This is the 5th Christmas gone by, since the start of the IL website, and what five years those have been. The first three years were all about documenting what I did in my sport and what I learned about people, myself and life in general. Then I turned the site into a series of blogs. Incredible Ladies became the Incredible Ladies Project, and the focus turned to the search for something substantial, the search for a sustainable future and a challenge which actually may make me a living. Writing became and still is my big passion. I am however writing memoir rather than novel and however much I like doing it, there have been times during which I had to skip. Some things are just too personal to write about in the present time; they need to slide into the past far enough to see them embedded in a bigger picture, to then be able to depict them honestly and with wit.Those things consume a lot of energy and distract the mind from seeing the awkwardness and the witty sparkle in every day situations, making it hard to write about those as well. I guess that distinguishes a good writer from an average or bad one. The good writer just sits down and labours through it. I need my brain free of distraction to see the inspiration of the moment to be able to write, like during this Christmas break. Hence for the good part of 2011 the blogs had a bit of a time-out.
I instead tried to focus on my second love: Bodybuilding. I decided to become a personal trainer!
Well, for the same reasons as for the writing, this is posing a bit of a challenge, too. Life really is the weirdest of things: For 2011 I had set myself challenges to make it the most remarkable and most memorable year of my life. I did this wonderful trip into the rainforest, I did the bodybuilding competition and I had organised a great party. The year I would become 50 was supposed to be MY year... funnily enough at the end of the year it doesn't feel like that, something else stole my thunder and I don't even know what it is.
I guess the premise was wrong, too: Thinking that achieving something by a certain age would make the achieved even better, bigger, nicer... Well, apparently the pedestal I wanted to be on was not deserved yet, or it was not the right one anyway.
Now the New Year is upon us and for me it feels like a crunch time year. This might be the year that will ask me: 'either' - 'or'. I have been doing a lot of things which I call challenges and which others might not even consider worth talking about. Those things however, have led me to a point at which to decide what sort of life I want to live in the future. So far I could juggle things both ways: I was not entirely the 'gardening, DIYing, party throwing, house and pets maintaining Me' anymore, but I was not the 'business owning, hard working and focused on the future Me' either.
2011 showed as well, that if I want my dreams come true I cannot balance it all anymore; I am tired before I even properly started - something's gotta give. This however sounds easier than it is. This is not about cooking a bit less often to gain time for a sewing course, this is about doing something very time consuming entirely on my own. This is about giving up a rewarding, good, and safe life, for a potentially equally rewarding, rather exhausting, risky, yet exciting life.
Posts
