Intervals

Chapters, Paths, Pushing and Coasting

I was sitting on a gym bench waiting for my heart rate to calm down after a fourth set of box squats when I realized that weight work can be a metaphor for how to live a life. It’s all about intervals.

Clearly any training program that involves intervals — my years as a runner spring to mind — works just as well, but the gym has sharpened my thinking on something I’ve been seeing a lot lately: coasting and pushing.

Many of my peers are, and have been, coasting in their lives for what I, on my judgier days, think is too long. Maybe they’ve let their bodies go, always trying to lose the same twenty (or thirty) pounds. Maybe they say they’re going to quit their job or their relationship, which is dreadful and stressy, but never do.

A few drink too much, say they’re gonna get on the wagon, but there they are at the bar, hammering beers like a college kid. I hear about books unwritten, trips not taken, skills still unlearned.

Within our world, I see people do the same old hunts in the same old places year after year, fish the same species on the same lake, gather the same mushroom (always morels) and the same berries ad nauseum.

I understand that it takes years to truly learn a piece of land or water, and once you do learn it you want to enjoy the fruits of your labor. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about the death of curiosity.

Enter those who push. Every one of the most interesting people I know possess so much curiosity I wonder sometimes if they’ve snatched it from the boring people who exist all around them. Conversations among us are usually a series of “check out what I just learned!” statements, with notes compared and a barrage of legitimately earnest questions flying back and forth.

Some I know push too much. A new job or partner every few months. Hobbies picked up, then forgotten; one guy I know decided to dedicate himself to bow hunting, bought thousands of dollars’ worth of gear, then quickly realized he wasn’t cut out to be an archer (sad trombone). It’s a sort of “everything everywhere all at once” vibe that can be exhausting.

It’s true, I sometimes move fast and break things (sorrynotsorry). But not always, and herein lies the crux. Balance, grasshopper…

You can’t lift every day and improve. Your muscles will explode. Ask any crossfitter. And if you don’t know any, it’s because you don’t know any — they will always tell you about CrossFit if they’re into it (It’s a bit culty). You can’t run fast every day, either.

Rest matters.

I’ve had several friends change jobs or leave big relationships in the past few years. All were in toxic environments that sapped their energy and confidence. Leaving (one got fired, but it wasn’t a surprise) was scary and jarring, a shock to routines built up over years. None had a new partner or gig lined up. But here’s the thing: They were confident enough in themselves to not take the first man or woman or job that came along. They coasted. Mindfully.

All are vibrant, curious people, so they naturally fretted about their loss of position, of status even. But rest was and is vital to anyone’s ability to re-enter the world. I speak from experience. Look back at my posts from 2023. That was a radical shift in my life, one so jarring I needed time to recover. So I took it. I coasted.

Now I’m not. I have a new book coming out in less than a month. I’ll likely do 50-plus events to help promote it. As I type this, I am eating a muffin I made that has rhubarb and hickory nuts in it, and it represents probably the sixth or seventh new dish I’ve come up with in the past two weeks. This, for me, is a flurry of creativity — one that only comes by being recharged, re-energized, and ready.

What does it take to get off the couch, to give your two weeks’ notice, to take a path that is new to you, whether its a relationship, a skill, a close-kept desire… or, literally a path in the woods you’ve never walked?

What does it take to have the courage to write your next chapter?

It takes courage. Fear of the unknown, the new, grows within us as we age like cancer. Humans are habit-forming creatures, and bad habits are far easier to cement than good ones. Back to the gym: If I travel for a while where I can’t exercise, when I get back there’s usually a day to dig out and settle back into my routine, but the gym gets pushed aside. Sometimes for a day, sometimes longer. It gets easier and easier to not step out that door and walk over to Lifetime. My inner monologue whines about being sore, I’ve lost too much, blah, blah, blah.

Finally, I look in the mirror, get angry with myself, and lace up my sneakers. Just an easy workout today, ease into it. I set no expectations that day, just going is a win. Baby steps. It always works.

I’ve been in and out of gyms since I was 15. Sometimes out for years, because, well, I was coasting those years. But I’ve always returned.

And this is the key to understanding life: Hard days follow easy days follow hard days. And weeks. And months. And years. Some days, weeks, months or years you coast, some you push through pain and fear and uncertainty. Some can be both, and, ideally, are, as you navigate the many facets of your unique life.

Sometimes you don’t get to choose your intervals. And that can be taxing, to put it mildly. But the trick is wanting that next chapter, wanting to take that untrodden path, do that new thing. Wanting to get back in the gym. It always works.