The perfect words to describe me are respectably average. Sure I have achieved things in my life, but nothing to write home about. I don’t have the David Goggins “I whooped life’s ass and continue the pummeling” success story, or a feel-good tale of beating cancer and running 50 marathons in 50 days. My story is one of creating a disciplined mind, jumping my own created barriers, and just doing my best to be the best damn average guy that I can. It took a very long time, but once I flipped that switch it was smooth…ish sailing.
Life has been a string of starting and stopping hobbies. I could start a hobby shop. Beginning the same hobbies yearly has almost become a hobby in itself. It’s not that I don’t enjoy them all. I do. My problem is that I only enjoy them for a very short amount of time, and then focus all my time on something else that has become important to me.
My loving wife alerted me to the fact, multiple times. “Are you going to use your woodworking stuff in the shed?”. “I thought you weren’t eating after dinner anymore.” “Why did you buy a new pair of running shoes when you only used your old ones a few times?”.
I heard her, I just didn’t want to believe that those things I loved were inherently dead to me. All of those hobbies were still relevant to present-day me. I was still “doing them”. Just not as often as I would have liked to.
The woodworking tools were in my shed, so I could only really use those when it wasn’t freezing outside (the shed doesn’t have heat), but she pointed out that I also wasn't using them during the Summer because I said it was “too hot”. The only time I was using my tools was when she wanted me to build something, or it was a Goldilocks day - not too hot, not too cold - and I didn’t have anything else occupying my time. I was finding every excuse I could to not go out there, set up shop, and build something.
She was right about not eating after dinner as well. Beer didn’t count as eating after dinner, because it’s not food right? Technically it still had calories. It counts. The goal was to lose weight which means decreasing calories, and beer should not have been on the menu.
This was an example of me bargaining with myself and creating new rules for my goal so that I could have a pass. No calories should mean no calories.
As for the shoes, I did end up using them. A lot.
Lightswitch running has been my go-to hobby for the past 20 years. I started strong at 16 years old, losing over 100 pounds, and getting up to running a whopping 10 miles a day. Going from the center for my football team to a cross-country runner was a huge step in the right direction for my physical and mental health. That story is for another time, but the health and wellness obsession that followed lasted a couple of years and was the foundation for my continuous on/off running career.
Once college started, I had much more free time that I usually filled with gaming, drinking, and sometimes going to the gym. I have lost track of how many times I started running again over the years, but it usually ended with one of two things. Injury or life.
My knees aren’t great. I always seem to get injured from starting too strongly, and like every other lightswitch bitch, I would hit the ground running (literally) and go back into it like I was 16 years old again. My first run back would feel great at a 10-minute mile, and I would tell myself that I’ll start slow to not hurt myself. I’m also an idiot. As if I had forgotten everything I told myself three days prior, I would go out for a 4-5 mile run, and my plantar fasciitis or knee ligaments would start twinging and aching. That was always the beginning of the end.
A 1-2 day break from running to heal a bit would soon turn into a week. Then two. Then a month. Until I eventually say, “I will just (insert any other form of workout - biking, lifting weights, etc.) instead to stay in shape and not hurt my knees” - starting the entire start/stop process over with a new priority.
Life also threw me a curve ball when my daughter was born. Not that I didn't expect things to change, but I really didn't listen when people told me I was going to be tired and have no time. That was the first time in my life that I had multiple people look at me and say “Wow, you look so tired.” Or “Oh man. She has been keeping you up most of the night, huh?”. Being that beat down emotionally, mentally, and physically was all new to me.
Before she was born in 2022, I was running a few times a week in preparation for when she came home. My thought process was that I would already have my healthy habits set up, and just keep up with them. I was so wrong. One week in the hospital, a month of trying to figure out what the hell the hospital was thinking letting me leave with a newborn, and a few months of no sleep while working a full-time job, and suddenly I was a zombie. It was 5 months before I even went on my next run.
2023 was just another lightswitch year for me. I followed my on-and-off routine of hobbies as I had for the past few years. It was as if I had just copied and pasted my previous year’s results onto that one.
January-May: I ran often, but not every day.
May-August: I ran a couple of times and started lifting more.
September-December: I didn’t run, lifted infrequently, and didn’t do much exercise at all.
Throughout the year, my exercise regimen went from running, to lifting weights, to biking (indoors) a bit, to nothing. I also used my woodworking tools once, started a book which I wrote two chapters for, bought a ton of Dungeons and Dragons content and books that I used once, and flicked my on/off switch hundreds of times among many different things. The amount of time and money wasted was immense, and I now had even more things sitting around my home that I wasn’t using.
Like everyone, the end of the year was approaching and it was time to reflect on what I had accomplished and what my plans and goals were for the next year. What I found was horrible. I had accomplished nothing. At all. Going back through my year and reading through the goals I had written down in January showed me something that made my heart sink into my stomach. I had not finished a single one. I had failed. Miserably. Thinking back now, the mental toll of beating myself up over failing so bad was a gigantic stress that could have been prevented.
In that instant, my finger was on the trigger about to switch on the light in my mind. I knew I had to change something. There was no way that I was going to let myself go into the next year and accomplish nothing - AGAIN. I had no discipline, no routine, and a million excuses for why I was always quitting. I created the term “Lightswitch Bitch” for myself, and was determined to not identify as one the next year.
I wallowed in self-pity for a while, but change doesn't happen until you take that first step in the right direction. So I started walking (quite literally). I created a plan for myself that turned out to be one of the dumbest and greatest things that I have ever done. We will discuss the actual plan I followed later as mine is, and should be, different than yours. The change that needed to occur in my life for me to always have my switch “on” required a significant intervention in my daily routine that not everyone will need. The foundation of the change will always remain the same though, mental toughness along with the will to be better - and practicing every day.