Long Car Rides

Today has been a long day. It began this morning by crawling in a minivan with four of my friends and my wife at 5:30am. Once we stopped for a little Tim Horton's coffee and breakfast, we were on the road for Atlanta. I certainly was not looking forward to the trip. Each trip that I have made from Lansing to Atlanta and back has turned into a longer than desired excursion. What should be 12 hour trips turned into 16 plus hours because of traffic jams, food stops, weak bladders, and what not.

Today's trip was better than normal. We had some required stops like Skyline Chili around Cincinnati. We had multiple bathroom breaks because I had too much liquid today. And, we had to stop for gas. Even with those stops, the drive came in at a "best" for time at just over 12 hours. The silly thing is there is some excitement and accomplishment in making it in that time. When, in reality, we still spent 12 LONG hours in a van driving down the road.

The trip didn't feel long until the last hour or two. By that time, my wife and our friend Sarah had become stir crazy in the back, back seat of the van. They were laughing histarically at almost nothing, which was a sight in itself. Everyone else was simply cramped from sitting too long.

As I sit now in the hotel courtyard enjoying the cool Atlanta weather and the stars in the sky, I've been thinking about our journey. We left from one place to come to another to be challenged by the Catalyst Conference. To get here, we endured over 800 miles of pavement. Life is like that sometimes. We want to get to a different place with life, which means we have to move in some way from point A to point B. While the drive today was long, it was doable. It could have been done quicker by plane, but that would have cost even more.

When we want to make changes in our lives, it costs us something. To get skinny (or at least skinnier than we are) we must eat less junk and move our bodies more. To get smarter, we must read, study, and learn and stop doing mundaine things like playing on Facebook and Twitter. To change, we must realize that where we are at is not where we need to be, and we must move ourselves to a new place. And, doing that takes effort and discipline, while overcoming our feeling of entitlement to where we were.

Where are you? Where do you want to be? What do you want to become? For me, where I am is not where I want to be. I've had goals for change for quite some time. I've always wanted to be skinnier and smarter. But, I have never fully given up my love for food and time wasting and grown any discipline.

May this journey be the beginning of a new me. May you join me in journey.