Birthdays are dangerous things. Parties and people, merry-making and celebration, too much food and cake, and when it’s all or mostly over, when it’s quiet, it becomes a time to sit down and really take a look at your life.
Usually I get pensive like this on the new year, and make a post with wishes for the coming year. But today I’m already feeling it.
Looking at my body and thinking I don’t want to feel like this, or look like this, that I want to feel energised and strong and fit and knowing that I can move. I’m actually afraid to jump — and I used to love jumping — because I don’t know if my body can handle it. That’s not a good feeling. I’d like to feel fit and free again.
Looking at the home I’ve built with Jarrod and thinking I’m blessed. And there’s also so much more to do. I won’t complain about the work that is housecare — the things I’d complain about are the things am blessed to have — it’s more like this house is the foundation of things that we get to create, and in that sense, there’s so much more to do.
I’m looking at my work and I know I haven’t given it a good go. Sure I can always say “I did the best I could with what I knew”, and in that perspective I can be satisfied. Doesn’t stop me from wanting more, wanting better, from holding myself to a expectation that is greater. It’s like a teacher looking at their students, knowing that they can figure out the math that’s currently stumping them. Or a coach looking at their athletes, knowing that they could play better than what they’re doing now. It takes some training, some skill, some discipline, some encouragement, and it happens. I know I can do better simply because lots of others like me have done better, and it’s not impossible.
I won’t say I’m dissatisfied with my life. It’s not the results I’m bothered by. It’s the thinking, the actions, the decisions, the processes that brought me here.
The great advice of life has always been to love the process, not the result. And I think that’s what I’m dissatisfied with. I’m not in love with the process.
There’s so much joy and satisfaction that could be gotten from work, you know? The way you can get sucked in to seeing a problem and finding a way out of it. And in fitness, the umph of getting a goal that you’ve set, or figuring things out with roller skates. There’s a life that I could live where I’m waking up every morning rested and ready and enthusiastic and passionate about what I’m doing, whether that’s getting myself moving or getting on my work or getting myself food and cleaning the home I’m blessed to have.
I miss… I miss that.
Sure there are rest days and off days and days I want to intentionally do nothing. These I want to be mindfully added to my calendar, to my life, and not have them as my ordinary days of the week.
I want to be able to love with intention. To stop doing things when it’s no longer gratifying (which isn’t the same as pleasurable, this is about meaning). To be conscious about where I am and what I’m doing.
A life without that, to have the same old, same old, day in and out? That isn’t life worth living. A life where the day is a checklist: gym, check; work, check; drinks and a screen, check; okay, bed. Ugh.
I don’t want to feel like I’m in the second trimester of my pregnancy. This isn’t body shaming. This is wanting energy and poise and better.
I’m sick of it. I’m so glad I’m sick of it. Because I’m finally at the point I don’t just talk or want change, I need change.
Don’t even need to bother with figuring out the when and the how, because I don’t need a shiny new perfectly-planned, down-to-the-minute schedule that’ll make me feel good but be pushed aside and filed for later to find. I know I’ll add it in.
How to I tell myself that I want life? To live? To have a reminder when I’m not feeling it, and not have it turn into some useless trinket?
This.
If I sit down, every single day, and I write in my journal, if I reflect on the day, and turn on my brain, I know I’ll find it. I’ll feel it.
If I give myself conscious moments in life, I’ll feel it.
I don’t want life on auto-pilot. I don’t want to do something or stay in something just because it started and needs to be finished. I’d hate a life lived without intention and desire and passion.
Can I choose to enter the arena? With playfulness and love and enthusiasm, and some amount of nothing-else-matters-except-for-this when it matters?
I’m not out to kill. I’m not here to fight. But I am going to win because I’m enjoying this.
✒️✨🧭
Because there weren’t many roller skate pictures,
image of someone’s legs on a skateboard by davidleeyyz from Pixabay.
