Woody Allen once quipped, “80 percent of success is showing
up,” and throughout this year I’ve tried, I believe without fail, to take every
opportunity this once in a lifetime experience has afforded me. I’ve reiterated it often enough that it is
one of my themes, but I cannot but be healthier—physically and mentally—the
more time I spend at Five Seasons, and so I’ve committed without thinking—whether
it be a 6:30am group with Laurie, a spur of the moment lunchtime walk with Joseph
around both banks of the Ohio River, or in a second of the day workout, hitting
the heavy bag in Stephanie’s kick boxing class—to drop everything that is
inconsequential and give attention to what I had neglected for far too long, my
health and fitness. For I will likely
never again have the flexibility of so much free time, without being in school
or having to work, and if I—nay, when I—get it right, I will never again have
to lose so much weight.
Agreeing to do everything that my team thinks will help me improve
and knows that I can do has made me greatly more functional, leaner, and keener
to try new things in order to get more experiences out of life. So when Joseph asked me to speak at the Newport
HeartChase committee meeting for their mission moment, I didn’t over think it, and
I didn’t freak out realizing that I’m nervous enough walking around each day,
let alone preparing to speak before a group of strangers. Instead, I decided that since I was going to
talk about a subject I know better than anything else—myself and my journey—I wouldn’t
think about it at all, wouldn’t imagine all the ways I could stuttered and
stammered my way to total embarrassment.
I told Joseph I’d love to.
Not being preoccupied on my little speech on Wednesday seemed
to spur my active mind into attempting new things. For the first time ever, I did my first load
of laundry! It’s probably ridiculous
that a 27 year old man-child hadn’t ever washed his own clothes (especially
when Mindy told me that her 10 year old son does his own laundry!), but the laundry
room is the domain of my grandma, and she seems to like for me to be reliant on
her as a way of feeling needed. Well,
Nana had been out of town visiting her sister, and at first it was alright
because I had enough clean gym clothes.
Then Nana decided that she was going to stay a further four days, and I began
to get nervous, trying to figure if I had sufficient outfits remaining in my
dresser drawer, contemplating whether I could get by wearing once sweated-in clothes. When Nana decided that she wasn’t coming home
until after Christmas, the solution became starkly apparent: it was time to do
it myself.
It doesn’t matter if it’s cooking a new recipe, building a
desktop computer, or teaching oneself to launder one’s clothes, it takes so
much longer to do things for the first time.
Mistakes are darn near guaranteed, techniques are yet to be
developed. I focused completely on not
ruining the gym clothes I spent so much money amassing that I didn’t think
about how much clothing constitutes one load of laundry. I had figured out the right water temperature
to not ruin my polyesters, but I smushed two weeks of dirty clothes into the
washer. At the end of the wash cycle the
clothes were sopping wet (there were too many of them to spin the excess water
out) and there was a soapy soup at the bottom of the tub.
Not knowing any better, that this was wrong, I flung the
dripping articles into the dryer, and turned it on. I walked away, coming back an hour later to a
stopped machine. Done, I thought,
expecting to feel nice and warm freshly cleaned clothes, but reaching in and feeling
the same sodden mess. The newb figured
out his mistake and halved the load, in the process at least doubling his
time. Yet at the end of a long
afternoon, I returned upstairs with what had been a source of great angst, and
instead of being tired I felt excited and liberated. Liberated from having to rely on others for what
I can do for myself. And this feeling
set off a chain of events that lead to a week of great progress…
