Helpful? Yes. Profusely navel gazing and self serving? Also yes.
I am meticulous about my mornings. From rising early, staring out the kitchen window, birthing grand thoughts and ideas, while hand-grinding my coffee beans, to my daily journaling and planning out my day in my beloved Japanese notebook with my beloved German fountain pen. Then a slow walk to the gym, where I am working on an assortment of different goals for strength and skill, all while calming my monkey mind, who’s always chipping away at my sanity. Lastly, a home-cooked breakfast, a second cup of coffee, then a shower and getting dressed for the day. Taking two or three hours, I am obviously leaning quite aggressively into the “no kids” lifestyle, and am well aware my mornings will crumble into ruins at the first sight of commitment to anything other than myself.
As I’m dealing with neither any grueling hangovers nor hours worrying about them, time has become a more abundant resource, as has energy. Not one to just lie around on the couch, which would quickly put me in a spiraling melancholic doom loop, I have two pursuits in particular that anchor my life a great deal.
My training first of all. While it started out as a project of vanity, priorities shifted when other benefits quickly emerged. Training is now centered around health, sanity and vanity, in that order. If I’m doing it right, training ensures that I will live longer, better, and have a chance of bending down and picking up any grandkids with relative ease. It forces me to get out of my own head, historically a scattershot mess of thoughts and worries, and into my body, demanding a physical focus on the “right now,” while also providing a commitment to a longer process with future goals. Lastly, it makes me look good naked, completing the three-punch combo of this daily ritual.
My other love is beach volleyball. That visceral feeling of sand between your toes, the tension when the ball comes towards you, intense concentration and effort put into a good set and the satisfaction of smashing that ball into the ground on the other side of the net – nothing quite compares to that. Growing up, I never participated in any team sports, and being part of a community like this is very new to me. I grieve for having missed out all these years. People relate differently to each other when sharing a common goal – there is an accountability to the game and your fellow player. Everybody is focused on improving their skills, getting stronger, eating and sleeping right, while having a lot of fun with each other in the process.
I couldn’t have designed a better system for sobriety even if asked to.
It continually surprises me how mind and body are so intrinsically connected. Experiencing how I improve in technique and strength while my mind sharpens its calm and focus has been such a rewarding process. The pursuit of improving both in the gym and on the sand has made each discipline part of a bigger picture.