Persistence
Be Stubborn. Keep Trying.
I remember being taken to the doctor when I was pretty young. My mother was concerned because I just didn’t seem to be putting on any weight. Looking back, it’s funny how what was once a problem would be so welcomed today. You see, my high metabolism was a short lived blessing. I don’t really have a problem putting on weight today. In fact, I’m pretty good at it. Doing the opposite? That’s the hard part.
Fast forward to just a few years ago. I had known for a while that that I hadn’t been taking very good care of myself and it was judgment day. I was finally stopping to take a long look in the mirror and I noticed something terrible in the reflection. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that there was a scale in the room. I hadn’t stepped foot on one of those dreaded things in a long time. I hadn’t been avoiding the scale outright but I knew that I wouldn’t be happy when we finally caught up with one another. I’m not sure what compelled me to face my inevitable disappointment that day but I’m glad I did.
That was the day that I hit a new low point. Or maybe you’d call it a high point, given the context. I don’t know what I had expected. I suppose it would have been nice if the scale simply read “Not as bad as you think!” but it turned out to be just the opposite. The scale tipped ever so slightly over the mark that read 230. Two-hundred and thirty pounds. The real gut-punch — emphasis on gut — was realizing the threshold for obesity is much lower than I expected. I fell on the wrong side. Whether you want to call it a high or a low, I knew that I wanted it to be a turning point for my health and for my life.
At first my only goal was a simple one: get healthier. I wanted to lose weight and feel like I was making progress towards a better me. As motivated as I felt, I knew that I needed to be careful. I was in pretty terrible shape and hurting myself wasn’t going to help the situation at all. So I set myself an even simpler goal. I told myself I would get up and walk every day. For some reason I settled on five miles. I wanted to walk five miles every day, whether it was a natural distance or one I forced myself to get up and finish. I knew that the important thing would be consistency. I had to keep going, even when it felt like hell.
A couple of months in, when I finally started to notice things changing, it felt like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Realistically, it had mostly been lifted off of my chest and stomach. I was finally at the point that I was actually seeing progress with my own two eyes and it felt great. I wanted to keep that feeling going so I set myself a new goal. Now I wanted to reach a healthy weight. For my height the upper threshold is about 158 pounds, so I set my goal for 155. I knew that it wouldn’t be quick or easy but I wanted it bad.
I still remember the exact feeling when I stepped onto the scale and it stopped at 160. It was about a year and half after I set my sights and I’ll be honest, I cried. My workout wasn’t that strenuous and it wasn’t like I was putting myself through some horrible pain every day knowing that it would pay off. In pretty much every way, I was living my life at a speed of average. The real challenge was going on in my head. Keep up the good habits, keep down the bad. Walking is slow progress, but it makes for steady results. I wasn’t tearing up because I knew that some grueling process was finally over. It was because for the first time in a while, I felt proud.
A lot of the things that I want to do and change about myself don’t come easily for me. Losing weight wasn’t the only thing that I decided I needed to work on. I knew that there was a lot more to fix. I wanted to challenge myself. I wanted to put everything that I thought I knew about myself up for review. I wanted to become a better me. So in addition to increasing my physical activity I wanted to find a way to intellectually stimulate myself.
I’ve always wanted to try my hand at programming. I thought that it would be such a cool skill to have. There are so many possibilities when it comes to coding and I thought hey, maybe it could even lead to a job somewhere down the line. The first time I really tried it was in high school. I learned the basics of web design and I could put together a site for fun. When I moved on to some higher concepts, I found myself feeling like I was literally trying to read a foreign language. None of it made sense and I couldn’t figure out where to begin.
From the first time that I decided to learn to code, it took me close to six years of trying, failing, giving up, and trying again before I ever wrote something that did more than print some text or solve a math problem. I failed a lot and to be completely honest, I don’t know if I got that much smarter. Not technically, anyway. The real change was that I got better at finding the right tutorials for me, the one’s I knew would jive well with my learning styles. It also helps that coding has been getting a lot more accessible. Modern programming languages have put a larger focus on human readability which, for me, makes a big difference and lowers a few hurdles.
Today I can say that I’ve written and published a few apps. I’ll be the first to tell you that they aren’t that special, but they were a lot of fun to make. The first one I wrote was in tandem with my weight loss. I wrote an app that would help me easily track how far I had walked that day so I could keep up with my goals. Since then, I’ve made a few things that I thought would be fun or useful. If I make something useful for me, I’ve succeeded. If they’re useful for other people too, that’s just a wonderful bonus.
Then there’s writing. Writing is something new and old to me. I’ve written a lot in the past but it’s not something I’d say I have a lot of experience in. I’ve written a lot for school courses but that’s always been fairly structured and I’ve written for myself but that’s always been extremely unstructured. Writing like I’m doing now is completely different. I find myself feeling pressure to be creative and say something meaningful. I find myself questioning whether what I have to say is of any use to anyone else or if I can really say it better than the next guy. In a lot of ways writing is like my experiencing programming. I thoroughly enjoy the process of making something only to feel worried over whether or not I should share it.
Right now writing is just a hobby, but maybe one day it will be more. There is a part of me that thinks it would be great to find a career in the medium some day but even if it only stays a hobby, writing is something that I’d really like to do well in. I’d like for other people to enjoy what I write and it would be great to feel like I’m having a positive impact on the readers that I reach. Just like the coding that I do, I find myself wanting to write because it feels good to do. I’m not expecting my little articles to drastically change anyone’s lives but if I can make a few people crack a smile or just feel understood along the way, I’d feel like I’d be doing something of worth all the same.
So while I’m still growing into this new hobby of mine, I’m going to give it my all. I’m going to write a little bit every day. I’m going to keep growing my list of ideas. And every time I write, I’m going to battle with the anxiety of sharing my words. Hopefully I’ll only get better with time and practice, and maybe even grow confident in my voice.
I’m not the best programmer, I don’t yet feel qualified to call myself a writer, and you know what? I’ve put back on about fifteen pounds. These things don’t make me happy but they won’t keep me down either. I might not find the strength of will to get up and run every day, but I’ll keep on running. I might not make a fortune writing apps, but I’ll keep on coding for myself. And I’ll write a little bit every day, even if what I write ends up being some nonsense I never publish.
People say that the real joy isn’t in the destination, but in the journey you take to get there. Well I’ve realized that where I’ve learned the most isn’t in comparing now to then, but in the challenges that I’ve faced to get to where I am.
Most importantly, I’ve learned that I should value that these things don’t come easily to me. If they had, I wouldn’t have learned the things I have along the way. I wouldn’t have found insight into my strengths. I wouldn’t have learned how I could use my stubbornness, and turn it into persistence. So every now and then, when I lose my grip and slip a few feet back down the mountain, I’ll just remember to catch myself. I’ll find my footing and start climbing again.
