All-in

I worked out on the rollers yesterday morning (21.2 over 15 miles), but am not going to today. I've been working on my kitchen the past couple of days.  Just a quick spruce-up before I re-list the house in April.  The trim is down, the wallpaper is down, and now I'm patching the walls up, and replacing sections of the wall where the horse hair plaster has come away from the lath.  Then the whole kitchen will be freshly painted, and that'll be that.  Except that I have to do the same to the pantry.  Either way, it's not a huge amount of work, and my hope is that it'll make a difference in selling the place.

I was completely exhausted last night and had a hard time getting up this morning -- thus the no riding today. Working in the kitchen is giving me plenty of exercise, and I don't want to fall asleep at dinner tonight (going out with a friend in Cambridge -- it's restaurant week in Boston).  I may tackle a couple of bike projects if I have time though.  Just quick ones -- trim down Juli's kickstand, mount the rack and bottle cage holder on her Schwinn, etc. The snow is melting very quickly, now, and we may have a weekend soon where an outdoor family ride will make sense!

While I've been working, I've had a lot of head time.  And one thing I took away from yesterday is that I don't like working on my house anymore.  Most of my house projects over the past dozen years have been solo, but I didn't mind so much when I was married -- first, because I was working towards making house better for us, and then later because it was an escape.  But I'm only working on the house now to make it more appealing to someone else, which isn't nearly as much fun.

But apart from grumbling to myself about the house, I've been mulling over the notion of being all-in.  I'm not all-in to the house, because I'm essentially waiting to leave it behind me.  And I've realized that I haven't been all-in to other aspects of my life for a while, either.  Instead, I think I've been waiting for something.  For my next thing to come along, maybe.  For Allyson to come back.  For the house to sell, as I've said, or for the divorce to finalize.  Waiting is a very passive activity.  Not all-in at all.

And that's not really like me.  I've always been a fairly intense person, and I've lived/worked/played with intensity.  Not self-destructively, just intensely, and I generally throw myself into whatever it is that I'm doing, working to exhaustion and starting over the next day.  But not lately.

I understand how I got where I've been, and I do think I've made great strides this year to upping the intensity back to where I'm used to it being.  I feel much more in life, now, than out of it.  And that's good, because being all-in is the only mode I've ever been happy in.  This waiting bit has really sucked, by comparison.  Even more than that, the others in my life need me to be all-in.  My kids, my friends, my employer, my dog, all the women I've been meeting out for dates -- everyone.  They don't need someone taking up space, they need an active participant -- someone ready to give it (whatever "it" is, in each case) their all.  If I can't do that, why bother?

Last May, I realized I needed to start living again.  And now 9 months later I think I've figured out that it's not just about living -- it's also about how I live.  Let's see if I can do a little better than that in turning up the intensity...

All for now,

J