It felt like the first true day of spring. It could have even been the buffer between spring and summer as I walked with sunshine streaming down overhead. My knees ached as I struggled through a small run. I had sat in an exam room earlier that day and talked about medical history with my new doctor. We discussed the heart problems and history of dementia that runs in my family. I didn’t speak on my fears that both may catch up to me in time.

I let my mind drift as I wandered through inner southeast without any electronics dominating my attention. No music to quell the running thoughts. No scrolling to temper insistent questions. I put extra miles onto my callused feet and thought about how we can change the things we don’t want to do. I had been exhausted from traveling across the country and immediately returning to coaching soccer and teaching. I had forgotten that I could take more time off. That I didn’t need to pack my schedule if I didn’t have the energy to see it through. I felt guilty as I meandered through the tree covered route— but I let that go as I thought about how liberating it was to do something independent of a fixed schedule.

I’d grown tired of the things that gave me energy. Or I thought that without initial energy and enthusiasm, it wasn’t worth my time to go on my runs or read inspiring pieces. I had forgotten the simple nature of ingesting good things. I’d forgotten that I need to push myself in a myriad of ways— and not just exist on the track that my schedule had defined. I read Joan Didion’s book on writing and then forced myself into that run. I stretched afterwards and listened to a podcast on the intricacies and many forms of love. I remembered that a certain amount of pain and effort goes a long ways towards maintaining balance.

There’s no epiphany in this piece— no “gotcha!” moments in which the secrets of the universe were revealed to me. Or even that anything inherently new was either. Instead, I came across well worn advice and habits that had served me before and will serve me again. The hardest being— you have to do things that are difficult in order to grow. And difficult is relative to each person. My difficult will be worlds away from your own. But I’m willing to bet that hitting the things that scare you head on will make the difference between feeling fulfilled and not.

There is no second go around. No reruns of this show. We get one go of it. Remembering that and pairing it with the kindness and grace that it’s the same scary reality for everyone else can go a long way.