We are in the grind.
That’s not all bad. It’s just the way it is.
In so many endeavors, there is an exciting, high-energy period as you launch into whatever it is, much fanfare and folderol… but if you’ve set your sights on a worthy, distant goal, something you can’t quite see from where you are, that initial momentum cannot carry you far enough: you enter into a period where it all comes down to effort and belief. The image that arrives is of a boat at sea and in the boat there is a rower at the oars, back to the goal, pulling stroke after stroke with no proof that the effort is enough. But if you believe, you keep pulling.
And often you find that, in fact, the effort isn’t enough. The goal is further than you thought. Or it is, upon arrival, not what you imagined, not what you wanted, not what you needed.
So you invent a new story, set a new goal and keep on keeping on.
Our friend Autumn Calabrese has a saying for this situation. Of course she does. It is, “Tired of starting over? Stop giving up.”
That bit of motivation has come to mind every day as I watch Tanja. Because it doesn’t quite fit. She kinda can’t give up. Every day is an inescapable workout that leaves her exhausted over and over again. All the little things she wants and tries to do are ingeniously designed to test her and tire her. It’s all minutiae–she takes the compost out, then naps. She chats with a visitor, then naps. She does her PT and then naps.
The progress is not discernible over the course of a day or two days. And, absent just staying in bed, there is really no way to quit.
But one nice thing about rowing is that you can see where you’ve been. I think it feels good for Tanja to see how far she is from those early days. Today she went into my office and found the bag with the clothes she’d been wearing when the ambulance came. She tried to put the shirt on a hanger but it just wasn’t working somehow and she realized it had been cut up one side. Same with the pants. Suddenly, you’re back in the tumult of that night, a body on a gurney, strangers slicing the clothes off you– the urgency and the uncertainty.
We have come so far! And we’re not done yet.
I noticed this on the calendar in the kitchen:
It’s both Tanja, after and before, side by side. It would make one sort of sad if it weren’t for the fact that we know she’ll get up tomorrow and start rowing again. Meanwhile there’s this small comfort: I’ve always admired Tanja’s penmanship and wished that my writing could be like hers. For this brief moment in time, it is.
Turn it up!
Tanja power 