Going on Through.

I would like to be angry but I’m simply tired. The house is still leaking. It doesn’t happen every time it rains, but it does happen, and water intrudes into the second floor closet, which is now opened up for the third time. I’m beginning to lose my mind. No idea how much this next venture into home repairs will cost. Thousands, I’m sure. And I can’t even get it started until things dry out. Which means weathering another storm this week.

But it is simply another thing. I can tolerate it. I have to: I don’t have another choice. And I’m fortunate enough to be able to face the financial aspect of it. It’s difficult and challenging, but I can do it. My emotions and frazzled, my frustration is high, and I have trouble sleeping. Which means that I think about drinking. Let me be clear: I don’t want to drink, and I’m not tempted to drink. I’m just aware that if I were to, it would make me unconscious, which is often what I want when it’s 11pm and I can’t sleep because I’m aware my house is leaking.

But other than that, I had a good weekend. I ran. A lot. Saturday I ran 11 miles, and Sunday I ran 10. That’s the longest weekend of my life. Total time was about 3:35. So, not fast. But decidedly on the pace I’d like to run my marathon in the fall. I get a little bit of grief from BB for stretching out my mileage too much, but I’m listening to my body and feeling good.

I got really good blood numbers at my annual work physical. Other than my fasting glucose, which is always around 105, everything looks good. Lipid panel pretty solid, if trending a bit high. A1c stellar. And at the gym, my body fat came in at 17.7%, which represents a 4.2% drop in the past three months. I’ve been working like hell, and it’s all coming together. Like most people, I’d like to be fitter than I am, and slimmer, and sexier. But I’m making progress. And progress is all I need.

I don’t think I’m especially good at anything. Not innately. What I’ve always been is willing to work just hard enough to get by. I’m no perfectionist. I’m not interested in a beautiful final product. In something flawless. I just want today to be better than yesterday. And I am fortunate in that slow, steady progress is deeply satisfying to me. I know that not everyone has that temperament, and I’m not sure how to cultivate it.

As I’ve said and written many times, I think the only thing it takes to be good at something is to be willing to be bad at it. I was a bad pianist for a long time. I was bad at math. At relationships. At computer programming. At running. At sobriety. At writing. Today, I’m pretty good at most of those things. I’m not great. Being great might take some kind of talent or drive that I don’t have. But I’m pretty good. And more to the point, I’m satisfied.

Finding ways to be satisfied with my life is the most important thing to me. Living in a constant state of disruption and frustration and discontentment is what leads me to drink myself into oblivion. So I work. I work reasonably hard at things that make me reasonably happy and I feel pretty good most of the time. It’s not deep wisdom. It’s simple. But it can be surprisingly difficult. Negative emotions are so seductive.

But I’ve found the path forward that works for me, most of the time. Turns out that these days, for the most part, it’s a running path along the river.