I swear to God I don’t purposely try and exhaust myself (you) but it seems to happen anyway. Innocuous thoughts enter my brains and won’t go away. Today’s started out during a run as a lot of times thoughts do. It wasn’t necessarily a personal indictment but I was thinking about what would happen if I dedicated as much time to my so called goals and or simply my to do list as I do to training. The realization was what you’d think. I could probably conquer the world. But then I couldn’t humble brag about being a slightly above average exerciser and that thought propelled me forth to some lackluster miles and ultimately a second thought. With regards to using the time to achieve things I state that I want, “What did I do instead?”
Sometimes these thoughts pass through me like any random thought never to return. Sometimes though, they are like the chorus to a song I hear ever so briefly on the radio. It tilts my head to the side and I repeat the line over and over again. I seek out the song. To hear the rest. To see if it’s going to be on repeat. This is what happened with this. “But what did you do instead?” A music-less refrain repeating over and over. Mocking. Taunting.
Thankfully this isn’t the kind of refrain that requires me sitting down with a pen and paper to document time wasted or ill spent. It’s more of a the gentle reminder type that gets you to refocus attention. It should be centering and allow you to finish what you started if you ask it at the right time.
It reminds us that we have time to do a lot of the things that we don’t do. We choose to do other things instead. Plain and simple.
Ultimately for me. These “insteads” cause stress in addition to gentle self loathing for not achieving what we know deep down we can. Slow silent stacks of “I’ll do it later,” looming over us. These stacks can become ominous like the trees that come alive in children’s books gazing down with “You’re never going too! We are too tall. We’ve shut out the sunlight with our branches!” Creepy, right?
These “insteads” are the motivation for me to write posts like Once and for All. Heroic reminders just like this one to refocus on what we tell ourselves is important. This isn’t all bad. It just proves the point even more. I haven’t gotten to those “once and for all’s either.”
Finally it’s the constant reminder that while we are complicit in our so called failures that self redemption is available through choices. All is never lost. We simply have to decide what we want. Some days those choices can be to screw off and do nothing. Just remember that when you’re looking at the list of things you thought you needed or wanted to do, that you chose which way to go and that’s not always a tremendous character flaw. It’s just the realities of being human.
#hugsanhi5s
