Golden Aspirations

The Olympics are something magical, and I am just another junkie this week, eating up every carefully choreographed "local girl does good" story.

in 1984, I imagined myself vaulting into history in Mary-Lou Retton's star-spangled gymnastics uniform.

 In the  early 90s, I was star-struck the evening I ran into figure skater Debi Thomas in the ladies' room at a B-52s concert. 

I've watched Misty May and Kerri Walsh bring beach volleyball into national prominence, over more than a decade.

I've learned the basics of Curling.... from a TV morning show host.

I've watched every medal ceremony starring an American athlete that I can find and stay awake for.

And I. Eat. It. Up.

During those podiums where Americans win gold, I move my lips and debate with myself:   When I am up there someday,  will I quietly  mouth the words, or sing them loud and proud (if out of key).

But here's my secret:  I will never actually be on that podium.  

I can give you a million reasonable excuses why:  I'm uncoordinated, I stink at sports, I overthink too much. Heck, at 38 I'm just plain too old for most of them.

But the reality is, that competition is  just not my thing. I just don't like working at beating other people. I don't like video games that pit me against a fellow player. I've never been much for Monopoly.

Don't get me wrong:  When put it competitive situations, I can and do fight for myself or my team - I've won plenty (especially where logical thought is involved), and lost more than a few.  

But competition begins to turn many otherwise good people, myself included, into someone ugly. Someone who wants to take the advantages at the expense of the competition.   Someone who puts too much store by "winning", and loses sight of the true goal of the competition, that we are all really only competing against ourselves.

So when these athletes compete, and especially manage to remain full of a sense of good sportsmanship and fun during the process, even, occasionally, at the expense of a win, I admire them that much deeper.  I watch the Olympics less for the medals, and more for the joy of thinking myself something better, something stronger, something more capable of handling both victory and defeat with grace.. of being something more than I am.  The Olympics are Hope.

And, yeah, if I ever should win Gold (overthinking as a sport? anyone?)...
I'm totally going to belt out my nation's anthem on the podium.

Unless they make me wear spandex on international TV.

In a Heartbeat

With news of another senseless tragedy striking in Colorado,  I feel compelled to remind you - to remind myself - that there is far more good in this world than evil. Evil merely gets more press.

Further, I suspect these bad things get the lion share of the press only because it is the exception, the oddity, the arrhythmia.
There are trillions of good and kind acts, polite words, and smiles that humans leave in their wakes every day:  so numerous, so prevalent, so taken for granted as to go as unnoticed as a regular heartbeat. Think about the human heart: scientifically, it's almost magical that it even exists, yet its billions of regular beats are rarely given a second thought... only the skips, the irregularities are ever remarked upon with more than a passing thought.

That said, a human heartbeat is a fragile thing, rather easily stilled. My heart and prayers are in Aurora, Colorado with the friends, the families, and the injured.

Chaos Theory (parking meter variation)

From the Imaginary Dictionary in my head...

Chaos Theory: n.
Looking for order and sense in the day to day world of humans is like trying to dig enough coins out of the car to feed an unexpected parking meter.
The closer I get to the amount I need, the smaller the value of each piece I find, the nearer I get to discovering there just aren't enough "cents" to be had...

A Question of Questions

These are the thinks I think... and then overthink...

A favorite TV series of mine was recently brought to mind.  If you looked beneath this particular show's surface of alien makeup and special effects, you found it was less about seeking answers of deep space, and more about seeking answers deep within humanity and within one's self.

In this particular case, that underlying deepness focused on three deceptively simple questions: 

Who are you?   What do you want?   Where are you going? 

Three short questions we've all answered a million times, often with little to no thought at all:

   I'm Helen's daughter.     I'd like a cold iced tea, please.     I'm off to the beach.     A reader.     Hope.     The cafeteria.     Perrian's wife.     A friend.     The office.     That shy girl in pigtails.     Creature comforts.     To infinity, and beyond.    Nobody special.   To be noticed.    The library.

Slowly through the course of the show,  a character of dubious origins, a sort of "fixer",  asked these three questions of each character.   Episodes, or even seasons, later,  the answers they declared developed an eerie tendency to come true.  

As you might expect, it was rarely to their benefit. 

In fact, the only good outcome came for the junior character who, after many refusals to answer, finally suggested he wanted to see this shady character's head on a pike. 

My original intent in starting this post was to try to come up with and record some of my own answers.   Then, as I began the exercise in navel-gazing, I found myself wondering: can any of us really truly understand what the answers to any of these are, in a long-term, big-picture, whole-life sense?  What is the purpose in even asking these questions?

Besides,  the very act of sharing would cause me to censor my answers, to pick the best of me, to mask the worst, to self-censor, and to otherwise cleanse for an audience, whether intentionally or not. 

Further, I wonder, wouldn't it be somewhat futile to try to write down ideas in a way that would be necessarily be limited by the boundaries and prejudices of the English language?

Perhaps it is  better to keep the reflections of the past light, and instead to look forward, to move on, to "just go," to stop wasting time wondering and defining, and just to live.  

So I'll just leave you with a random sampling of applicable answers....  and while you're here, please do share your own random, meaningful, or entertaining (but true) sets of answers in the comments.

___________________

Who am I?    A girl. A woman. A daughter. A ponderer. The Dred Pirate Roberts. A tester. A geek. A wife. A dog-owner.

What do I want?     A good book. Ice cream. Peace on Earth. Two million dollars. Friends. A red-ryder bb gun. A good laugh.  Financial security. To make someone giggle uncontrollably. 

Where am I going?   To bed.

20 Years Well-Wasted

I turned 18 the summer after high school graduation. On that birthday,  I was working  my first paid job (a summer internship), enjoying my last summer with high school friends before we all scattered to the winds for college.  For my birthday lunch, a coworker and I walked down to register to vote in (and for absentee ballots for) the fall's presidential election. That evening, I had friends over to celebrate. One of our last get-togethers before the first of the college-bound left for school in August.

Joy abounded that summer: our little group of friends tried to wring every last remaining ounce out of our childhoods that we could. I was excited to go to a great college, far enough from home that none would have preconceived notions of who I was, based neither on the antics of my barely-older brother, nor on who they'd known me as since pre-school.

There was also a lot of fear: wondering what the future would hold, scared of moving to a school hours from home, afraid that I'd chosen the school where I'd be a much smaller fish, worried  that my extreme shyness would cripple me in a world where I knew not a soul. Fear of the unknown. Of holding my own.

That milestone birthday was 20 years ago, yesterday.

This week, I find myself reflecting on the hopes, the fears, the expectations I held that day, standing on the threshold of adulthood. And I can't help but make the comparison to the reality.  As Brad Paisley sings, "Welcome to the future."  

In most ways, my life has taken directions I never could have imagined. (But really, who DOES imagine being a "software quality manager"?)   

There are goals I haven't met: 

I didn't become a famous scientist or journalist, or really an expert in any one thing. 

I  have yet to reach Earth's orbit; to outdo my brother in salary, education, or title; 

to increase my '"visited countries" list (aside from several Caribbean nations). 

I've found many friends along the way, but not the close clique of local "lifetime" girlfriends I've always coveted.

But in the ways that truly matter, and that I never remotely expected, the unfathomable reality has exceeded my dreams: 

I fell almost by accident into a a career that meshes weirdly well with my puzzle-minded anal-retentive, yet people-oriented  brain.  

I've made friends across the country and world that have opened my eyes and my mind. 

I learned to eat - and enjoy - foods that look, smell, or sound weird.  

I fell in love with a great guy who has become my best friend, who has tempered my tightly-wound brain with his loose go-with-the-flow attitude.   

I've learned to listen to country music. And like it.

I've lived in 4 additional states.

I've travelled extensively inside the boundaries of the good old USA:  now lacking only Louisiana and South Carolina in my bucket list.  (I expect to remedy one of those before the month is out.)    

I am surrounded by an amazing family, old and new, by blood and by marriage, that I've always managed to find time to connect and reconnect with.

It's not the life I expected when I turned 18…  it is in some ways smaller, but in many ways so much more. 

I've learned that the true measure of success is not in titles, dollar signs, a collection of things, or the size of an office; but rather in quality connections with truly good people,  in enjoying what I do with my time, in leaving more smiles and giggles and happy thoughts and memories behind than sadness: in spreading at least a little bit of pixie dust and magic.

All in all, I'd say the last 20 years (to borrow from yet another country song) has been "Time well wasted."