A few months ago, I had a work conference to go to early in the morning and so I rushed to the hotel, grabbed a plate of the hotel breakfast, and sat down to listen to the opening speaker. He was an Ironman athlete who had completed the extreme triathlon more times than I can count. Granted it was 7:30 in the morning and I was just beginning to wake up but I looked at him the whole time, deadpan. I ate my eggs, I'm sorry to say, rolling my eyes.

I know I shouldn't be so harsh — and I don't know why it irks me so much — but mainly I was just thinking about how refreshing it would be to sit down and listen to a motivational speech from someone more modest in their ambitions, perhaps steady or quiet or balanced. Since then I've watched Free Solo and The Dawn Wall and Homecoming and countless other documentaries of people achieving the unachievable and I walk away from so many of them thinking, can you ever achieve your dreams and still have healthy relationships with people you love and get eight hours a sleep a night? (Eh, probably not.)

To be fair, I loved the aforementioned movies and think people should pursue absolutely anything they want within reason I suppose but at that conference, I kept thinking that I wanted nothing more than a co-worker of mine to go up on stage and give a motivational speech. He lives in the woods of the Pacific Northwest and does his job just fine and looks completely inconspicuous but also like maybe he really has life figured out. I can't be sure but I feel like his speech would go something like, Hey, don't work yourself to death. 

That being said, I probably could benefit from the stories of accomplished athletes more than most. I told myself that I would be done with a second draft of my novel before I left for a two-week vacation to the Southwest last month and I failed to meet that self-imposed deadline. It's been six years since I started the first chapter of this novel and I'm still chipping away at it. My deadlines for the book are usually arbitrary and unrealistic considering the other things I have going on in my life (and the fact that I don't focus solely on this novel) so it's laughable that I didn't think it was going to take 6+ years. But still, that number: 6+ years. It's longer than I thought. 

In the end, the important thing is to see this thing through, which I will do, but I should knuckle down. I should just get this thing done but as someone with a slower, more "everything-in-moderation" demeanor, I can't help but be drawn to hard work and balance. A blessing, I suppose, but also a curse.

I am a writer, not an athlete, but in light of this post, it's interesting to note that I have recently moved to Salt Lake City, a city of outdoor enthusiasts, and have been dabbling in things I never thought I would. By my nature, I am drawn to the slow, steady activities of hiking and backpacking but I have also have been trying my hand at more extreme endeavors due, a bit, to my partner. Ever since the move, the riskier, more intense, more testosterone-prone activities of climbing and mountain biking and skiing have been pushing me past my limits, for better or worse.

Just yesterday, I was walking my mountain bike up a trail, huffing and grumbling, and thinking the thing I always think when I'm struggling: When is it good to push yourself? When is it good to just accept who you are? It seems a question there is no real answer to. It seems the question I am getting at.

Basically all of this rambling and lamenting to say, if I had my way, I think I would have invited a poet to be the opening speaker of the sales conference (can you imagine?) because you know what has been invigorating me lately? The words of Mary Oliver and Nikki Giovanni and Bernadette Mayer. The poetry of Tony Hoagland and essays of Robin Wall Kimmerer.

"I really don't think anybody ever listens to poets so it doesn't matter what you say," Nikki Giovanni said laughing in her interview with WNYC, and then added: "If they did, it'd be a whole different world." I can't help but agree, though I'm biased. 

I do hate posing questions and just leaving them there so I will end with this: I have learned a lot in the past year. I have learned, for example, that you can get over your fear of, and even enjoy, hanging from a forty-foot wall if you do it enough. I have learned that you can write a novel slowly and still, hopefully, get it done. 

Pictured above: shots from a recent two-week long adventure through the Grand Canyon, Sedona, Santa Fe and Moab