Focus on the Journey... and all that Jazz

www.ryanscottlum.tumblr.com

For 4 years I worked in the career management industry in Canada. Oh those were the days... I gots to travel alls over the country meeting nice ladies and gentlemans even going aaaaaallll the ways up to Inuit Nirvana aka Nunavut (pronounced: So Friggin Cold) and hads me a doggy sled ride in the snowy blizzardy desert... yes them was the days indeed!

And during these glorious days I repeated clichés such as:

• Follow Your Heart
• Focus on the Journey
• If You Build it They Will Come

OK, so the last one is from a movie, only because this sweet life is so far away I can't remember all the wunderbar stuff I told people repeatedly. That and a new thing I've developed recently called "forgetting". Joys. Of. Aging.

Even if focus on the journey was a principle I believed in, practicing it was a whole nuther matter. Do as I say, not as I do. But recently I've come to the realization that (cue bright lights and angelic voices coming from the heavens, yes HEAVENS in plural one heaven for each religion) for once in my life I've engaged myself in something that is really about the journey.

I know you're all expecting me to reveal something deep such as re-kindling with religion, or taking on a new career, or whatever... but it isn't. What has finally made me shift into this new paradigm is roller derby.

I know. I'm sounding like a cheap late night infomercial as I'm dangling on some weird new exercise machine screaming "YOU CAN DO IT!" And I apologize for that.

But roller derby is what did it for me. Lot's of ladies join derby hoping to rush through bootcamp and quickly become league members competing in bouts. Not this little freshmeat bootcamper. I'm enjoying the challenges as I go through them one by one. OK, well, as I repeat them over and over and over until I kinda meet them is how I should put it. But still.

Whether it takes me 6 months, a year or if I never even graduate from bootcamp: just being there, doing the drills, meeting the challenges, and facing new ones regularly is my thrill. My new nirvana. Its the here and now no matter where it takes me simply because where I'm at is beyond my wildest imagination.

This is my journey...