I spent this past weekend at a fitness and business summit in Seattle.  The three day summit had an all-star line up of fitness professionals that were willing to share inspiration and wisdom from their successes and failures in the fitness industry.  As I was driving home, I was overwhelmed with information.  My mind was racing over the many different points that stuck out, trying to retain those “ah-ha” moments.

I am competitive.  I know surprise surprise.  I hate to lose at anything and I want to win at everything.  Most of the time I think competition is great, I love the competition in tennis and basketball.  I love competing with myself in powerlifting, and I like competing with people who don’t even know I’m competing with them.  Is there a point when competition takes away from the activity?  I have seen both sides of competition and there have been times that the ugly side has shown its face.

For the most part, plateaus suck.  We set the goal, we work our asses off to accomplish it and then somewhere, somehow plateaus will come out of nowhere to make us second guess all our hard work.  They don’t really happen quiet like that, but they always seem to come when we are hungry for more and stop us in our tracks.  It’s almost a test to make sure we want it bad enough, or give us an excuse to take a step backwards.  

I was working out today and feeling great about my training.  My nutrition has been good this summer, my workouts have been challenging, I’m feeling strong and when I look at myself in the mirror the woman smiling back is someone I am proud to be.  And then, as I was finishing up my final set of back exercises, I realized I was waiting for the other foot to drop.  I realized I have been anticipating that moment when something terribly wrong will happen to me, you know, to “even” out these good feelings.

I am sitting here enjoying a peaceful night to myself.  We have about 10 days left until the minis head back to school and all that structure and consistency can return.  The time to think and write and breath will return and for the next nine months I will be given the gift of public education for my minis.

There is too much positive in this post to start anywhere but the end.  The village that surrounds me today is full of life and love and people that genuinely are looking out for my best interests.  This village listens to me, they make me laugh harder than I knew possible and the moment I start to fall, they somehow pick me up before I ever hit the ground.  For a large part of my life I didn't know what it felt like to have a village, I felt abandoned by the idea of one and I searched in all the wrong places trying to create one.

We all have bad days, and maybe today I am having one.  Maybe today, this is the best I can do.  Maybe today everything in life is hard, and just showing up was all I could muster.  Maybe sweatpants and a hat make me feel like I can hide away in a cloud of comfort.  Maybe all of this has to do with me and only me.  Maybe this has nothing to do with you…maybe.

When I was growing up, I was a very athletic kid.  Basketball was by far my favorite sport.  I lived and breathed basketball.  My lunchtime recesses where spent playing KnockOut, my evenings were spent shooting baskets in the driveway, sometimes until way past 10pm when I am surprised none of the neighbors yelled at me.

I loved summer as a kid, the last day of school lingered on the calendar for months.  The final day was celebrated with friends and we began the months of long days, endless watermelon and just a lot of nothing.  Some summers we worked just enough to have money to spend, other summers were filled with sleepover camps and adventures with our friends. 

Regularly I get asked, “how's it going?” or “how are things?” or some other version of the same question.  I usually answer with a “good,” or “great” or sometimes I throw in a “so-so.”  But lately this question is not feeling like an easy one to answer.  I struggle with the right way to say, “HOLY FUCK HOW DID LIFE GET SO HARD.”