My Former Life

My extended family lives in Thailand. My family was part of a large Thai community that was my surrogate extended family when we lived in Brooklyn and Long Island. When we moved from NY, we were still part of that family, but geographically separated. So I've always wanted to belong to a big family and have sisters (I have one brother). I figured in my former life I was probably a Madagascar fruit bat. They live in large family groups where the females are all related. They spend most of the day hanging out together in the family tree and eating fruit. I've always wanted to fly and I love tropical fruit. I'm hoping that in my next life I'll get to be a Malagasi fruit bat again. It's an obvious fit.
On a recent trainer ride, I watched my "Life of Mammals" DVD (yeah, big geek alert--I love those BBC/David Atenborough nature shows!). The featured mammal was an elephant shrew in east Africa. It's a small rodent that makes trails through the grasslands in order to have a pathway to hunt for insects. It's also incredibly fastidious about keeping those trails clean of debris as it must run very fast on those trails to escape from hawks and eagles. To demonstrate this extreme neatness, David Attenborough puts a camera right next to the trail and sprinkles some dried leaves in the middle of the trail. Within 45 minutes, the elephant shrew shows up. She sees the mess on her trail. If rodents can look pissed-off, this one surely did. In one swift fling with its tiny forefeet, it pitched the flotsam from its trail. Kevin says,"You were definitely an elephant shrew in your former life."

Okay, so I am a bit of a neatnik, but I don't run very fast nor do I like to eat bugs. Which brings me to the point of this rambling: While we can have very clear ideas about what we want, we shouldn't lose sight of what we are.

I've been thinking about this point recently as I review how this triathlon season went and start making plans for next year. I had some specific time goals with my HIM season this year. None of them were met--not because of an unexpected injury or because the goals themselves were unrealistic for my abilities. What I didn't factor was just how much energy I would expend in stress over going to court for my first malpractice suit. I grossly underestimated how much life the whole process would suck from my soul. I just figured I'd train through it and still be able to peak for Eagleman 48 hours after the jury deliberated. Wrong! I really didn't take into account the other part of my life--the surgeon part, the part that takes up alot more time than the triathlon part. So my goal for Longhorn is not so much for redemption of those lost goals, but for a revisit to myself (the surgeon, the fiance, the elephant shrew that can't be excised from the triathlete) and ultimately a revision of those goals that fit all of it.

In 3 weeks, I shall have a great change in my career (that I chose). It will take some time to adjust to the changes, positive and negative. I won't set any goals for Penticton until I see how I adjust to those changes. For now, I'm just so dammed happy to be going that I haven't even thought about any of the splits. I just want to show up at the Start Line healthy and uninjured. Maybe that's enough of a goal...

Oh for crying out load! Who am I kidding? I was OCD statistician in the life before I was an elephant shrew. There'll be exact numbers for watts, pace, and splits.

*big sigh* I can only hope that in my next life that my small, fruit-fed bat brain can't count past 2.