Today is the first Sunday in a while that I haven’t been swimming laps. I decided that, between a recent blood donation and a hectic schedule (seriously, how crazy are the expectations and events for children in year 6?!), I would give myself a rest this week. Part of me is already longing to jump in and swim - it may just be the humid heat of the pool building as I sit and sweat while my son & daughter complete their swimming lessons.
But I do enjoy it. Swimming, that is.
The first week was very hard. I used to be a competent swimmer; in high school I was usually one of the first to finish in swimming races. I had basically (according to my parents) learned to swim before I could walk. So after having been out of practice for years (decades?) and in particular being exceedingly out of shape right now, the picture in my mind of what I could remember doing, and the physical reality of what I could do was frustrating, jarring, disheartening.
The second week was a little better. I tried to not make it a decision. I just got into the pool before I could talk myself out of it. I could feel it getting easier — I could make it that much farther across the pool before I was hopelessly out of breath. It was just enough to encourage me to keep going.
I don’t generally fare well with long term goals that must be incrementally progressed. I often (when it comes to personal growth) find myself in a very binary mode. I either achieved the thing or I failed. I believe very much in continual improvement but only when I can see each improvement as a discrete thing that I can check off a list, not when it’s a continuum on a never-ending line.
Part of it I think is that I struggle with the perception of time, especially in increments more than a day. Did I last do that thing a week ago or a month ago? Who can say? Was it better or worse? It’s a toss up whether I’ll recall it in painstaking detail or struggle to recall it at all. Ironically, I think that’s why I like setting up systems at work where I can track the progress of improvements with software. You can have an automatic script register a deployment event somewhere and then generate a beautiful graph that clearly shows whether the system is performing better. I don’t have an equivalent mechanism to record that last week I managed to get 3/4 of the way across the pool before my lungs gave out and I had to flip over and backstroke the rest of the way. There is no beautiful graph to be had without a significant manual effort to note, record, consolidate and analyse everything, and I frankly just don’t have the bandwidth for that. I don’t even have the bandwidth to keep track of when I last vacuumed or remembering to shave my legs.
But I do have, at least, for now, an amorphous sense that the needle has moved a little bit. Progress has been directed and made.
Next weekend I won’t even think about it — I’ll get my swimsuit on and slog my way across the pool again. Maybe one day I’ll look up and find myself powering back & forth across the pool again.
For now, I’ll just keep my focus on showing up.