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singular focus

 I am terrified of setting this goal.  it feels not unlike updating my glasses or getting back on the horse with dental work. really anything that gets to my sense of value as a person becomes difficult. It feels like sometimes it can take a whole year to set one appointment. I spend my whole career trying to unsuccessfully motivating others to move forward on their life goals and dreams. I help them identify what their value system is and align that with their actions.


Now I find myself twenty, thirty, fourth pounds overweight. I still run often for mood regulation and personal enjoyment but I find myself stuck in this rut with nothing to dream about, no race to strive for which is typically what I have on the books to motivate me in other things. It all makes sense after all - I'm a father of a two, almost 3-year-old and a 7-year-old and we've moved a couple times in the last few years. the last move was tough and I medicated it with bags of candy in the evening after the kids went to bed. So now it's time to step out and what I've come to know as the Imposter, a sort of demonic artifact of my clinical depression, PTSD, and monotropism, yells in the background, "you do not deserve this! you are not good! you are not worthy!"


To a greater degree lately that voice has become more well managed with pharmaceuticals and therapy.  but with that I've added being a dad to two kids who will grow up in a world teeming with political and social hate.  just the other day my 7 y/o came home talking about how being "fat" is such an disgusting, ugly and undesirable thing.  damn kids, I can just imagine the shit talking that probably populates some amount of any school yard anywhere.  


I try to offer my daughter a kind of empathy and support I never had growing up.  and i've found myself sounding a lot like my parents and grandparents at times.  I work at being kind to myself.  usually that work has best been accomplished by adding more outside.  for me, it's hours on the trial.  for my family I hope it'll be what it was like a couple times before: an excuse to spend an extended amount of time camping, maybe hiking, and exploring beautiful places we've never been before.  


I hope it works, and it's the only idea I have to combine so many of my needs as well as things I value in passing on to my kids.  get out of the city, away from the politics, away from the bullshit, see some stars, read some books, play some Nintendo Switch.  


It's a stretch.  I can't wait for the grind to get better.  in so many of the stories I've heard, the grind is a state of mind and maybe most of the time it's as much of a choice as it is a predetermined privilege.  but fuck that, who wants some autonomy instead.  agency.  voice.  the trail is where I've often learned the lessons I need to stretch in that direction.  


 

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