When Life Forces You to Pivot

This spring, I was sitting in my office. The realization that I would not be paid for an entire quarter's worth of work was sitting in my lap like a thing that's too heavy to hold but too fragile to sit down. I started asking myself the usual tree of questions: How large of a setback is this? Can the damage be mitigated? From where will I replace this money? Losing four months of income could have been catastrophic for a single-income household. As my brain raced through finances, anticipated incomes, debt, and ongoing responsibilities, I made a resolution. I was going to give myself 14 days to wrap up this business, make some decisions, and move on, and as a treat afterwards, I'd pick something off of my I've always wanted to but.... list and I'd do it immediately. For the next fourteen days, I canceled, transferred, bartered, and dealt until this was no longer an emergency but an opportunity of a lifetime.

Rebuilding Strength, Inside and Out

I was already scheduled to be in Michigan with family in another 6 weeks, for 3 weeks. For the first time in my entire life, I had zero things to worry about day to day beyond existing and enjoying my friends and family. I googled "personal training near me" and called the first listing. I took their next available consultation on Friday and had my first session on Monday.

The Art of Distress Tolerance

For four weeks, they would create a specialized training schedule for my chronic and debilitating hip pain, and they would train me with the intention of my being able to hike the Chapel Rock and Mosquito Basin area loop. I had attempted this 18 months prior, and due to poor planning and completely unrealistic expectations, I had failed. It was a beautiful two birds with one stone moment. I had always wanted to learn proper form for lifting, and I was getting another run at a bucket list adventure. I can't lie, weeks three and four of the program were DENSE, but they provided exactly what I needed. I completed the entire planned hike and some. I walked hillsides, crossed rivers, climbed over fallen trees, ran across beaches, and shimmied across the cliffs. It was breathtaking. Would my body have preferred I covered fewer miles? Yes. Nevertheless, I prevailed and completed another line item on my list.

Surviving, Adapting, Becoming

There are people in my life who would describe me as a control freak. I agree because I am the only one responsible for ensuring my life is not miserable. To the right of the touchpad on my MacBook is a sticker that reads, "If you end up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it." The triage-stabilize-run right to the next scary thing- process is one I've employed for about twenty years. I treat it as a game of distress tolerance. How uncomfortable can I allow myself to be before I crash out? I rationalize this by questioning if there is a correlation between the level of excitement one can feel and the level of anxiety one can tolerate. For example, when life required me to testify in court on matters that caused significant emotional distress, I doubled down and scheduled underground cave ziplining tours. There's something liberating about developing the nerve to leap off a platform into pitch blackness, with no idea what was ahead or if there was a bottom beneath you. If I can will my shaking legs to leap into the dark unknown, what can I not will myself to do?

Learning to Let Go of the Plan

I was eighteen when I googled the statistical probabilities for my adult life. The studies I read were not comforting, to say the least. From a statistical standpoint, people in my demographics barely survive, and they endure horrible life events with recidivism rates that make me physically ill. That day, staring at my tiny computer screen, in my $375 a month apartment with no heat, I swore I wouldn't live the life I felt I was condemned to. At the time, I was fueled by youthful pride more than a strategic outlook, but I took that promise to myself seriously. I went on to experience every single event that those studies had predicted. I dropped out of school, became an unwed mother, experienced homelessness, and was taken advantage of in a city where I had no one. However, the me that is sitting here writing this blog would not exist without those experiences. Along the way, I developed things eighteen-year-old me had not known to consider. Things like resilience, discipline, and self-worth. Today's problems look much smaller given the magnitude of younger me's issues. A peace comes with a resume of surviving and overcoming impossible obstacles. It's a reminder that my worst days were successfully survived, and it's only getting better from here.

This existence is less about a perfectly orchestrated plan than the ability to pivot when the plan becomes irrelevant.

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