Transitions...

I'm your huckleberry... pie... 

Long time, no blather. I'm sitting here thinking about some minor tumult in my life, changes in direction and how things change for everybody. Life is just so damn busy lately and it crushed me this last year. The kid hit that critical mass point where he wants to do everything - lacrosse, swimming, Scouts, some other extracurriculur activities - and I didn't handle it very well. Training suffered and became non-existent, the racing evaporated... though to my credit I've kicked ass at work. I'm in a highly responsible job you see, and have stepped up from a poo throwing job in a corner of the monkey house, into a poo throwing job in a more centrally located position in the monkey house.  Some even claim that I have learned to walk upright and have achieved what some consider to be sentience, or a facsimile of it, displaying several AMESLAN signs, and fewer middle fingers than last year. 


There has been restlessness though and a lack of direction.  It's taken a lot of soul searching and drinking beer - the soul searching was probably optional, my soul is right where I left it after entering law school - but a couple things have been learned. One is that the missus and I have to divvy up some of the kid duties, we can't both be on station for all things. Neither of us gets a life if we're both on station for all kid activities, and it's unfair to the kid and to us to make the routine that demanding. We're going to wind up resentful and the kid is going to wonder why the government has him under surveillance, with two highly pushy and very obtrusive old people looking at him at all times, waiting for any slipup.

Resolved: be very present when I'm there, but don't worry about being there for every single thing, and split the load. Find time to ride and be healthy and destress and be happy, and when I'm on duty, find time for the wife to do her thing.  She wants to do a triathlon next spring so maybe we can get some synergy going, or whatever it's called when fat people sweat together in different locations.

A move between clubs sort of fell on me as well.  The race isn't being left in an orphanage; I will be sticking around in an advisory role, and will help the newer management team get up to speed.  They and the rest of the Squadra will no doubt surpass anything I ever did with il Tacchino.  After this year and the foam pit, I was officially out of new ideas.  All I had left for next year were strippers and fireworks, and the venue operators are death on fireworks. 

Although there was some epic level of ennui afflicting me this year, the decision to move clubs wasn't really in the works until probably 8:15 on race day.  I'd started organizing the race late, totally seat-of-the-pants'ed things this year - and with the help of a great management team and wonderful club and outside volunteers, it came off pretty good.  But it had gotten easy, and when I wasn't hyperventilating and crushed at 8:15, when I was running around happy, managing, enjoying it, not a care in the world, it was clear: I was a complete wreck, and needed to move on. 

Nothing was wrong with the race.  There were the little usual things - but overall it was close to a perfect day.  And that was the problem.  Self knowledge is one of the most important things and it is also one of the hardest to come by, and it's taken me a long time to figure out that when I get static and comfortable, I go totally to seed.  I had planned to step down as director after this year, but not to leave the club.  Yet it hit me after a while that my promoting ennui this year was due to comfort.  I'm too fat and happy, and possibly drunk and stupid too.  This is not good.  It's not directing that made me unhappy; it's that the big challenges, the fear of failure, the nightmare headache of untangling race logistics, isn't there to challenge me any longer.  Static-R-Us.  Simply put I go stale and rot if there aren't new challenges to face, and it was clear that it's now time to go and grow.

I will miss the Squadra badly but when you have to move, you have to move.  The bottom line, in the middle of this blog entry, is a good opportunity for personal growth came up and I lept at it.  Patience exhausted by some of the same-old-same-old that comes from having a routine nailed, I was irritable.  Same old success, same old frustrations - and it's not fair to get resentful and ugly about things you can't change, that are inherent in a situation.  Perfection isn't possible in this life, but  continued growth is.  So rather than sit and stew, I moved on.  And I feel sad about it but feel a sense of optimism about the future.  (In the movies, this is where the story ends). 

We'll see how it goes. I'm looking forward to the new venture with another established club that I think highly of, riding with some other friends who are going to no doubt challenge me pretty stiffly as a rider and team guy.  It isn't going to get spun up for me personally until December or so, there's some foot surgery to be done in the next couple weeks, probably a period of starvation as I try to diet and ride a physio-approved L2 pace to get myself back to merely really frickin' fat and slow from "Oh mah gawd awful" to "well, he kinda sucks."  I hope to blog about it a bit too, keep my online friends up to date and maybe chuckling a bit. 

So now I'm optimistic, and feeling a little pressure to perform, step my biking game back up, get it going again.  Pressure.  Some worry.  Maybe a little angst.  Maybe even some unhappy along the way.

That's okay though.  That means good things; like certain fish, I am happier in deeper water, under a bit of pressure and feeling it keenly.