Determined To Succeed

Day ninety-three.

I can’t begin to tell you all the times Bill Ivory Larson wakes up on a given morning NOT feeling like doing something that particular day. Going to the store. Cleaning the house. Making a phone call to a creditor or business. Putting my nice warm and toasty feet on the cold, hard floor. It doesn’t matter. From time to time all of us face that point where we have to do something that we don’t want to do but have to do anyway.

Take for example working out, which for me has been more mental than anything lately. It’s not that I hate going to the gym. In fact, I love going and love sweating my ass off when I’m there. Sometimes, though, it’s purely because I HAVE TO GO that makes me not WANT to go. Know what I mean? It’s that I wish I didn’t HAVE to do it all the time. I wish I was one of those people who could (seemingly) eat whatever they want and not gain an ounce AND look like they just stepped out of a fashion magazine ad. But noooooooooo! I HAVE to go workout if I am going to merely keep my weight down. Bah! Bah, I say! The same goes for eating more nutritious foods, eating right and exercising portion control.

I know I should have a better mental attitude sometimes about weight loss. I absolutely do but I am human. But the thing that makes me know this is a story my sensei, Doug Shaffer, told me last week.

Doug told me the story of a kid he knew (you know a story will never end well when the words “kid” and “knew” crop up. Very foreboding, indeed) who was onloy twenty-one years old and died from an asthma attack. Poor guy. Went to a party, got plastered, went back to his place and zonked out. Somehow, he started having an attack and couldn’t get to his medicine (or was passed out while it was happening) and he died. he was found the next day by his girlfriend.

Just twenty-one, and with so much life ahead of him.

The reason I tell you that story today (and tell myself that story) is that we cannot sit on our butts and wait to feel like we WANT to do something. If there is something we have to do we should just go do it, for the love of God, and get it out of the way. I know I have never in my life been good at doing that because I was afraid of hurting someone’s feelings (that they wouldn’t like me anymore), or that there would be repercussions (like at my former job where you would just not want to open your mouth out of dread and a constant fear of being fired for daring to speak out). If we wait, if I wait, to do do something for when I WANT to do it I might be waiting a long time. Worse, I will be wasting time in the process, and I have wasted too much time on addictions to waste anymore of it on silly things that are only in my head.

Next month, I am going to celebrate being 40 years old and in the coming weeks I will tell you how I plan to celebrate my birthday all year long. But in the meantime I’m just going to think about how I lived almost 19 years longer than a kid who died simply because he couldn’t take a breath. I know exactly how that feels. I, too, had asthma so bad I couldn’t breathe at times. Hell, it even made me pass out once. I’ve lived 19 years longer and that means I SHOULD do something with that and because of that. That is purpose. That is drive. That is will.

I will because I must make the most of each and every day. No. Matter. What.

My friends, if there is something you don’t want to do today but know that you have to keep two things in mind. One, that you are not alone. There are so many others facing similar feelings about their own situations. Two, once you get it over with you will feel so much better and can move on to the things you WANT to do (and yes, that does include eating what you should and exercising to keep weight in check). That is what I will do today. Do the things I need to do to make the time to do what I want to do.

In honor of that kid who didn’t make it to see 22.

In honor of my mom, JoAnn Larson, so I do not disappoint her.

Most of all, for myself so I can be the man I’ve always wanted to be and now strive for every day. One of which my mom can be proud and I can say did the hard things even if he didn’t want to so that he, and those closest to him, could be happy in the long run.