Muscle Failure

There is a big space between who I want to be and who it turns out I am most days.  It's not a terribly unusual problem I don't think, and doesn't set me apart from anybody who thinks just a tiny bit.  I think that gap is often the source of ambition and drive and hope even.  It is the negative space that allows imagination to imagine the next positive space. Or something like that.

A problem I'm having is that a lot of who I plan to be next I've said I'll be when I turn 40. I won't bore you (or embarass myself) with the list, but it's pretty lengthy and is going to require some significant overhall of several major systems if I'm going to pull it off. 

I was innocently reading the North Shore News today and some personal trainer dude got to write a whole column about how he's going to the world finals or something for the Tough Mudder. He's pretty excited. But anyway, as he's explaining how he started tough mudding, he says something like, I decided I wanted to be in the best shape of my life when I turned 40. 

Oh fuck me.

I have realized tonight that I may have to actually prepare for the many, many things I intend to having going on for me in my 40s.

I start feeling a bit hopeless and overwhelmed right about now.  It feels impossible to add more to this life of mine, although I'm not altogether sure why.  I have time and space and even sometimes some money.  But adding things just requires a More of Something that I just don't think I have.  So then I try to reframe it so that I'm not adding anything but just adapting things that already are.  But that still asks for that More of Something I just don't have.

And it occurs to me that that Something is a courage-thing.  It's a willingness to be brave and do something differently. 

It's unlikely.

I'm not sure what will come, or what 40s will look like. But I'm going to pretend that writing more often is the beginning of a discipline that might strong up whatever muscle it is that I need to do the next thing.

I'll let you know.