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

[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.