Growing Up
Until a few months ago, I never really was interested in my age, or the age of people around me. When someone asked me my age, I would have to pause and think about what year it was (a number I often forget) and calculate the years. Being born in 1990, it wasn’t too hard. Just add 10 to the last two numbers of the current year. My birthday is in November, so if it was currently before November, I’d just minus one.
Today is my 35th birthday. I’ve never really made a big deal out of my birthday, but 35 is a little different for me. Knowing that 35 is not that much different from 34, or 33, it doesn’t really make sense, but it just feels different - like I’m finally “growing up”. That feeling seems ridiculous to me when I think about it, though, because I have two children, 11 and 8. By any measure, I would be considered an adult. However, it feels like that fact is just starting to sink in. Is this the infamous mid-life crisis creeping up on me?
In these 35 years, I’ve done quite a lot. From growing up in Maine, to moving and living in Tokyo for 10 years, and now living on Yakushima. In terms of work, I’ve been at some incredible environments, with some incredible people. Now I’m working on starting up my own company - something that I wanted to try since I was a kid.
This past year, I’ve been getting more serious about running. I’m getting ready for a couple events - a 55km race halfway around the island in January, and the Kagoshima City marathon in March. I don’t expect to run that fast for the Yakushima race, but I’m planning on going all out for the marathon.
While I did some mountain biking when I lived in Maine, I was never really interested in sports - I never would have considered myself an athlete. Now, however, I enjoy running every day and make goals for myself to continue improving. I know why I run today, but what got me here?
There were two main inciting events. One was the Yakushima marathon - my wife ran the 26km course previously, and had good things to say about it, so I wanted to try it as well. This was my first goal, and got me into training. Before this, I couldn’t even sustain running for more than 1 or 2km.
The second was being approached for the neighborhood relay race - a relay race where each neighborhood on the island competes against each other. Working at home all day on the computer, I knew I needed some exercise, so my wife and I would normally take a walk in the morning after sending the kids to school - people saw us, and approached us to join the team. It’s a very small thing, but being a part of a team - relying on others and being relied on - was rewarding for me. I didn’t end up running because I hadn’t been training enough, but it was enough of a motivation to get better.
That was last year. Those two events got me on track, and now I’ve been working on getting better, setting more goals for myself. It’s amazing what a routine can do. I started out trying to run 5km every morning, to actually running 5km, to gradually increasing the distance, to where I run 10km every morning now, with a long 30km run over the weekends.
Anyways, this was a little different from what I usually write on here, but it was good getting some thoughts outside of my head and into words. In the coming years, I want to continue with the path that I’ve been setting up for myself, and continue improving myself. In the book Good to Great by Jim Collins, I was introduced to the concept of a flywheel as a thinking device. In the book, it refers to the momentum of a company, but it applies anywhere, even to individuals. It feels to me like I’ve finally gotten some movement on my personal flywheel, and in the coming years, I’m going to devote myself to speeding it up.