no road map to our goals

What a nice day at work I had.

It was tiring. I was pretty tired from Wednesday-Thursday. About half-way through my day, I felt myself crashing. I lay down in the teacher’s room and felt myself sinking, drifting….sinking… so this is what it’s like to fall asleep, I thought. Then suddenly I started thinking about dinosaurs. Wondering why woke me up a bit, but I let it go, and drifted…. my new co-workers were all sitting around in the room and suddenly the floor disappeared. It was a jungle and the chairs laying around suddenly became vines I had to hang on to. Everyone was trying to get away from the crocodiles that were slowly chomping their way up the vines…I was trying to climb up but my upper body isn’t so strong. The waterfalls! (I don’t know why, but they were the key.)

Then I woke up. lol

I had a rowdy kids class, but it was almost welcome! Bring’em on! Keep me sharp! I’m being spoiled from lack of rebellious kids at my new school. I actually had to raise my voice and implement the point system on them. It was their second class with me. I’ll show’em that they can’t walk all over me.

Anyway, I got home from work at 9:30. I lay down in my apartment. Thinking. How nice it is to be working at my new Language Center. I loved the other places, but this was my goal. To be here. Moving closer to the big city had always been my goal. I met two of my long-term goals. I wanted to make new friends. I did. Third goal. I wanted to move into a slightly bigger apartment than when I first moved to Japan. I am- it’s nice and spacious. Fourth goal. I no longer commute an hour and a half to the gym every day. Fifth goal.

I realized completely that I changed my situation through break-neck paced effort and perseverance. It hit me. I’m here doing what I want to be doing and nobody can tell me what to do.

I found myself laughing. I was laughing out loud. I found that my face was wet. I found that I was crying. The in-between is hard and gray…gray in that you can’t see a beginning or end. You don’t know if you’re at the beginning of your journey, or end, or middle. When you see the finish line, you can gather that last ounce of strength and sprint to the finish. It takes a lot of mental energy to sprint the whole way. In anything. Never let up. Keep pushing, and you’ll find that you passed the finish line a few steps ago!

I’m healthy and young. I’m on a losing streak, but I can still become a champion in my MMA future. And nobody can take away my experiences or my achievements. I have no road map, and I have no idea how far along to my goal I am. It could come tomorrow.

Finally, I realize that I’ve adopted and internalized a saying, that I hope can be associated with the Happy Warrior; for better or worse, “smile and carry on.” I firmly believe that positiveness attracts positive things.