2021 – 02 Dec – Late night pre-surgery ramblings by ZT aka Shane

Adventures in Germany

“The path of least resistance is a terrible teacher.” 

Ryan Holiday — Don’t shy away from difficulty. Are you in a relationship because you fear loneliness? Are you staying at a job that you hate? Don’t do things just because they’re easy. How do you expect to grow?

Well, we made it across the pond and have made it. Liz has met the medical team and is moving forward. Soon I will not be posting any more on Facebook nor my blog as she will make the posts about the rest of the journey – when she is ready of course.

To her chagrin, she found out she goes first tomorrow so she has begun the sleep protocol. She goes over at 5 AM in the morning. Last time she got up that early – she was running the Top of Utah Half Marathon, and Ragnar or other running relays. What this event and surgery should provide is in her own time the ability to do just that again. Our hope is in time she will have the capability to strengthen herself and finalize her yoga certifications as well. So look ahead to a follow up from her about it all by following the link above (Happy in the Hills) of by clicking here.

Anyway, I’ve got the sherpa butterflies and that is why I am up and writing. Liz and I have gone thru the motions to this point and she is ready to go. What I have found the best part this far is the kindred friend I think Liz had made in this journey. Another gal that has a different cervical issue came in and was sharing similar stories to Liz. It is that camaraderie that I hope will pull Liz and her surgery friend through. I am hoping they will also keep in touch as she and her mother have been great humans thus far and looking to be stellar examples of humans trying to just be good. Some refer to these experiences as serendipity, silver linings, green lights and many other euphamisms.

What’s next

The next few days will be daddy Lucas time. Liz has commandeered the little one since birth. He is our current planned last one and we believe our natural roster is full. however, I imagine if all goes well with Liz here, then we still do have two frozen embryos. I will find out just how crazy my life-partner is. Yup, she will see this too.

When we get home, one of my first priorities is to get our 2 exterior doors hung. to that end, you can track that experience and more at the following site: happyinthehills.com/DIY

One of the things that both Liz and I have been sitting on is our next challenge, be brave enough to suck at something new type thing. Its not just DIY, but its turning our happyinthehills blog space into a meta verse of #TeamLivingston as one of our leaders in Team Zoot refers to us as (And we love you for it Laurie).

Now, I don’t know what will come of it all, but i want to concentrate more on my triathlon journey. My blog is selfish, its my writings and journal. Over the last few years since I was brave enough to purchase a bike, I have learned so much. So much of that is reflecetd in different ways in my blog posts. I have shared glimpses of that. Because of my lessons learned I als wanted to have a small platform to share my wisdoms earned. This is not a selfish endeavor, rather it is something I wish I had happened upon, and in many ways I did, but I wanted to give back somehow. I want it to begin small and intentionally as a selfless way for me to give back. The painful part about this for me, is I truly am a horrible writer. My wife has to always tell me to slow down and share complete sentences. My brain does not work that way. I am wired in a way that I quickly take in info, synthesize it and leverage what I need and discard what doesn’t need to stick, or I find a novel way to catalogue it so I can reference it when needed. Man, google helps so much here and I am grateful tot he alphabet ecoverse of cataloguing knowledge. That being said, I will be trying to not just journal my triathlon nuggets, but topics where life and triathlon intersect and how I worked through things. i want to share both my successes and failures. Simply highlighting my growth opportunities and calling out lessons learned and wisdom earned. In my professional spheres of influence I have also witnessed many examples that naturally transfer as analogies or cases to help provide more understanding. Again, a lot of this starts as a way for me, but my simple hope is others can inherit via proxy better opportunities than myself. Ok off to help with Lucas so Liz is ready in the morning. Here we go. Giddy up!