Navigating Life: The Low Energy Long Distance Runner

Back in my high school and college days, I was a long distance runner.

I lacked the "energetic explosiveness" of sprinters, and my "essence" just felt more suited to "plodding along" for a really long time.

I'd rather just SIT, for a spell...

I never paid that much mind to it, but with the benefit of some 40 years of hindsight, I have always been a low energy or slow energy person.

It has often felt like slow is not a characteristic generally valued much... and I have often found myself on the receiving end of "accusations" that I lack both passion and enthusiasm.

Those assertions haven't ever felt true to me; I would simply say that I feel passionate and enthusiastic in a slow and measured way.

That said, the "Long Distance Runner" analogy has held true for many aspects of my life... including the key fact that I am often still there working diligently at something, long after everyone else has either gotten bored and left, or has collapsed in an exhausted heap.

Happy water birds...

"A Body in Motion..."

As I have alluded to before, one of the benefits of therapy is that it tends to "shake loose" old memories; old thoughts we have filed away in recesses of our minds where we don't tend to look.

One of the ones I have recently been "facing" is the definite connection between my claim to being a "low energy person" and my very long learning curve.

It tends to take me more or less forever to become proficient at anything new. It often takes me a week to figure out how things work; things that many people are already good at, after maybe a couple of hours.

In grade school, it was noticeable enough that I went through all manners of tests for "Learning Disabilities" and "Intelligence." The educational establishment was rather baffled that I tested in the top 1% across various spectrums... and yet was such a "slowpoke."

Leaves in the sun

Of course, I have always made up for it by the fact that a year from now, I will probably be three times better than you at doing whatever "it" is. That's typically how my life has unfolded.

Once I finally get in motion I have a tendency to just keep going.

In a world that seems to be forever moving faster... my natural rhythms have gradually become more of a drawback, because there's less and less chance that we will even be doing the same thing, a year from now.

Our windows of opportunity to show the world that we can excel at anything become smaller and smaller; shorter and shorter. And that's not so good for the low energy long distance runner!

Thanks for reading!

(Another #creativecoin creative non-fiction post)

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Created at 20200215 13:22 PST
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