The \u201cI didn\u2019t know yet\u201d honesty - recognition and acknowldgement aren't the same<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The hip adductor injury in 2023 wasn\u2019t just an injury. It was a hinge. A shrill. A moment where endurance pacing stopped being a strength and became a warning. I had been running, biking, swimming, traveling, producing, performing \u2014 mistaking motion for balance, mistaking resilience for sovereignty, mistaking productivity for presence. Work always bounced. I assumed I would too. But glass remembers impact.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I wasn\u2019t juggling five balls. I was juggling labels. Each with its own contour, weight, demand. Some inherited. Some self\u2011assigned. Some masks I didn\u2019t know I was wearing. I kept all of them in the air because I thought that was the point. I thought dropping anything meant failure. I didn\u2019t understand that dropping the wrong thing meant fracture.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The present lives between two fairy tales \u2014 the past and the future.<\/p><\/blockquote>

Eddie Pinero said it, but I lived it. I was depressed in the past and anxious in the future. I was living in both fairy tales at once. Peace only ever showed up when I stayed in the present long enough to feel my own breath. The present is the only place where the glass realms can be protected.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The acknowledgment that the tools weren\u2019t built yet<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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My journey of reasonable self\u2011scrutiny didn\u2019t exist yet. Not in the way it does now. I didn\u2019t have the internal architecture. I didn\u2019t have the virtues integrated. I didn\u2019t have the cosmology. I didn\u2019t have the somatic literacy to understand what my body was trying to tell me.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Wisdom, Temperance, Justice, Courage \u2014 the Stoic virtues didn\u2019t arrive as philosophy. They arrived as necessity. Wisdom became the lantern I carried when the fog thickened. Temperance became the bridle on the storm when my reactions wanted to outrun my intentions. Justice became the calibration I needed when I was carrying too much or too little. Courage became the gate I had to walk through alone, even when my hands were shaking. These weren\u2019t virtues. They were guardians.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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I needed a term for my worldview. A label for the architecture I was building. Something that could hold my authentic core values, my faith\u2011oriented philosophies, my Stoic trajectories, my nuclear family, my physical and mental values, my time management, my endurance identity. I needed a cosmology that didn\u2019t collapse under its own weight.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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The imbalance becomes visible<\/h3><\/div>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Work kept bouncing. I kept traveling. I kept swimming, biking, running with too much freedom. I kept mistaking motion for presence. I kept assuming my partner would understand the pace I was keeping. I kept ignoring the other balls.\u00a0 The Four Agreements helped \u2014 not as doctrine, but as calibration. A reminder that my worldview needed to be lived, not performed.<\/span><\/p>

And then there was the theft in San Francisco \u2014 a moment that disrupted everything. I had just returned from a run. My backpack was gone. I followed protocols. I stayed calm. I made sure my wife knew I was safe. But in the empty moments \u2014 the ones without movement \u2014 my mind drifted into fear. Job security. Safety. Fragility. The glass felt thin.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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But before the theft \u2014 before the disruption \u2014 I had been on the beach. Sand under my feet. Shoes off. Running barefoot among strangers, seagulls, birds, the waning light. Grounding. Self\u2011care. Reasonable self\u2011care. Being selfish where I could so I could become more selfless. I remember the sunset. I remember the warmth. I remember taking photos for a family visiting from somewhere far away \u2014 the father finally in the frame. I remember feeling aligned. Present. Connected to the glass realms I had been neglecting.<\/span><\/p>

And then the disruption. The shattered glass. The displaced things. The realization: my computer is gone.<\/span><\/p>

Work could have shattered everything. But I didn\u2019t let it. I stayed in front of it. I ran again the next day. I acknowledged what I could control and what I couldn\u2019t. I parsed the information reasonably. I navigated the stress. I let it go.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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That moment grabbed me by the shoulders. It stabbed my heart strings. It reminded me that work will always bounce back like rubber, but the others \u2014 family, health, friends, spirit \u2014 are at high risk of fracture. So I shifted from hyper\u2011focus to balanced focus. Until the hip injury. And now I\u2019m here again \u2014 juggling a different set of balls. It doesn\u2019t matter what they are. It matters that I get them back in balance. Before the universe turns the noise into shrill screams.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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Sometimes it just clicks \u2014 like swimming. Work keeps bouncing back. It always has. All the way back to Carl\u2019s Jr. But the glass \u2014 the intimate things \u2014 they were close to shattering. I was slipping. I was losing discipline. I was letting external things disrupt my demeanor. I was doubting the basic truth that most humans are trying to do good.<\/span><\/p>

I didn\u2019t go over the ledge. I stayed rooted in my moral standards. I stayed honest with my wife. I stayed present enough to see the fracture forming.<\/span><\/p>

And now I\u2019m rewriting this post \u2014 not to perfect it, but to tell the truth I couldn\u2019t tell then.<\/span><\/p>

I lived the metaphor. I broke where I didn\u2019t expect. I bounced where I didn\u2019t deserve. I learned what I couldn\u2019t have known in 2017. And I\u2019m rewriting now because the glass remembers.<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original Post title: Check-in \u2013 August 25 \u2013 Juggling the 5 balls of life Click here for original post I\u2019m rewriting a post I first wrote in 2017 because I finally understand what I couldn\u2019t then. Back then, I copied […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22559,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"nf_dc_page":"","_eb_attr":"","pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","rs_blank_template":"","rs_page_bg_color":"","slide_template_v7":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-name":"","wprm-recipe-roundup-description":"","_templately_pack_id":"","_templately_imported_at":"","_templately_source":"","_templately_import_session_id":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[814],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ads"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26719"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26742,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26719\/revisions\/26742"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22559"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/happyinthehills.com\/zentriathlete\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}