Noticing & Cherishing

Today is a day of noticing, one which I intend for cherishing too. When something in our life ends, we get grand opportunity to notice many of the pieces it had touched. Even if it hadn’t been active or lively for a good long while. I’ve written about this a couple times now, on my CrossFit-focused blog (www.crossfitatmidlife.com), but my home-gym, CrossFit Dedication, closed its doors for good yesterday. It was sweet to do one more AMRAP–which I dubbed “That’s a Wrap” in my writer-way–with Open Gym friends (Melissa, Matt, Beth, and Amber).

It was poignant to receive the snap-video and then final picture of the box completely cleaned of equipment, mats, etc. Truly “end of an era” as this CF affiliate that had held space there for eleven years became its emptied-out space of ending.

And new beginnings…for them, for me, for us.

Me being me, I notice the “us” things first. While I didn’t consciously choose this transition for me, it was the change in the “us” that really pushed me out into the larger CF world. The relational web of the class I had enjoyed for years shifted, with some members leaving to other classes, new members coming in that were difficult for me. I did my best to innoculate myself from the relational tensions, but to no avail. What had been an anchor became just a weight. I shifted my attentions to some Work that was calling–a book manuscript–and realized my best writing time was during the previously-CF-focused hour. So I shifted my CFD times to more open, more collaborative-communal offerings on the weekend. And I explored other CF boxes closer to home. In a weird way, I’m now thankful for that dissonance that invited me to grow up, move out. Sometimes unwanted things are good things for our own maturation.

Because my own CF practice had needed it, I now see. Not aware of it at the time, I was hungry for new perspectives, a variety of coaching styles, more-specific technique-coaching each class. It wasn’t that the CFD coaches weren’t providing. I simply knew them well. So I landed at Bombers’ CrossFit, much closer to my home, with course offerings that fit my writing-work schedule (10:30 a.m. esp, but afternoon WODs too). And I have grown intentional again about my own training, technique, in a way I hadn’t been, too-focused on the people-bits.

There’s a lot to notice just in my sense of the day today, this first day “after.” Folks who hold space for others’ learning-journeys–whether it’s in a writing circle, or in a CrossFit gym, or in a nutrition-education program, etc.--carry an energetic weight that is underneath and above the explicit curriculum or practice-tasks.

I noticed an absence as I food-prepped yesterday and now as I make choices about how to fuel my body, for instance. The Dedication Health program utterly changed my life in my relationship with food, a healthy sense of how to fuel my body for all the activity I now love. Though it’s not been active for well over two years for me, the presence of CFD had held an echo-web of community, holding this healthier way of being in the world. I wasn’t alone in it, which helped me balance the really unhealthy eating dynamics in my own home. Its historic-structures strengthened me in living a healthy-choice, body-fueling life. So this morning, I notice the energetics of that is now solely within me, my own body this morning. The “Melissa is Always Right” energetics we always joked about can now return solely to her, with no more responsibility to hold, even unconsciously. I find myself curious whether she will notice any of that abundance returning to her in her own awareness. How to relinquish responsibilities when you’ve carried them for years…takes practice! And I will observe my own habits and explorations…I know online-resourcing to pursue, if I need that communal web of healthy-living-eating support. (Bombers doesn’t really carry the focus on nutrition in the same way.)

For these years/months that I’ve time-shared between CrossFit boxes, I’ve been able to play the boxes’ strengths off of one another, choosing to receive what I needed, when. It was a little complicated, of course, requiring me to manage and scale if/when two arms’ days or two legs’ days collided in a week. But I notice an ease with some simplification now. I’m less relationally-focused at Bombers, so more energy can be spent simply on my own training. What are my own training goals? What do I want to lean into next, discomfort-zone-wise? A 10K race? Some mobility-learning around shoulder or thoracic-tight movements? I wonder… I found myself missing my “push-ups per day” practice, so maybe I begin that today. I’ll miss the Murph event this year, being on an Alaskan cruise, but I can still do a version of it on my own…

It’s weird having the apps on my iPhone change. The scheduling app was no longer necessary, so got rid of that. The SugarWod is my 5-year history-app, but color changed. Not sure what that says about the relationship I have with my phone, that I notice such things. 🙂

So…this morning, Brian and I begin our day slowly, unplanned but gently organized now into a high protein breakfast, a walk in the woods somewhere with Nala, then I suspect I will find myself at a coffee-shop for some downtime, a bit of work, then a Fran-focused WOD afternoon class. Or a longish run, perhaps. I’m needing to slow my own pace down, allow my own energies to be replenished amidst things I love to do, to receive.

A good new-beginnings day, then…