5:00PM
I feel sad. In sitting down to type this, I realized that tomorrow is the last day of writing. I can’t believe that it has been 34 days already. I can’t believe that I have done the same thing, three times per day, at the same time, for 34 days in a row. I didn’t think I had the stamina to keep going.
Maybe this actually makes sense for me. I was talking with my mom earlier and said that most of society wants someone to run marathons—say same, every day, slow pace, basically until they die. Yes, I exaggerate on that, probably because it frustrates me to think about doing the same thing for so long. I then told her that I’m a sprinter—I can do something very intensely for a short period of time and then need a break. Maybe I’m actually a middle distance runner.
I remember when I ran track in middle school—I didn’t run the long distance (1600m or 3200m), I didn’t run the short distance (100m or 200m), I mostly ran the middle distance (400m and 800m). I think what I loved about those races is that they were almost full-out sprints, but for a longer distance. It was doing something intense but high speed.
I wonder how much our behaviors and styles as kids reflects how we are in life. Besides running middle distance, I also liked to play multiple sports. I would play soccer in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring and summer for most of my childhood. When school sports started, I followed a similar seasonality. I liked being dedicated to one sport for a while, then take a break and shift to another.
I see these patterns in my adult life as well. I don’t like to do one thing over and over again for too long—I seem to tap out at about 3 months or 2-3 years, depending on the subject. I feel a bit more confident that it’s OK to follow that path—not everyone has the same pattens or rhythm to life. I really like that last line: not everyone has the same rhythm. Not everyone wants to do things very fast and intense and then take a break. Some people want to go slow and steady. It reminds me of the tale of the tortoise and the hare, where it says that the tortoise wins because it has a slow and steady pace. I disagree. I think the tortoise won because he had a slow and steady pace AND it was a long race. If it were a short race, the hare would have destroyed him. I say he and him, but really, I have no idea what gender the tortoise was.
Maybe part of life is just accepting our natural rhythms, dancing to our own beats, running at our own pace. Maybe it doesn’t work for certain races, but maybe it helps us win the ones we want to win.
5:10PM
