Relocation tends to offer an opportunity to reorganize. As I sit amidst the slowly shrinking pile of chaos that comes from a move, I find myself with a chance to draft something that has been on my mind a lot lately.
Social media is all about choices. For some, it is what messages to regurgitate with little independent research. Others choose to play it “safe” and post very little on their own ideas and lives. Few, like yours truly, use it as a means to have a look at alternative perspectives and try to understand the road we are travelling upon. Some, however, use it as means to illustrate their personal progress and challenges they face.
Last May, I wrote about my experiences and thoughts on the 2017 Mid-Atlantic Strongman Challenge in a post simply titled “Why?” Over a year later, I feel like I still am missing something – that there is more to be said for the motivations that possess folks to lift the ridiculous, carry the insane, and throw weights that would warp the soul and back of most people.
One of the competitors I met that day recently gave a glimpse into her logic:
I sat down the other night… and roughly estimated the amount of money I spent over the 6 years I partied. I was at the bar, on average, 3 nights a week and I figure, on average, spent $30 a night. Add that to the pack a day smoking habit and over 6 years- we get roughly $40,500.
I chose to stop wasting hours doing shit I wouldn’t remember anyway and chose to work my ass off to get to the memories that will last me a lifetime.
We all make choices. The choices we make, are the choices we live with. Choose wisely.
Closer to home, there is this story:
At my heaviest I weighed 268 lbs
From a size 22 to a 10
Down 90 lbs and loving life.
Other similar successes:
Current weight: 220.2
Goal weight: 195
Starting weight 281 (xmas), 271 (Feb 10)
There are many more out there on my timeline, and the fact that time constraints limit me in sharing all of them is a great indication that I try to surround myself with exceptional folks.
Finally, one post stands out as noteworthy and relevant:
I have a personal challenge for you. Tell us the one thing you love most about yourself. For most of us, that’s a scary thing to do. We’ve associated thinking good personal thoughts with arrogance. We feel like our happiness could be seen as a threat by the people around us. Ask yourself this though… Is their personal self-image so brittle that it will fall apart if they find out someone they care about actually loves themselves? If our friends are threatened by our happiness, are they really our friends?
We spend so much time dwelling on the things we wish were different about ourselves, but how often do we reflect on the things that make us proud to be us? I challenge you to change that. Don’t say it here in a comment where only MY friends see it. Share it to your page. Let the people YOU know see that you’re not ashamed of your strengths. They’ll either be inspired by it, or turned off by it, but either of those results are out of your hands. You’re not posting for them, you’re posting for you. I’d love to be tagged in it to make sure that I see your post.
Okay, so I am one of those “Beaky Buzzards” when it comes to participatory content on Facebook:
The challenge was interesting, though…
Years ago, my Creative Writing teacher (one of the most influential adults in my educational path) would harp on us to “show the audience; don’t just tell them!”
There’s this focus that, once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity: you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other; you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once the conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.
I set out to show you some of the examples of folks who have inspired me to tell their story further, but in the process, I have shown you what I truly love about myself…
What’s your story?
milsurpwriter 