Eating, Breathing, and Loving

i live a truly gluttonous life, a life i've always wanted to live. like the characters of eat, pray, love and under a tuscan sky, after a truly disastrous blow up of a life once lived, i too moved, completely changed my way of living, and starting getting my groove back. just like stella.

it's a life that i don't feel guilty about having, well that's mostly true. some days i get off my center and have visions of people gathering around with judgmental pitchforks yelling "get a job. get a life. start your company. study. stop being a sloth. contribute more."

and then... politely (as politely one can bitch slap) i tell that brutal bullying thought to go f*ck itself.

now back to why my life rocks.

well first of all, it rocks because it's a life i created. my design. i did this. allllll mine. i wanted to stop working. i wanted to take a break, rest, be around my family, live in a beautiful place, eat organic locally grown food. I wanted to breath freely and not have a million things i needed to do.

for sure, i was also clear about what i did NOT want to do. i no longer wanted a life that was never good enough; always upping the ante. triathlon became the mirror of what i was starting to believe my life's destiny was: never good enough. i started sinking into that abysmal belief that no matter how hard i tried: denied myself, push myself, fought stronger, fell hard but got up harder... i would still, despite my efforts of blood sweat and tears, fail.

i wasn't always this way. in fact, i was born with obnoxious optimism. and for most of my life, it served me well. believe you can do something and surprisingly, you can and most likely, you will do it well! this blind luck got me to places i never dreamed of reaching.  blind because i often had no idea of what i was getting myself into and luck, because for most of my life, things really would turn out quite well~

i went to college. i figured out how to get good grades. i traveled and lived in cool places like guam and hawaii. i became a doctor. i became a triathlete. i did ironmans and brought hardware home frequently from races. i made lots of cool friends and experienced weird things that are now fun to tell stories about such as sky-diving, cutting all my hair off, and surf kayaking 15 foot waves. this list goes on and on.

it periodically amazes me that i have had so many cool experiences and stories to share and relate.
i'm only 35... how did i live THAT MUCH life already?

well in truth, it was because i had created a monster: a life that was never enough. and so it came to be that the very thing that fed and fueled me for many years, came to be the very thing that would destroy me. my inordinate ability to tolerate pain, endure suffering, delaying gratification, put others first, excel at being a type AAA, work hard and train harder, push push push, do, always keep my cool, be on my game, think on my feet, burn the candle at both ends of the stick... all this got me to a life extremely lived by age 35. AND it got me sick.

like the law of attraction, i attracted people into my life that would echo this sentiment: in particular, a coach, a boss who both played a significant role in damaging me and bringing about my decline. it always had to be more. i also attracted experiences that would echo this painful lesson. triathlon had once been something that brought me so much joy and a sense of achievement. it had become something that consistently made me feel not good enough, having not trained or pushed hard enough, been disciplined enough, talented enough. enough. i needed to do more, be more, hurt more. my increasing failure to perform seemed to be an indicator i was doing something wrong, that i wasn't doing enough.

i WAS doing something wrong. i WAS doing too much. in fact, i WASN'T doing little enough.

yes, you read that correctly: i wasn't doing little enough.

(and by the way, when i finally gave up... i gave all the bullshit that makes life unneccesarily complex. i gave up giving a damn about crap like spelling correctly or have good grammar. i gave up caring about anything that makes one strive for perfection or more. i have no decency and frankly, i don't give a damn. in fact, i've purposely left mispellings, grammatical errors and poor use of parethases to prove my impish point).

i needed to do less. in fact, i needed to do so much lesser that i wasn't even starting at ground zero. i was like a meteor that crashed into the earth and was now sitting 100 feet below the earth's surface, imploded and steaming, with bits of myself strewn everywhere and life spirit and energy seeping from me like the great BP spill.

i continued to keep seeping and declining long after i had stopped moving. i lost my health, my ability to think, reason, remember. i lost the ability to make a living, buy groceries, move my hands, sleep without night sweats or wake without migraines, stand up in the shower, get out of bed, call people back, feel peace, exist without deep pain, or just breath without sinking into even deeper exhaustion. i'm not kidding. every moment that i existed during that time i was in incredible pain to just be.

how lame is that??!

i had done so much, pushed so hard, that now i had lost my ability to recover. and that my friends is something that you do NOT want to lose!

imagine not being able to heal a wound, be able to sleep off a hangover or a brewing cold. imagine losing the taken for granted ability to wake up feeling rested and rejuvenated. no matter what, you never felt better. and on some days, you felt worse than you imagined possible. that's what all that hard work got me.... deep into hell.

getting painful to read? starting to feel monotonous? yea, i knew the feeling.

so getting back to why my life now rocks. well because i completely overhauled the life i was once living. i did extreme makeover: SOUL and SENSE OF SELF edition. after awhile of flailing like a fish out of water, i gave up. i let go of my identity as a triathlete, a successful professional. i stopped doing most everything. and then, i only started doing what i wanted. i entered into the era i now affectionately refer to as the "pleasure protocol" portion of my life.

if it felt good, i did it. if i wanted to eat it, i would. if i wanted to sleep more, be touched more, cared for, stare at more sunsets and starry nights, watch mind-blowing amounts of total trash television, drink, party, scream, f*ck, nap, ask, be needy, get backrubs, massages, eat delicious fatty and meaty foods with reckless abandon.... i did it.

like nike, i just did it.

and in truth, i'm still f*cking doing it mutha truckas. take that old sucky life with all your shoulds and rules and ought to's. suck it.

my life rules because i'm currently on sabbatical. i sleep in every day. if i stay up late, i don't worry because i'll make sure to sleep in and get in an afternoon nap. i don't rush. i don't schedule myself. if i'm late or things don't go right such as people driving normal, i don't care. it's their problem, not mine. i stare at humming birds and watch the sun move across the sky. i eat leisure breakfasts with my adoring family. they feed me. they house me. they entertain me, listen to me, hug me, make me laugh, tolerate my not so great me moments. LOVE me.

we sit in the morning sun, sip morning tea, indulge in even more rugged coastal cheddar (get it from costo... it's to DIE FOR) and live life like we got nothing to do because in truth... we really don't. ask me how cool it is to take a sabbatical with other people that are also taking sabbaticals? i'm resting and recovering. they're taking breaks from birthing so many babies (others, not her own) and to write books; all very good reasons to take a break from common, boring, mundane, suck the life out of you kind of life lives.

when the fog clears, i hit the water for some paddle boarding or i take a jog in the redwoods or lush meadows with killer ocean and mountain vistas. i get up and have no idea what i'll do that day because i have nothing that i have to do. i'm on vacation. i'm on a boat! (never thought i'd be on a boat).

so yes. my life currently rocks. i'm eating, breathing, and loving. and.... it's working.

i'm coming back to life.