📍Where You Are
Let's start with a confession:
Sometimes my best inspiration stems from Reddit.
Take the Warrior-Scholar's Field Guide, for example. This is the grounding document for our college success curriculum at Warrior-Scholar Project boot camps. One section of the guide opens with the following quotes:
“Pavlov probably thought about feeding his dogs every time someone rang a bell.”
“The tallest person in the world has physically experienced being the exact height of every other person in the world at some point.”
These come from strangers on Reddit (usernames Pyro92587 and SilphRoadPokemon88, respectively). If you're curious how these fit into a bespoke guide on student veteran success, well, you'll have to wait until we get this thing formally published. That is, assuming we can find an editor willing to keep those insane things in the final version.
If you don't know what Reddit is, you're probably better off just not knowing? Then again, it's more or less become the only functioning purpose of Googling these days, so you may know about it even if you don't know about it.
Suffice it to say that it's a series of forum/chat-like pages specific to any number of given topics. Those quotes above come from a page dedicated to thoughts one comes up with in the shower. Unsurprisingly, I subscribe to another page focused on productivity. It's mostly not worth visiting, but there are occasionally some valuable insights. Such as…
Where You Are
In one post, an exasperated user asked what tools and practices people use to stay maximally productive.
Another user responded, simply, "meet yourself where you are."
Yes.
This is a profound insight. I jotted it down a few months back and keep coming back to it.
We are oh so very good at comparing ourselves to where we think we should be. Ah yes, if only I can clear through these tasks, get through this phase, conquer this project, I will finally be free! I'll get everything done that I'm not currently doing! I'll explore my hobbies! See the world! Take care of my health! Read more! Pursue my passions! Yada! Yada! Yada!
Excitement for the future is essential, but not quite enough to get you there. By taking stock of your current situation, you stand a better chance of figuring out how to get from where you are to where you want to be.
I don't mean to minimize the value, and sometimes desperate need, to cope by simply daydreaming. Contemplating change can sometimes be one of the only things that gives strength to persevere.
In the Marine Corps, especially on my second deployment, imagining myself in college helped quiet the arresting cognitive dissonance I felt as I grew increasingly angry at what I was seeing abroad.
In the high school classroom as a teacher, I woke up in a bonafide panic every single day, especially in my first year. Knowing that I had a plan in loose formation for what came after teaching kept me going. It helped me flex resiliency in the classroom, no matter what the day had in store for me, or what my students threatened to throw at me 😬.
At the law firm, I could appreciate how much I was learning and growing while also drawing strength from knowing that this wasn't my end goal. I knew it would be towards something else, and it turns out that thing turned out to be my current job, which I love, despite its innumerable challenges.
For each of those environments, I still had a job to do. I could spend time thinking about and planning for the future, but I also had to do the things that were right in front of me. I had to meet myself where I was.
And juuuust to be clear, I'm not saying I always did that. Countless hours went by with my thoughts on what could come far down the road. Hell, as a teacher I would fantasize regularly about quitting and bagging groceries at the local market to make a living. But where I saw genuine progress was when I acknowledged where I actually was, and got to work on building the path for what came next. One application at a time. One support call at a time.
This applies to more discrete parts of life, too. Take fitness. If you don't currently work out at all, is it plausible that a plan to work out every day from this point onward will stick? I suspect not. But can you move gradually towards a regular or semi-regular fitness regimen, giving space and grace since you're essentially starting from scratch? Yeah, that seems more likely.
I'm obnoxiously fond of asking about the things that make us who we are. Where we are is perhaps an equally important question.
Where Are You, Ryan?
Recently, my morning coffee and a blinking cursor led to some journalling. "Where are you, Ryan?" I interrogated.
I wrote about the obvious items first. Well, you're on a patio. You're sitting on a couch. You're at your new apartment. You're in Chicago.
And then it got deeper. You're in transition. You're in a state of discovery. You're searching. You're oscillating between periods of fleeting equanimity and spiraling concern. And no matter where you'd like to be, in this moment, you are right here.
Concerning practice of writing to myself in the second person aside, I found the exercise grounding. It is, I believe, because I was meeting myself precisely where I was.
--
On Sunday, however, I was in the garage. I wrote last week about thrifting a headboard in need of work, a type of work I was eager to start. I snagged the hand-me-down sander from the storage unit.
I snapped in some rough grit and got to work, probably not thinking enough about ventilation. It was one of the most satisfying home improvement projects in recent memory, and I was genuinely sad that I didn't have time to continue the next day. I write this from a quick trip out to New York (I get to teach!), and of the many reasons I'm excited to return, I'd be lying if I said more sanding wasn't one of them.
This is going to be a special piece of furniture, assuming I don't sand so hard that I snap something in the process. And once this one's done? Oh man, back to the thrift store for more stuff to stand, I suspect.
--
Wherever you are, dear reader, be there. And please — please — try to give yourself some grace for not yet arriving at the places you've not yet been. The journey continues. And I, for one, am here for it.
Dustily yours,
Rye
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