the lap pool
This is head clearance.
My need to zen out. To go swimming in a pool at 10 a.m. because it might hit the 80s today, I tell myself; because to not go headfirst would be an opportunity wasted.
I never stop paddling. It's a craving.
It's been a winter underwater. Pushing and striving and exercising specific muscles deliberately to get another lap ahead. Mostly professionally. Almost always competing against myself. Here's to the end of the race arriving and thinking, "Oh."
It goes without saying, but money isn't everything. Money doesn't give you time back or lend you the respect of your peers. And if it does, we’re not motivated by the same things.
I like to push creative boundaries, but I don't like being a machine. I’m probably at a point in my career where I’m more satisfied to mentor others. I wrote on my desk on Friday: "Be a leader by staying positive." Part of that is being happy and encouraging others to avoid making life about any one thing. Accomplishment, acceptance, or pride and impatience for each.
You get to a certain point and you’ve earned it or you haven’t.
Spring always arrives with a mental health reminder. To be a happy, less stressed person. To stretch the body as much as the mind. Get back into yoga. Take long walks with my love in a city 11 years called home. I used to walk around the residential backstreets just to notice things I could capture in photo or memory. Just to notice things.
It's a time for writing. Creating. Connecting or dis-. A time for blooming and bubbling up. Swimming, today. To turning off email. To maybe not keeping a to-do list of to-do lists. Personal ebb and spiritual flow.
When you’re in your thirties and gay and without children, you can talk a lot about free time and ambition and Never Neverland. Balance, I guess, was one more thing I thought I kept under my belt. A lesson so cliché I'd checked that box years ago. And there I continue with box checking.
Keeping one section of life from spilling to the next does not a whole life make. I am lucky I have such a great partner.
Maybe I'm preoccupied with time right now, more than usual. My grandmother is no longer able to count hers - today's compared to yesterday's. The scales tip from time left toward time spent. A calculus problem of what we still have to give.
Death prompts us to do things worth remembering. To fear death makes us ambitious. We're always dying. Someone important to me points out we should crave the accomplishments spoken in eulogy, not those written on a resume.
To be that kind of person, I hope to find footing.
I watch my hands and limbs in the water, no center of gravity, no struggle with balance. When all that’s required is floating, action becomes really about clearing your head. To my chagrin, I've never been a person who could wipe out thought. In yoga, I would imagine myself as on a planet all alone, looking at other star systems too far to disrupt my semblance of quiet. Colors crashing over chakras, whitewashing stressors, filling up preoccupiers. A day or life of insecurities. Being alone isn’t meditation and life isn’t arrival at blankness. Blankness isn’t bliss.
Around the pool's perimeter, 20 people are staring at cell phones. Automatons who can't stop. I swim another lap and focus on pushing, breath, arm in front of arm, head down, following the lines, grabbing what’s in front of me.
We are always looking for answers in the pursuit of more. If enough isn’t enough, I guess we’re filling something bottomless.
I do a lot of things because, but fewer things for me. I'm looking forward to planning a wedding. I'm looking forward to taking care of my body. To a summer with friends, spending time outside, vacation and keeping close to Adam. I want to show, not tell, people that I love them.
I'm going to take a swim but leave some time to breathe.
My need to zen out. To go swimming in a pool at 10 a.m. because it might hit the 80s today, I tell myself; because to not go headfirst would be an opportunity wasted.
I never stop paddling. It's a craving.
It's been a winter underwater. Pushing and striving and exercising specific muscles deliberately to get another lap ahead. Mostly professionally. Almost always competing against myself. Here's to the end of the race arriving and thinking, "Oh."
It goes without saying, but money isn't everything. Money doesn't give you time back or lend you the respect of your peers. And if it does, we’re not motivated by the same things.
I like to push creative boundaries, but I don't like being a machine. I’m probably at a point in my career where I’m more satisfied to mentor others. I wrote on my desk on Friday: "Be a leader by staying positive." Part of that is being happy and encouraging others to avoid making life about any one thing. Accomplishment, acceptance, or pride and impatience for each.
You get to a certain point and you’ve earned it or you haven’t.
Spring always arrives with a mental health reminder. To be a happy, less stressed person. To stretch the body as much as the mind. Get back into yoga. Take long walks with my love in a city 11 years called home. I used to walk around the residential backstreets just to notice things I could capture in photo or memory. Just to notice things.
It's a time for writing. Creating. Connecting or dis-. A time for blooming and bubbling up. Swimming, today. To turning off email. To maybe not keeping a to-do list of to-do lists. Personal ebb and spiritual flow.
When you’re in your thirties and gay and without children, you can talk a lot about free time and ambition and Never Neverland. Balance, I guess, was one more thing I thought I kept under my belt. A lesson so cliché I'd checked that box years ago. And there I continue with box checking.
Keeping one section of life from spilling to the next does not a whole life make. I am lucky I have such a great partner.
Maybe I'm preoccupied with time right now, more than usual. My grandmother is no longer able to count hers - today's compared to yesterday's. The scales tip from time left toward time spent. A calculus problem of what we still have to give.
Death prompts us to do things worth remembering. To fear death makes us ambitious. We're always dying. Someone important to me points out we should crave the accomplishments spoken in eulogy, not those written on a resume.
To be that kind of person, I hope to find footing.
I watch my hands and limbs in the water, no center of gravity, no struggle with balance. When all that’s required is floating, action becomes really about clearing your head. To my chagrin, I've never been a person who could wipe out thought. In yoga, I would imagine myself as on a planet all alone, looking at other star systems too far to disrupt my semblance of quiet. Colors crashing over chakras, whitewashing stressors, filling up preoccupiers. A day or life of insecurities. Being alone isn’t meditation and life isn’t arrival at blankness. Blankness isn’t bliss.
Around the pool's perimeter, 20 people are staring at cell phones. Automatons who can't stop. I swim another lap and focus on pushing, breath, arm in front of arm, head down, following the lines, grabbing what’s in front of me.
We are always looking for answers in the pursuit of more. If enough isn’t enough, I guess we’re filling something bottomless.
I do a lot of things because, but fewer things for me. I'm looking forward to planning a wedding. I'm looking forward to taking care of my body. To a summer with friends, spending time outside, vacation and keeping close to Adam. I want to show, not tell, people that I love them.
I'm going to take a swim but leave some time to breathe.