Turning the Page...

About three weeks ago I went for a jog on the beach. It was a cold day; like much of the country, our winter has been a little rougher than usual. Six minutes into my run, I felt the muscle in my right calf seize. A knot formed and I could barely walk. It felt like a sniper had pegged me from one of those surfside condo towers.

I limped back to my truck and, since then, I've been using the R.I.C.E. method (rest, ice, compression, elevation) of treatment for muscle injury. I've tested it a few times, but I haven't had a pain-free run.

Until this afternoon. I just smoked a good one out to the Round Marsh and back.

As I write this, I'm looking at the nicest day in Northeast Florida since probably last September. I've got a gallon of tea steeping on the patio. I just picked up some steaks for Lyla's first birthday dinner, and we're going up to the park in thirty minutes when Jeanne gets home to kick the soccer ball around. I saw a school of reds muscling each other just off the birding platform, there in the oyster beds. Big fish, the whole lot of them.

Life is good.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the discomfort was temporary. The restless feeling I get when I can't get a jog in was weighing on me, but it sure felt good to stretch my muscles and my lungs today. It felt redemptive.

It's an important lesson to keep in mind. Earlier this week, I was given an interesting opportunity (albeit an opportunity that would have been almost impossible to take). I made some calls to check on other, more realistic opportunities and was disappointed to have a little bit of a setback. It hurt then and it hurts now, but here's the thing: almost every form of disappointment is temporary.

The person I am now is not the person I'll be in six months, six years, or sixty years (man, I'll be a cantankerous ol' ninety-two-year-old man; thank God for Jeanne's patience). Life is evolution, and this setback is temporary. I'm in the process of regrouping and taking another run at my goals, this time with a little clearer idea of where I need to go.

Time passes. Seasons change. People grow.

That's it...

Now, off to spray for wasps. Part of the joy of warm weather in Florida.

UPDATE: The wasps are mad. Oh, they're soooooo mad!