It occurred to me today that my amazing now isn’t what my amazing used to be.

First off, I just need to start off by saying that I have been feeling more and more lately that I have made so many positive changes during the past three months –> I don’t ever want things to get “back to normal”. Now, this isn’t to say that I don’t hope that we will one day get back to something as close to what we used to have as possible, but I also think that people who think that things are going to be the way that they were don’t have their heads on straight.

Additionally, for me personally, I don’t want to go back to the me that I was, just going through the motions and fumbling through the days, previously. I wonder if my mid-life crisis and the quarantine didn’t, in fact, coincide –> to create a new Phil Brackett. More on that in a moment…

For about the past couple of weeks, I have been listening to news reports from states, who fought hard to reopen early, that are now becoming the new hot spots for corona virus cases nationwide. In fact, it was about a month ago when I wrote THIS POST about whether or not it was a good idea to rush into opening up at all. One of these states that I’ve been watching in the news is the state where my family and I are supposed to vacation in July –> that’s got me a little worried.

And, as a quick political side note –> congratulations to Governor Gretchen Whitmer on her handling of a pandemic in a state that was, initially, one of the worst hot spots, and is now one of the most exciting pandemic success stories.

Anyway, I just wonder what the rush was to get back to “normal”. I guess I can admit, with a little bit of shame, that I wasn’t living my best life before the pandemic. I was definitely too busy, which the pandemic and the quarantine pretty much took care of. I wasn’t spending as much time with my kids as I should have been. How about being locked up with them in the house for twelve weeks?!?!

But, an even bigger part of the problem was that I wasn’t pursuing my goals and my interests back then, back when things were “normal”. Now that I’ve started to re-prioritize my agenda, I don’t want to go back to the way that things were. To be honest, I’m afraid of what’s going to happen when I have to start making the tough choices between keeping these new loves that I’ve found and going back to doing what everyone else wants me to do.

Check this out:

If you take all of the blog posts that I’ve written and put them all together in one document, it’s the equivalent length of a two-hundred page novel.

If you’d asked me on March 13th, the last day that I had a classroom full of students in front of me, if I was going to be able to write a two-hundred page novel in 2020, I would’ve laughed in your face.

If you’d asked me on March 13th, the last day that I had a classroom full of students in front of me, if I was going to be able to run a 10K distance this year, I would have said something like, “I sure hope so.”

I’ve run two 10K distances this week, my first two 10K distances ever.

And I can tell you one thing, as I sit here and type these things out; I’M NOT GOING BACK TO THE WAY THINGS WERE –> THAT “NORMAL” IS NOT WORTH GOING BACK TO.

* * *

I think that I’ve discovered that my current concept of “amazing” isn’t what it used to be, because I’ve advanced. I am capable of doing what I would have previously considered amazing, because of these advancements, so now, I need to be looking further down the road.

Wouldn’t it be amazing if I ran a half-marathon? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I got a book published? Wouldn’t it be amazing if my doctor was impressed with my physical fitness at my next physical? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I signed a book deal?

These are my new “amazings”. These are the new goals. I’ve taken the first bite of the entree, and it tastes SOOOOOO good, and now I am looking forward to the next bite, and the next, and the next.

I’m not going back to waiting in the entryway, hoping to be seated.

Earlier, I mentioned my mid-life crisis and the quarantine coinciding, and I was partly kidding, but I’m also partly serious. I’ve taken a look at who I was and compared it to who I want to be and I decided that it was time to make some changes.

You should try it.

I know that, on the average day, there aren’t that many people reading these posts, and it doesn’t really bother me that there aren’t. But, I do know that there are a few people –sometimes random guests and sometimes faithful readers– who read my posts everyday.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I got a comment on one of my posts from someone named Pengobatan Sipilis, and they told me that something that I’d written in a post was helpful for them.

I’d have to say, that’s relatively amazing to me!

I hope that you can all look at what your current “amazings” are and say that you are closer to them than you were previously. I hope that you all are in a place where what you’ve accomplished is what you would have previously hoped to accomplish, and that you are reaching for the next level of amazing.

I saw a meme on social media the other day that said something like, “Don’t live the same year seventy or eighty times and call that ‘a life’.”

Agreed.