life reboot

Just. Like. That.

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I was flying over the petroglyphs, the winding river, pointed at the mountains through the clear clear air. I hadn’t seen it all in about 10 months and that was shocking to contemplate. Bewildering, almost.

In those 10 months I’d spent inordinate amounts of time training, running, and working, and working, and working more. And it had evaporated like time does. Just like that.

But seeing Albuquerque again after so abruptly departing 16 months ago was unexpectedly emotional, too. It heightened the sense of how quickly things can turn on a dime if you let them or want them or make them. After 17 years in one place, I changed tracks on the high-speed railway. Just like that.

These days I am externally a rather different person in my choice of employment, day to day associates, and home than I was 2 years ago. Little changes inside, of course. That’s why you can hop tracks but you’re still your own make and model of train.

 

How To Let A Midlife Crisis Year Go By In Moments

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When I was a bit younger I started to notice the sensation of time speeding up. This just wouldn’t do, no. I commented on it to a friend and they agreed, so we accosted the very next person we encountered on our run to ask them. The 50-ish woman obliged our off-the-cuff inquiry, “so, does time just keep getting faster?!” by answering immediately, “yes!”. We were disappointed but not at all surprised.

Cue a decade later and some major shifts in my situational and emotional trajectory. Or, as some regular folks like to call it, a “midlife crisis”.

In 2014, a small series of personal events set off a chain of reactions that far exceeded the initial tipping mechanisms. But like a convoluted domino setup, the chain reaction had been waiting, building. All of these things happened and all contributed: my cat companion died, I quit my job, I recovered from eating disorder after-effects, I started meditating, I turned 40. Still I knew there was more to change, one big thing. Whether or not it was the final thing I needed to regroup I did not know at the time. I only knew it was coming and it was finally time to do it. I ended a 15 year relationship and moved away from my home of 18 years.

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For a few months after that galactic shift, I was still in shock, floundering around mentally. I embraced the new location, leaned into a new relationship, ran a LOT, and pondered. And then I started getting busy. I took on work that turned into more work and more work, finding myself with 60+ hour weeks by mid-summer that hasn’t let up since. Running flamed out after injury and has yet to come back.

But all of those things I want to do with my old life—reaching out, communicating, thanking, reconciling—those things were lost in the slipstream of work, work, work and trying to run again. It has been 14 months, just like that.

Time is doing that thing again; I don’t need anyone on the trail to tell me what’s what.

I don’t have answers as to how I can start that process again, connecting with lost stubs of friendships and withering roots to a locational past home. I hope to figure it out for I miss those old connections.