This is not a motivation station, catchword filled blogpost of struggle and hard work. This is reality. People do not take life, decisions, choices, lifestyle, behaviour, family, work, commitments, passion, hobbies, health and many other stuff seriously. They are still b…..g out about being time crunched, stressed and forced to do things that they don’t want to do by an external force.
Look at my schedule. I wake up every day between 4 and 6am. I do my best to clean up the house, wash the dishes and prepare food for the day before the family wakes up. This can be 30min to 2 hours, it depends. Then warm up, go for a run of 30 min to 2 hours, it depends. When arrived home, I most likely have to take my daughter to school. Come home and again clean up the mess, that she left. Prepare my clothes, bag, work equipements. Write a couple of emails of coaching, meetings, transportation, check and manage the family accounts, look for ways to make and save money. We are at around 9am. I probably hop on the scooter or the bike to meet a client, do 30 to 90minutes of training and talking. Together with the commute, I am back home at 11. I might do 5min of strength and conditioning and eat, but will be out before 11:30 doing bike-messenger or motorbike delivery till around 15:00. If I had time and did not get stuck in traffic or had not much work left at that hour of the day, I might be back home in 5 minutes or maybe 10 times later inbetween 15:05 and 16:30. I might go out and run again, or have another double or tripple personal training session. Then really get home as I have to get my daughter before 18pm. Undress her, change her, get some food into her, try talking to her, educating, maybe get some playtime. My wife gets home around 18:45. At 19pm I am out the door doing delivery work again till 22:00, but often till midnight. If the flow is good or had some personal requests or distance transport, I regularly stay till 1am, but a couple of times a month I arrive home after 3am. This doesn’t change the fact, that next day the wake up time is between 4am and 6am ! In addition to this, my daughter is only 2years old, so in the last 36 months, I wake up around 4 to 5 times every night, even if I had only 5 hours of sleep. Since the time she started getting into the créche, she gets sick super regularly and as we have not been exposed to these kind of bugs for 25 years, we get sick too. In the weekends, maybe 2 times a month, I manage to get 5 hours of freedom. I should sleep, but my daughter needs to see the world, so we pack up and go to some place to discover. Do a little hike around, pick flowers and herbs, cuddle baby sheeps and so. However this doesn’t mean off day, I might had only 3 hours of sleep previously as Friday is always hectic, I might got in a 30km run beforehand and when get home, I cook, get in a 15min catnap and get back to work, again probably till midnight.
If we talked about work exclusively, my average weekly hours of pure work would be around 50 hours. But if we added, commute, preparation and organisation to work itself, this is going up towards 80. During the first close-down what was the strictest, for 6 weeks I averaged over 100hours of delivery work each week ! 8am till midnight every single day.
When I close my eyes in the bed, I don’t even know how did I get there and how will I be able to do that again. However, the body bounces back, reset and restart !
Do I complain ? Do I cry ?
This is to say, that when anybody is telling me, that during a 35 hour week of comfortable office job, with no real responsibilities, no kids, nothing else in the life what is disturbing them, they get tired, I just start getting rid of these people and laughing at them. They pull the humanity down ! If I worked only 35hours a week and would do nothing else besides, I would run 200km weeks and spend as much time outdoors as possible, organise giant personal adventures and would be world beater in ultra running events. Or just had my mouth shut and would be chilling like a king ! But not complaining ! This is what I did actually in my 20s. Kind of, I had a less disturbing work schedule and a lot less responsibilities, but still was pulling 12 hour lifeguard shifts day after day for 7-8 years, while swimming, running, body building, diving, cycling and so.
The thing is, that I am not even a good example of hard work. Imagine that the time I spend riding my car, bike, motorcycle and having fun and getting payed for it while can listen freely to music, podcast and audiobooks, others do hard physical labour, for instance in mines or out in the fields for 3, 4, 5 decades endlessly. Day after day after day. There are these coding and computer maniacs, who program and type and pull 20hour days for years on end, from 16 years of age and up. There are people suffering in factories doing shift-work in their whole life, messing up their circadian rhythms with no real possible recovery or change. There are families with 3 kids or more, loads of mouths to feed, garden to take care of, big bills to pay and giant responsibilities. They are still able to manage and the father can still run 100mile weeks ! Not sure how it is possible ! You see, despite that I do a lot, I still look at some people and say, wtf ? How is it possible. Teach me !
So why is this weakness in humans ? Easy. Lifestyle and habits. Disturbed sleep due to phone and tv time. Alcohol consumption and too much mindless mingling. Spending money on things you don’t need. Getting pulled down by friends who you don’t need either. A lot of people lost their real personality to the community at the age of 14 ! Actually they never really developed it !
2 cents
The big cliché: Find your why ! Do some physical exercises. My daily exercise routine is great for anybody. 10minutes minimum 20 minutes maximum. Ultra high intensity once every 40days. High intensity once every 40days. Low to normal intensity every single day. 10 to 20 minutes.
Why ? Well, if you did something like sports, weight lifting, physical labor and even if you did nothing extra than that 10minutes of routine during the day, you would develop a hard crust, a resistance. That would stop you complaining and crying out and about how life is hard. No, your life is just boring ! Swallow it and say nothing, or do something about it. For both you would need to do something ! If your were soft, you cannot keep it to yourself. If you did nothing, nothing would change !
The thing is, that if you do not develop yourself as a human physically and intellectually, constantly, you will never find the exact stuff that really interest you. Your calling. This means, learning, reading, researching, trying out and working towards goals and opportunities. From childhood I practiced a lot of sports, I tried out many musical instruments, I travelled, I talked with a lot of interesting people, I took many courses on various subjects, I read a ton of books on subjects completely alien to me. Me, I found running, mountains and outdoor adventures, hiking, expeditions and pushing the human body. This interests me and I do a lot of stuff about it to make that happen. I take care of my health on a very global level, so I can do quite hard looking microadventures daily. This keeps me sharp, so when time comes to expeditions, long travel arrangements, survival, resistance and so, I am ready in a couple of weeks. This is my gig. I never knew, but I always liked it, even as a kid. I just was deranged by other disturbing clutter, till my mind was free to roam.
The thing is, that even if I have no real time left on hand, I still not feel fulfilled and satisfied. I feel, that I can see a little more and understand just a bit deeper. I have actually always been looking for ways to expand my curiosity, but without real hard physical labour, as to add more fatigue and more use, I think my body would really go to the edge. I took a transportation course last year, than started switching my bike to motorcycle delivery. My running went up straight. Yeah cross training is great, but as a runner, 7-8 hours of riding is not that beneficial, especially if we talked about it daily for 4 years. I immediately felt in love with the scooter. I started talking to people loving motorbikes, getting me explained how they work, what do we need to do with them to keep them rolling for ever. I dug into the history of motorcycle touring, of big motorbike adventures, about everything. I started analysing the difference between scooter and motorcycle riders and the attitude of good and bad motards. The behaviour and riding style of touring, offroad, cruiser, street and sport bike riders.
I said to myself, f-yeah. So I am now just before my final exam to get my A2 licence. This is a process and will have to have 2 years of assured motorbike till I can get a full licence. This is my new gig, but I am already in love with. I always know when I find something that I can stick to easily.
Find your why, find your calling, what ever it is. Do not stop looking for it. Do micro researches if had no time due to obligations and commitments or do full weekends of 30hours of digging. Audiobooks and podcasts will always be your best ever choices, as you can still clean the dishes, chop wood, edit and work on images in adobe or whatever you do. Take notes ! Take notes ! Take notes ! Review them often. You like something, go and have a look at it. Try it out or work towards trying it out. I like people getting after their goals and do not live their life purposelessly. Do not imagine, but do understand, that you might never fall into the group of “identified”. Till you die ! But look and keep on looking !
Boundless Runner 
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