Halftime

I'm sure I'm not alone in being generally freaked out by how much faster time seems to go by as we get older. I've often thought back on the idea that each year is a smaller percentage of a persons life than any of the previous ones that have passed. Your first year is 100% of your life, the second is 50%, the third, 33%, and on and on. Still, even if you can fully process that notion, it does nothing to prepare you for the actual feeling of time speeding up. The holidays start to run together. Birthdays sneak up on you, and the seasons themselves seem to wave sadly as they go by. This is all on my mind because somewhere in the last week, I passed the halfway point in this little experiment. I'm now closer to watching sports again than I am to having stopped.

Not that I'm dying for it anymore. Not by a long shot. Most days, I am perfectly content to go about my business without paying the local teams any mind. In fact, with more regular gym visits, more frequent and ambitious cooking at home, and more fun things to go see and do, I'm finding that even without sports in my life, there doesn't seem to be enough time to do and plan everything the world has to offer. But I feel better knowing my intake is a bit more balanced than before.

Of course, the are moments where I would love to settle in and enjoy the excitement and easy drama of a Sox game, or a Bruins-Canadians matchup, or even an NBA postseason game seven without a local team, so long as it ended in a buzzer beater. I have no doubt that I will return to these things after six more months speed past us. I'm encouraged to think that, when that time comes, sports will have to fight for my attention alongside so many other wonderful options.

Meanwhile, one of the biggest reasons I started this project was to get better acquainted with my own writing. For my whole life I have sat in awe and amazement of those who can write well. I have always imagined it a skill that was well beyond my purview. Writing was the thing that scared me the most about life. So much so, in fact, that several early attempts at simple journaling were aborted long before their time due to my inability to deal with how bad they were. I wouldn't allow myself to even try, for fear of failing. This was the cause of countless late papers, and, until email at least, the almost complete absence of correspondence with friends and family. Often, once handed the syllabus for a class in college, if I saw more than one or two manageable length papers would be required, I would drop the class in search of lower demands on my vocabulary. Even my handwriting has suffered for my mammoth self doubt. 

Many people far wiser than I will ever be have given me the same piece of advice at various points in my life. They've said, "Whatever scares you the most is worth looking in to". I found this idea to be true myself when, after a panicked involvement with a college improv troupe, I was encouraged to audition for a new improv theatre company that was starting in Boston's North End. I must have learned something from my old classmates, because I got in, and a great deal of what is good about my life has come from my involvement there. Though I had always felt some mistake had been made by my college buddies, I turned out ok, and had a great time in the offing. Why it never occurred to me to test the same formula out with writing until recently, I'll never know.

It took conquering another fear to put me in touch with my ability to at least allow myself to write regularly. That was the fear of returning to school. As I mentioned before, completing school assignments was never a comfort zone for me, but circumstances conspired to guide me back to the classroom, and in grad school, writing cannot be avoided. Even so, I may never have survived without my dearest of friends, technology. The iPad proved to be the best assistant I could ever have asked for. A complete word processor, dictionary, research library, and procrastination tool all wrapped up in a size and weight I could carry with me at all times. I did almost my entire degree, papers, presentations and creative work on my iPad, and I have written 90% or more of this blog on one as well.

Once I finished grad school, I felt the lack of output more than the relief of not having to do homework. It was a an absolute shock. Before long, I knew I had to start something to keep me writing regularly. I was scared that if I left that muscle alone it would atrophy and never return.  So here I find myself six months in to The Off Season. I've missed some good games, to be sure. However, I have traded those games for better health, more comfort with cooking, the ability to mix a good drink, a passing ability to imitate songs on a guitar, a steady, basic juggling hand, and a truce with writing that is starting to resemble a real friendship. To say nothing of a fun collection of plays, movies, museum visits, shows, and other events that may have been missed under, ahem, other circumstances.

Here's to six more months of new things.