Who Do I Want To Be?
When I was 21, I was a Senior at The University of Tulsa and I was an athlete.
My life centered around being a wide receiver on the football team, my studies, and not much else. I've always been a goal-oriented person and every year I make time for journalling and planning out my goals. This polaroid, taken by my roommate at the time, captures me in the middle of a goal journaling session for my next block of work. At that point in my life I wanted to be a professional athlete and even though I knew the chances were slim my life was regimented, disciplined, and focused on achieving this goal. After graduating, I struggled through some things, like most athletes do when the door is shut on their lifelong pursuit. What am I, if I'm not an athlete? Who do I want to be, if my aspirational goal for myself is no longer attainable? Over the years through self-reflection, failure, and success I was able to shed much of the arrogance and ego that I had carried as a collegiate athlete. In a lot of ways, through time and experience, I was able to find fulfillment in my life with hyper-focus on academics, finding challenging work, growing a family, and surrounding myself with grounding friends.
Twenty one years later, looking back, I may have made an overcorrection in some areas of my life, as I now find myself overweight and experiencing some slightly scary effects of high-blood pressure and anxiety related stress. It is time to ask myself, like I did when I was 21, and leaving college football -- Who do I want to be? What do I want the next twenty years to be about?
In pursuit of the answer to these questions, I felt it time to refocus my ambitions and expectations. I've been disciplined in my What I'm Doing Now - prioritization of things, which allows me to say no to a lot of opportunities or ideas which would dilute my attention and time. But, at 42 years old, I'm needing a re-centering of my expectations with less focus on achieving success, and more focus on enjoying the journey. While I won't share the specifics of my goals, I wanted to share some habits I'm working on everyday in order to ENJOY the next twenty years.
- Sam
April, 15 2022