When a Sprinter Hits the Wall

I promised myself when I started blogging that I wouldn't be one of those writers who started out every piece the same way, apologizing for not writing in so long, and promising never to do it again. But here we are, with over a month between posts. I can at least be good enough not to give you some flimsy apology. I know what happens during times of procrastination, and you do, too.

Let's just move on.

Procrastination comes easily to me. I've always thought of myself as a sprinter of sorts: great out of the gate with an extra gear, to boot. I can shine in competition...but only for a bit.

Back in high school track, my coach made me a regular on the 400 meters: a terrible race dreamt up by sick individuals back in the eighteen hundreds, and now is loved only by sadists and masochists. The distance is just long enough that most people cannot all-out sprint the entire thing. And yet, that is (kind of) what you have to do if you want a legitimate chance of winning. Every time I rounded the final turn, I had the same sobering realization: I didn't have enough left. I'd give whatever last gasps I had, struggling and heaving for the last hundred meters to the finish line, typically finishing somewhere around third and just being happy to be done with it. 

This metaphor applies to a lot of my personality, as self-fulfilling prophesies tend to do. If only life were a series of short sprints, instead of the decades long marathon that it is. 

In my career, I've found a way to use the sprinting approach to my advantage. Projects tend to be relatively short in my field, so they manage to conclude before I get bored or lazy. If I can parlay my early successes into a promotion or a new position every three years or so, I look like an up-and-comer instead of a guy who just gets serially disinterested.

But the rest of my life doesn't provide such easy solutions to the quitter's dilemma. After five years in our home, it turns out that I really hate yard work, along with work of all other sorts. And yet every morning, I look out at the property and the dumb grass has grown higher, like a jerk, and there are more leaves and needles that need to be raked, and the trees branches that need to be pruned continue to grow. Stupid nature.

To someone who can regularly put in the work, maintaining a property is not a burden. Indeed, it might provide purpose or pride or something. I suppose there are people out there who like gardening and tending to the living things in their little plot of the world, and in seeing small daily improvement. I, on the other hand, like television, board games, and naps.

And there are other annoying things in life that require steady, regular effort, too. The recurring issues that crop up in marriage: the division of house work, and balancing our precious hours between the dozens of responsibilities we have, and me just being jerk from time to time...all of that requires honest, ongoing effort if things are truly going to improve. Those issues won't ever be fixed by the sprinters' quick fix approach.

I initially thought blogging would dovetail perfectly with my short-run approach, seeing how most posts are only around 800 words and, at least in my case, keep things on the surface-level. But then after a few years, I started running out of easy ideas and clever angles, and I found out that I might actually have to work hard to keep coming up with something worth reading. 

Well, I've done that thing I said I wasn't going to do, and have come up with a long excuse for why I haven't written. But at least it's something on the page, so there's that.

The big worry is that I'm also feeling the fatigue of running towards financial independence. Since our financial awakening back in 2009, we've been ramping up the frugality, maximizing our income, and narrowing our focus to the specific goal of being financially free by the time I'm forty. We're rounding the corner with the finish line in sight...and I'm spent. I'm weary of the price comparisons and budget optimizations and the constant burden of money, money, money weighing on my mind.

Will we get the million we "need" for financial independence in five more years? According to my calculations, we can...but we'll have to really push.

Do we have enough left in the tank?

Does it even matter how long it takes us to get to the finish line?

Maybe fourth isn't so bad.

*Photo is from Steven Pisano at Flickr Creative Commons.