I am attached to challenging myself for sport.
/I woke up about 10 minutes after I had fallen asleep, again. My hips were sore from being pressed into the cold, hard ground. The orange blow up air pad I bought on Amazon for $30 three nights before kept deflating. It wasn’t super painful, it was just uncomfortable to feel the wetness of the ground, a sleeping bag, deflated air pad, tent liner and a tarp away from the wet dirt. It was about 47 degrees. My hair was wet, had been for 3 days. The rain and wind was ruthless. My little green tent, also purchased on Amazon a few nights before, was holding up surprisingly well, but the wind was so intense, the moisture in the air and condensation was just unavoidable. My body just laid there. I planned to try to blow up the air pad again, or try to shove my pillow under my hip, but as uncomfortable as I was, I couldn’t really move yet. I had been wet, cold, and shivering in the rain for 3 days. My body was exhausted. I’m usually a really great sleeper, and so I had no problems falling asleep, even during this time, but I would wake up within minutes, because my ears were cold, and my hips hurt with no padding. I managed to roll over and search for my headlamp in the dark. Turned it on, I previously learned how to reflect it on the green wall of my tent so that it lit up my tent enough to see. I found the part of the air pad where there are two nobs to chose between “inflate” and “deflate.” Excited to have figured that out, I fumbled with my slow, cold fingers to, extremely relieved, inflate it correctly this time and quickly surrendered into the pad. Unfortunately, my cold hips woke me up again shortly. The air pad still deflated.
If you read my recent posts, you know I have been dealing with anxiety lately. Nothing too horrible has been happening in my life, I’m just having spirals of insecurity, and overanalyzing myself and my decisions, mostly related to recent huge jumps in personal development. I am growing a lot right now, and my head is kinda spinning.
So I’m laying there like, “Why am I here?”
I used to really love challenging myself. I have been doing it my entire life. But I am starting to think, my life is kinda programmed around challenging myself. I am attached to challenging myself for sport. I am an adrenaline junkie, but I’m not really getting high anymore. And I’m tired.
It’s becoming so clear that it is now time to rest some.
The survival school weekend started to feel a little like a very jr. version of the yoga ashram experience again. It wasn’t that bad, but I was stressing myself out, and shaming myself for how dramatic I was being. Mostly because it was hard, and I knew it would be hard, but I was still mad at myself for putting myself there, and for not enjoying it more. Should I be doing hard things right now? Have I done enough hard things for awhile?
The other day I listened to a song I had used as an escape tactic when I was at the yoga ashram. It’s enough in the past now, that, it made me kinda nostalgic. I laughed, realizing, wherever I am, I want to be somewhere else.
So I laid in my wet, cold, green tent, listened to the rain pour, puddle and slosh, and tried to be ok with where I was, and where I am, why I chose to come, and where I will be.
This morning, when I was meditating, (I try to do 6 min every morning) I realized how I was really just doing it because that is what I am supposed to do, and I was waiting for the 6 minutes to be over.
I tried to just be ok with where I was, and who I was. It’s not even so much liking or disliking what is happening, but just meeting it with equanimity.
Photo Credit: Black Oak Wilderness
Allowing. Softening. Surrendering.
No one expected it to be that cold and rainy, like really, really rainy. I didn’t expect that I would need twice as much clothing as I brought, and that my air pad wouldn’t work. I think I thought this would help me to be a more worldly, experienced person. It did. I don’t know if I have ever been that underdog in an event in my life, and everyone else was very helpful. I learned things I never knew I didn’t know about fire, plants, birds, tents, water, clothes, food, shoes, knifes, people, wind, sticks, bugs, diseases, shelters…the list goes on. The school took a very learn-by-trial-and-error approach, which was communicated before hand, appreciated, and productive. I also had lots of opportunities to connect with really interesting people who know things very different than the things I know.
I’m not exactly sure what I was thinking when I signed up for survival school. I can’t remember if I thought it would be hard, or fun, or informational. It was all of those things and, as normal, dealing with the things that happen in between my ears during, proved to be that hardest and most important lessons.