I remember a distinct moment in my junior year of college. I was in my apartment, chatting with my roommate, Ines. We were trying to make a plan to hang out, because despite living together, we barely saw each other each day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“What about lunch tomorrow?” she asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Can’t. I’ve got a drum lesson at 12:30.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Well, what about dinner Thursday night?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’ve got newspaper editing all afternoon and evening.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Friday afternoon?” <\/p>\n\n\n\n
“I’m monitoring the climbing gym.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The back and forth continued, with every available slot that I had being taken by something that Ines<\/em> had. It was at this moment I realized that I had taken on too much; the problem was, I liked <\/em>everything I had taken on. Intuitively, I knew that having this much on my plate wasn’t sustainable and didn’t afford any free time. Still, I loathed the idea of dropping any of my hobbies or activities. I enjoyed all of them enough that it didn’t make sense to eliminate any of them. And so, I would continue on, perpetually scrambling in order to pursue all of the things that brought me joy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I had a weird sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu recently, and I think it was recalling this moment. Because not a whole lot has changed in adulthood (or I suppose post-college life). I’m STILL doing too much, STILL perpetually scrambling. And like college, there’s really nothing I wish to eliminate\u2014or could bear eliminating. However, this re-realization reached another echelon. It was: “I’m doing too much but I don’t want to stop doing any of these things,” and also, “If I keep doing all of these things at once, I’ll never be as good at any of them as I want to be.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n I don’t think I had fully processed the thought as I told Ryan a couple of weeks ago, “Lately, I don’t feel very good at anything. And I don’t mean that in a bad way. It’s just like … I know I could be better at things. Right now, I don’t feel like I’m particularly GOOD at running, at climbing, at resoling, at drums, at my job at REI, at coaching. It’s OK, but I just don’t have the time to really dig into any of these things.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n Don’t get me wrong; I know I’m doing better than average at all of these things (except probably drumming. I’ll always be mediocre at that). But in terms of my own personal standards\u2014standards I set for myself\u2014I could be stronger. I’ve long known that as high a level as I’ve gotten as a runner and a climber, I will never be elite in either sport unless I drop one of them. And I refuse to do that. In my three jobs, resoling, coaching, and customer service, I do a good job, but I wonder if I just had one of them, how truly well I could deliver. From a financial perspective, I can’t really eliminate any of them, so my performance is going to wax and wane among all three depending on my energy level and time. I suppose I’m wistful about it all, because I think, If I just had more hours in the day, I could really crush all of these things<\/em>. But I don’t. In fact, I am cramming so much into every hour of every day, there is literally no way I could squeeze one more bit of effort. And I’ve made peace with it; so long as I continue with all of this stuff, I will accept that I won’t be as good as I could be. Because the joy is in pursuing<\/em> all of them, not crushing them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n I was recounting this conversation to my dad on the phone, and he was supportive\u2014because he’s the same way. He recognizes that he could be a master at all sorts of aspects of his job, but like me, he’d rather be pretty good at a bunch of things so that he can switch up what he’s doing and stay engaged. “Yeah, I could become an expert at certain software. For example, I could learn all the nuances of Python. But then I’d have no time for anything else. So I’d rather understand the fundamentals of a lot of different programs and software, because it makes me more versatile. I can always bring an expert in if something is over my head.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n It’s no surprise that Steve felt my sentiment. Just look at our band, Double Dog Dare. We play classic rock tunes that aren’t polished, but they’re decent. Our renditions of Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite! and A Day in the Life are weird, given we’re a piano-drums duo, but hey, they’re not bad. They’re different, but passable. Being polished isn’t the point. The point is that we’re having fun, playing songs we like, for people we love, with each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n We’re all our own greatest critics. But lately, I don’t feel the need to critique myself when I’m doing a pretty OK job at a lot of things. I could be a killer climber, runner, resoler, drummer, coach, etc. if I let some things go. But where’s the joy in that?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I remember a distinct moment in my junior year of college. I was in my apartment, chatting with my roommate, Ines. We were trying to make a plan to hang out, because despite living together, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ponderings"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2529"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2534,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2529\/revisions\/2534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/excrcl.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}