One of the things I find extremely interesting is how high-level, professional, dedicated, and obsessed athletes talk about things when they've reached their goals. It's also fascinating to observe their behaviour patterns and the challenges they face at the highest level.
It's quite well known and written about, and talked about that some of those guys end up in big trouble.
It happens to rock stars, pop stars, actors, and people who set their sights high and then achieve. In short, it happens to people who finish.
When you reach the end of the road, the end of the project, or the end of the stretch for your goal, it's often (at least I find) not exactly what you hope for.
It's possible to craft or manufacture situations where the immediate release from achieving what you set out to do is extraordinary (for me, I think long-distance triathlon particularly), but very quickly you come down to earth with a bump, your motivation drains away, and you wonder what it was all for.
I would often get that in the middle of a race, particularly on the bike in a long distance race, wondering what the f*ck@ng hell I was doing here and why I had bothered with all that effort, only to come round the corner and to finish and to feel an extraordinary sense of pride in myself and well-being which was quickly washed away by the, ‘what the hell do I do next?’.
This is a metaphor for all of us, for all of life.
The answer, at least for me, is in the process, not the finish line.
In the past week, I've had some time to myself at home; Alison and the girls have been away on holiday, Callum has been around and not around, out and about with his mates and his girlfriend, etc.
I haven't felt the best because I've had one of those summer colds that you get if you finish work for holiday, but I have had time to sit and think and time to be around.
I'm banging around this new house that we bought (which is not new) with the land that we have, in a totally different circumstance from that which I was in before.
When I first arrived here, I was desperate to be finished. What's happening now is that I'm drifting into the process of trying to create this into our home, into the place we love to be, into the thing we're proud of because of all the work we've done to it.
I will never ever be finished here, and what I've realised this week is that that is absolutely perfect because sometimes what comes after finished is just not quite what we expected.
Blog Post Number - 4242
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