I received the auto renew on the site and realized how long it had been since I had posted here.  Why?  I’ve been struggling to answer that for a while now.  I wish there was an easy answer, but like most things in life it’s just not that easy.  There are a lot of reasons.  My job got a little hectic.  My family takes up more of my free time, and happily so.  I have been trying to solve a few computer issues.  Life gets in the way.

All of that is true, except none of that is really true.  What is really true?  I got hurt.  Not severely, but almost constantly.  I have a bad back.  It seems like I was in constant pain for almost the last year.  I have also had issues with my foot causing me to not be able to run.  Again, nothing huge but always there for the last year.  It would cost me a week here or there.  Not enough to be a real problem, but enough to stop forward progress.

So why did life interrupting plus injuries cause me to stop writing?  It was because I stopped riding.  And running.  And training.  Again, not always.  Most people would look at my event calendar and say that I was out of my mind, I hadn’t missed anything.  You would be completely correct.  I did manage to hit every event, but sometimes that was all I was able to accomplish that month.  Just as important, I did as poorly as you would imagine someone would do without training for an event.

All of this weighs in on why I haven’t written.  You see, I started this blog to be a positive voice.  I’m a big guy trying to get fit.  There are a lot of us in the world and we don’t often hear positive voices.  We hear people (including ourselves) tell us we are fat.  We get intimidated at the gym.  We know we don’t fit in, and worse, we know we stand out.  I wrote to be a small voice saying yes, that is true, but it doesn’t diminish our effort.  It doesn’t make us worth less, it just makes us different.

The issue is I had very little positive to say.  It is hard to be positive when you feel like you are failing.  Every time I got hurt or missed a workout for some other reason I felt less like writing and more like hiding.  I would have less to say because I couldn’t get over the idea that I sounded like I was complaining.  I don’t like to hear myself complain so I didn’t want to put it here either.

What I missed is that I think everyone ends up where I am sometimes.  People get hurt.  People get busy with life.  People lose track of what they are working on and lose ground on goals.  Not everyone is blessed with a great body and no one is perfect.  So we stumble and struggle and try.  No one can be positive all of the time, but we can support each other.  We can share stories and laugh at some shortcomings as well.  We can pick each other up.

So here I am, back again.  Resetting the blog and trying again.  Getting back up and writing, telling stories about what is happening, the good, the bad, and the sweaty.

This week starts a new commitment by me to write every week.  To blow off the cobwebs and get back to work.  First up, I am heading back to Rugged Maniac this weekend.  Look for a full report next week!