Step Ten: Never assume slightly better is the best you can have

January 2nd 2021: I hit the heaviest deadlift for reps I've pulled since September 2017, when I first suffered mold poisoning and my journey into dis-ease officially began. It is lighter than it used to be. I have room for growth. Never let anyone tell you there isn't or that you can't. Don’t shy away from things just because you hear people with ‘your condition’ aren’t supposed to do them. You are the only person with your condition.

I began lifting again in earnest just a month after my trip to Maine. 

I would never want anyone following this to confuse fitness with health. I am still fighting to regain balance. I have not found the level of health I want to regain. But the importance of STRENGTH in my journey cannot be understated. Fitness has been my rock.

Never stop learning. Never slow the advance no matter what that may look like for you on any given day. If you fight for 23 months to stumble into a couple months of better feelings, do not become complacent. Keep Moving Forward. Do not stop at the arrival of your dreams. You do not need to be attached to the accomplishments you sought after yesterday. Feeling accomplished? Look onto the next step. Allow your Soul to break soil on new avenues within your mind and get walking. 

This journey of healing was never about returning to who you were. That desire in us is meant to die! Suffocate it under the ideology of becoming more than you were, because that is happening every single day. Remember that the totality of our experiences in this life are always adding up. We cannot shrink or fragment into smaller, past versions of ourselves, even if those people were capable of certain things our full, current selves can not do. You are still more than that. No matter what you have lost, that loss is a net gain. All we can do is continue to gain, and hope to better orchestrate the gain of our experiences here and now. Keep moving forward. 

Expand your horizons and fight for growth. There is no stagnancy in life, no matter the limitations we perceive. Take advantage of the fact that you have an imagination. When you physically arrive at something that was once only a glimmer of a seemingly silly, hopelessly romanticized concept within your mind, it is time to Invest in your next bout of “irrationality”. Wherever it takes you, the range of emotional content afforded to one who tries will always be worth more than the collective experience of those who settle. Be more than you were.