I often joke with a lot of my friends that every few years you should completely reinvent yourself – or in my case, every few months. You see, I’ve never been accused of being someone that has a very long attention span or a good sense of focus. I’m always chasing after the next new shiny thing or skipping along from hobby to hobby, idea to idea, without much thought to the impact it has on the rest of my life. Undiagnosed (or at least untreated) ADHD? Yeah, probably, but I think it’s probably also a trait I developed while growing up. Moving every 2-6 years and getting to start over with a new batch of friends, new hobbies, and a chance to form a new identity is something I’ve always been pretty good at. Even once we moved to Louisville and I started high school, I still found myself repeating the same pattern of making some wholesale change of friends and interests every few years. My best and oldest friends are the ones who manage to slip through this housecleaning and are usually the ones who are the most tolerant of whatever hairbrained idea I have now and who I plan on being this year/month/week.

So why is this worth mentioning? And what on earth does it have to do with two grainy pictures of cars tightly crammed in our garage?

Well, sometime around the holidays I started to struggle with the idea of looking at the things I do – what I spend my time, effort, and money on – through the lens of where I want to be. Having moved home from Germany less than a year ago, after living overseas for 18 months (see what I mean about reinventing myself) it’s easy to take the “where I want to be” part a bit too literally. The problem with that is, as Thomas Kempis wrote waaay back in 1440 “for wherever you go you are burdened with yourself. Wherever you go, there you are.” Gee, thanks Tom… way to harsh on my mellow. So it turns out that it doesn’t matter where I am – if I don’t change the things I do and the reasons I do them, it’s not going to get me any closer to being who I want to be. And who is that, anyway?

Well, without rolling out the laundry list of my personal inventory, goals, etc (mostly because I haven’t actually gotten that far yet) it’s probably best to say that I’m paring down the things that I’m pretty sure I’m not. Probably foremost on the list of things that I convince myself from time to time that I enjoy doing, but which in actuality, cause me a great bit of stress, frustration, expense, and time away from family and friends is…. racing. Yup. Turns out that throwing fistfuls of dollars at non-running-but-I’ll-get-around-to-working-on-it racecars so that I can skip church and spend my entire Sunday standing in a parking lot for 15 minutes or frustrating, uncompetitive driving rather than spending that time with my wife and family. Well… it’s just dumb. So… I sold the racecar. And the trailer. And I’m going through the garage bit by bit to find things that I don’t need any more, projects I never got around to, and parts for cars I don’t even own any more, and I’m selling it all. This pleases Laura immensely and it gives me a spot to park in the garage – something I’m pretty sure I haven’t had for more than a month at a time as long as we’ve owned houses.

So I’m off to a good start and definitely killed the biggest time and money vacuum first. But what’s next? Laura is encouraging me to pick up a new mountain bike, as I’m really not enjoying the exercise regimen (mostly running) that I’ve been doing for the last few weeks. A good idea (as most of hers are), and one that will definitely meet the goal of being in better shape and being outdoors more… but, I’ve also wanted to make a point of traveling more, exploring outdoors, etc… and the allure of a dual sport motorcycle is very strong… Another shiny thing – or legitimate hobby?

In any case, this is the kind of stuff I’m struggling with at the moment. Trying to focus my time and my personal life, as it’s the only thing I have some sort of control over. Work is another matter entirely and is a bit tumultuous at the moment, too. I’ve promised myself to try and write some of this stuff down so that I can go back and remind myself of where I’ve been and where I’m going. Blog readers, thanks for indulging this mental dump. Lucky you. We’ll see where it goes from here.

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