that I’m not special. I’m just like everyone else; the only difference being that I’m someone who had an idea and I made the idea happen. All of us can do that; you have my permission to be awesome too!

me, damien and Minister