Fresh Start

[mamculuna]

Wishing I had a record of every time I've started over. Exercise, diets, meditation, yoga, writing, even school and work. Even marriages and children. It seems that I'm not the kind who can start something one day and just keep it going for years with no lapses. Mostly it's my own laziness, lack of will, lack of confidence, etc., but often outside circumstances: pulled tendons, broken computers, rejection letters, etc., etc., etc. Whatever. It doesn't matter if it's something inside or outside that makes me fall off the horse, but inevitably I'm sitting in the dust watching the hooves go down the trail.

At one time these events threw me into despair. I can run a 10 meter race! Well, no, I can't even run across the street. It was hideous. I'd feel doomed to weakness and failure forever.

Don't know what kinds of things came along and told me that I had to get up, catch the beast, and get back on. Somehow or another I did it. Eventually it got to be not how far I could go, but how quickly I could get back to where I used to be, or even to where I was at least trying to go somewhere.

The hard part is that most of the time as I grow older, each time I start over I'm going to lose some ground, and yet now it's gotten to where even that no longer seems so bad, as long as I do start over. Once I felt so angry at having to struggle to get to what used to be so easy, but now I'm glad to walk a familiar path.

A while back I did a series of posts based on I Ching readings, but never got to the one that should be the label for my life, I think: Work on What Has Been Spoiled.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Thanks for writing that. It was a good thing for me to read right now.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Glad if it helped.

[wisewoman.livejournal.com]

Synchronicity. Serendipity? I read this directly after an MSN article on regrets. I was surfing the general idea of whether psychological change is ever possible. (I was discomfited to find that the phrase "Is change possible?" gets you hundreds of hits for religious sites insisting that homosexuality is a lifestyle choice that can be changed by prayer. Oh, please, go away.)

When I think in terms of fresh starts it doesn't usually have anything to do with starting something old afresh, rather with starting something totally new. Searching, always searching, and perhaps going back and trying again to perfect the things at which I've failed would be more productive. I'm trying to obliterate the regrets by succeeding at something new, instead of persisting. I thinks that's always been a major failing; lack of persistence, tenacity.

Thank you for adjusting my perspective.

;o)

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Actually, me too (lacking tenacity). I guess maybe it was having to keep trying to teach the same thing over and over that helped me understand a little bit about going back and trying again.

[fraydecat.livejournal.com]

Same here. Thanks, I needed that. I have been seriously bummed out about having to stop walking on the treadmill after six weeks of hard work. Trying to look at it differently.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's what I mean. I've had to stop and start over with that kind of thing so many times. But at least we do get another chance, eventually.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

One thing I've been trying to learn as I get older is to adjust my sights. Not lower them, necessarily, but alter them so the goals fit me at my present stage of life better. I was getting way, way too frustrated and angry at myself. Urgh.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Exactly. But at the other extreme, I see a lot of people who seem to think that they can't do anything if they can't do everything they used to do. It's hard to find the right balance.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I think you have hit on something that affects a lot of women our age. I think one of the best things about getting older for me is the realization that it's the effort, the journey that counts most. That as long as I continue to get up and keep going, I learn something new. I've also learned not to be so hard on myself, to accept that I'm not superwoman.
Makes life a little easier, that does.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Indeed. But also not to go the other way and just give up. It's hard sometimes to accept that doing a little less is not the same as doing nothing.

It's sort of a matter of knowing ourselves as we really are right now, and not looking at our imaginary projections of our younger selves--and for me, that's difficult.

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

It's sort of a matter of knowing ourselves as we really are right now Yes, absolutely. I still have trouble looking at myself in the mirror, and realizing that I am no longer a young woman. I still feel young; just that my physical self doesn't always agree with my mental self. I guess that's something that doesn't change: I remember my Mom saying to me when she turned 85, that some days she looks in the mirror and wonders who that old lady looking back at her is..

[wombatina.livejournal.com]

all so true.

my favorite fortune cookie (same as i ching, right?):

ignoring the problem will not make it go away.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Indeed!

Actually some of the ideas in I Ching are a little more interesting than fortune cookies, but using them to tell the future is definitely the same.