I started this Journey to lose weight and improve my fitness.  I knew that the way I was going I was putting my life at risk.

I looked at my family and friends and decided that they were worth staying around for if it was at all within my control to do so.

Struggling to climb stairs, out of breath mowing the lawn, the view in the mirror, all this and more told me that I was on the wrong path, a self-destructive course.

It was not what I wanted, not what I expected when I entered my adult years..

I started the Journey.

I started to lose the weight

I began working on the fitness.  First with short walks, then a little longer, then I added the bleacher-sets and then back on my bike…

The weight began to come off.

I stopped losing my breath climbing stairs…

Along the line somewhere, I started to find something.  It has taken me time to understand it and I don’t know that I do fully…

I think it is called “peace”.

I have never rested easily.  I always found it difficult to accept things outside of my expectation, to go with the flow, to deal gracefully with the unexpected or unwanted.  I have fought an often-losing battle against certain aspects of my nature.  I think the term “emotionally volatile” has been used.

Peace was not something I really much experienced for long.  There was always some sort of turmoil within, something just on the edge.

Then I started to notice a change…

Over the last several months, I have had to fight the battle less and less often.  I am comfortable, relaxed, more accepting.  I feel an energy that had been missing.  I am fighting myself less.  I am using the energy once lost on the internal fight to move myself forward.

From nearly the first, I realized that this Journey was about more than fitness and weight.  I wasn’t certain what it would prove to be but I knew there was more to it.

I found value in myself.  I started to see that I was more than a placeholder, a person filling time and space and then forgotten.  I started to see “ME” as having intrinsic value to friends, family, self.  I have started to understand that with recognition of value comes a sense of worth that perhaps was not always there.  I have started seeing a different ME in the mirror.  I see an older man than my mind’s eye is accustomed to seeing.  I also see a thinner, healthier me.  However, what I think I am seeing looking back at me is a man more at ease with himself than at any time prior in life.  I believe I am seeing not a new me but the “me” that has always been there, waiting under the surface, waiting for me to realize that I was there.

I don’t want to be maudlin, dramatic or silly here.  Really, I am not at all about finding inner peace and being one with oneself or nature or any of that, I am certainly not “a spiritual person”.  Something about this Journey has been comforting I guess.  Maybe it is the process of writing this blog or the time I spend by myself or with friends walking in the woods along the trails. Maybe it is the introspection needed to dedicate to the new way of living.  Maybe it is the new way of living in and of itself that is bringing this sense of peace to me.  I don’t know.  I wish I did.  I can only say that I believe it is real and lasting, as real and lasting as I want the other changes in my way of living to be.

I said early on in the history of this blog that I felt some changes in my mindset were inevitable as I went along the Journey.  I am pleased with what has been happening so far.

It is fun waiting to see what happens next!

Thank you for allowing me to ramble on.

Peace