“Bacon,” Avery replied when I asked what I should blog about that evening.
My mind was all over the place and though my boys were with their dad for the weekend, I couldn’t bring myself to just sit and write. I had the entire weekend to myself, and the words weren’t flowing. I needed them to be flowing.
I was dropping Avery, a 5-year-old who calls me Auntie Jen, and her (my) family off after a workout. An outdoor workout on a cool Maine Sunday morning where I did things like deadlift cinderblocks, crawl up a hill, carry buckets filled with bricks and smash a tire with a sledgehammer. A workout that left Avery’s dad itching to chop wood as we drove home. We had driven in the “bacon car,” so named because it has the words from my tagline “eat bacon” on my back windshield.
“Wolfpack,” Avery suggested after I noted that maybe bacon was too expected. I also noted that WolfPack Fitness, our outdoor “gym,” has already been mentioned on my blog a couple of times (here and here).
The words didn’t flow Sunday night either. I paid bills instead and let my web developer change the theme to my website (which explains the new look you are now seeing). I attempted to view and respond to messages. So many messages. In so many places. No wonder my mind was everywhere.
On Monday, I turned to Facebook and asked friends for some inspiration. I’m known most for bacon and philanthropy, so it’s no surprise that the first six comments referred solely to bacon, followed by some suggestions around generosity and giving. There was mention of music, the changing of the season, and focus. A good friend from high school mentioned wanting to hear more about WolfPack specifically. I noticed other friends liking certain comments on the thread, showing their vote for my inspiration.
The writer in me started to weave it all together to find the storyline in Avery’s innocent response and a Facebook status I half expected to be ignored.
Two comments stood out for me.
“Selflessness,” a simple word left by my good friend, Jim Bouchard, who has written on the topic of selfless selfishness.
My friend Linda responded, “What about: it’s good to do something good for others, but sometimes you have to do something good for yourself? Like a nice open air workout?”
Linda is my workout buddy on Friday mornings and the woman who took the above photo of me and my boys before a “playout” on an island on a weekday where there was no school. We’re still fairly new to that open air workout, but our form is getting better and our weights heavier. The fun is never absent, and the view is always spectacular.
The real thread in all of this is a walk down a long dirt driveway I took on an unseasonably warm Friday at the end of September. The last piece of the puzzle in my quest to reclaim myself after divorce. A selflessly selfish act so my physical strength could match my inner strength. An act that has also given me the chance to be alongside some wonderful, generous people who also value selflessness and a happy life over pain and impressing others.
And, yes, I selflessly eat bacon and eggs before every workout.
I could fret about the lack of words flowing despite a large deadline looming ahead of me. Or the fact that I can’t quite keep up with all those messages. But when I stop and think about it, I had a spectacular weekend. I did some needed organizing, prioritized my to do list, went to a party, talked to some close friends, had a fun impromptu meetup, and pretended to milk a cow with bricks in my hands. At the end of it all, I got to hug my boys.
The words. They will come. They always do.
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