It has been 12 months since my last confession………
Moving into my own space since August of 2002 has been invigorating. It has brought me a new sense of focus and enlightenment. I am starting to feel a void being filled, a void that I had found myself falling into deeper and deeper. For the past twelve months I have been searching for a purpose outside of my 9-5 life.
In my first full weekend in my new space I found myself getting lost in things I have missed. They say it takes about 21 days to learn a new habit. Oddly enough this weekend was my 21st day in my new place. This weekend had been building on my personal curiosity of this new city. A curiosity paired with a laundry list of things I felt that I had lost as superficial as DVR to as personally expressive as writing.
Over the past 21 days I have been able to peel back the onion slowly but productively. I started with a few quick successes like getting a cable package that included DVR, HD & full Sports. This simple pleasure to me is representative of my personality of being rapid-fire without commercials, attentive to sparkling clear detail and, a Sports fanatic. This snowball began to gain momentum with me further exploring the sports side. When I first moved to San Francisco I thought my quick win was going to be my old romance of rugby. A serious commitment I kept for over 7 years. I flirted with this old fling, but felt that ship had sailed, I felt it was time to focus independently on my next phase of life especially with this recent move to freedom.
This movement of independence led to my next quick win of joining a new sports club. It tied together my new found enthusiasm and curiosity of finding personal limits. This club provided the slight push off this plateau that I felt stranded on. The Club’s inaugural package of training and nutritionist sessions came right into alignment at the opportune time. Over my first two weeks I setup appointments with both professionals in lock-step, allowing me to maximize these finite resources and harness my resurrection of personal accountability. For what ever reason these professionals have unlocked my suppressed knowledge of best practices when it comes to physical activity and food management. (It must be my acceptance of authority.) Needless to say the snowball is gaining mass.
This weekend I really dug my heels into this new beginning. I managed to take a nice trail run to coincide with a 4 mile walk to the center of my new town. (The Land of Beautiful People as my Co-Worker says.) I had fresh groceries delivered which is a major factor of the equation of the reshaping of my physical self. Proper caloric intakes makes up 80% of battle with one’s body. This also opens up the door to one of my next explorations of cooking. I have always been intrigued the preparation and delivery of food. My family has always shared food a device to reward accomplishments as well as the center piece of socialization. To me food has the opportunity of being a mechanism of personal expression. When you create something to be consumed by another person it is a reflection of you. It represents your view, relationship and pallet with food. The ability to step outside of oneself and create something that is enjoyable for someone else as much as it is you is quite challenging. This is a challenge that I have had on my laundry list and am deeply excited to embark on soon. Right now I am focus on the basics fundamentals of portions, frequencies and quality of foods that I consume. The art of food will come once this snowball becomes the base of a snowman.
I leave you with this. Relish new beginnings and restarts, because rarely do they come around and sometimes they are attached to a terrible ending. This new beginning has allowed me a baptism like cleansing to start fresh, and by starting fresh I am able to reprogram my routines. While I am in this honeymoon of chaos, I was able to reinsert a commitment to basics. Basics like sports, food, accountability and creativity. All of which I feel are a central part of who I am. This revelation of awareness was sparked on my 21st day of my new space when I looked up taking in the moment and said wow I think I have come a long way from the last time I did this in 2002. It was at that point I also put fingers to keyboard and I began to write expressively for the first time in 12 months. In this moment it feels like my new found freedom is more than just about a superficial vaulted space but is also about once again releasing creative autonomy.
I find it oddly fitting the last time I wrote was on the birthday of my Grandfather who was a very inspirational man in my life. Then I break twelve months of silence on the birthday of his daughter and my Aunt, who is a very inspirational woman in my life.
