Well, it happened. I turned 36, which makes me ‘well into’ my 30’s, rather than at the entrance of them.
While I normally write a blog on my actual birthday, many of the attempts I made to jot down my thoughts didn’t come through clearly, or they were blended too much with negativity, and I don’t want to start off my year that way.
The older I get, I discover more value for living life on your own terms. There aren’t *many* rules to this thing, and as long as you play within the boundaries, there’s a lot of incredible moments and opportunities that happen in life, especially when you leave your comfort zone.
For the last few months, I’ve been trying to cut my teeth at the local skatepark. I’ve gone through every range of emotion, including feelings of failure, frustration, embarrassment, shame and even sadness. I’m quickly learning that only a minority of these feelings are actually associated with skating, itself. Rather, skating has become a catalyst for me to purge a lot of the internal feelings of failure, doubt and even sadness, which I’ve carried for years.
This week, I finally felt like I ‘fit in’ at the park, which is little more than the result of going somewhere on a regular basis. Skating though the park, I got fist bumps, tips and pointers and incredible conversation with a handful of people at the park.
When I look at a situation like this, I realize it’s really the tip of the iceberg for how I’ve felt for most of my life; I’ve wrestled to feel accepted, good enough, welcome or even wanted in most social environments. There’s a big part of me that always feel like everybody else has it somehow figured out, and that I’m light years behind the rest of the world.
That’s been something I’ve carried for most of my life, and I’m not entirely sure why. However, there’s something really important to realize here; I don’t need to understand the full why.
I could spent a lot of time trying to figure out why I feel this way, or I could take that same energy and put it into things that make the feel the opposite, while recognizing there isn’t ever a ‘nirvana’ moment on the other side; just a healthier level of acceptance that doesn’t need to go down every emotional rabbit hole in life.
Just like going over the top of a transition ramp, I’m starting to now feel as if the momentum of my life is carrying me through a lot of dark times, and leading me to a better life that seems to emerge every day I wake up and decide to get out of bed instead of hitting snooze.
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