Pieces of a Whole

So I turned 36 recently.

Turns out I'm basically the same person that I was when I was younger.  I'd really like to change that.  Not that I'm a terrible guy - I'm a pretty involved dad.  I take care of my family.  I'm nice to my neighbors.  I help my parents with yard work.  I'm a nice enough guy, really, but it turns out that I'm lazy in a lot of areas in my life.  I'm just kind of eeking by.  I'm living, but don't feel wholly alive.  I don't feel totally engaged in my days.. it's as if I just watch as the days unfold and I'm shocked to see how things happen to me.  These are the results:

* overweight.  I'm 5'10'' and weigh 238 lbs.  I should be 180.

* hate my job.  Which isn't a big deal.  Alot of people hate their job, but I let the stress of it consume me sometimes and the fact that I don't like my job makes me feel a bit defeated - like I have no control over what happens to me.  I would probably like it more if I took ownership of it and became more involved.

* zero creativity.  I used to be very creative.  Acting, writing, and more... but now, I'm always tired.  I just want to come home and go to sleep.

So it's time to change all this.  I'm past the half-way mark.

I remember when I was in college in the early 90's I was interested in the idea of running.  In my school library I thumbed through some Runner's World magazines and stumbled across the writings of George Sheehan.  I was mesmerized.  Here was a man describing what I thought running should be - it was a mix of physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual.  This was before the days of the internet and instant gratification (and instant boredom), and I had to wait for a whole month for the next issue of Runner's World to come out before I could read another article.  But I kept reading.

I only ran a handful of times in college.  After college came years of waiting tables and traveling and drinking and eating badly.  Then marriage in my 30's.  Now young children and a stressful job and BAM! I feel like all of the sudden I've woken up and found that 15 years has disappeared and I'm terribly uninvolved in my life and overweight.

So it's time to change all this.  Years ago I fully signed on to the psychological and emotional aspects of Sheehan's writings.  Over the last couple of years, I fee like the spiritual has started to take shape.  Now it's time for the physical.  I think that, based on what I've seen in other people's lives, all these pieces together will form a whole.  And I'll feel whole.  Human.  Alive.  Involved.

I'm ready to experience what I read in a Sheehan essay back in my college library 18 years ago: "Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach."