Time is going by so quickly

Wow summer really has arrived in the last few days, although today I notice it is a bit overcast. Hope it wasn't just summer in a weekend, like lunch in a can. I have started swimming a few days a week to build up my legs and lungs and it does feel great after I do it. Although curiously the riding has begun to occur as hard work and not as much fun as it was when I started.

It seems to me that I am in a middle stage as opposed to middle age (damn it might be the same thing). I have moved through the euphoria, just like a new relationship, the excitement of the beginning and the creation of a new future. One that didn't exist days before and I'm just loving every little part of it, revelling in the difference it brings to my life, talking about it, planning things to do and just generally enjoying the newness it brings to my experience of living.

Now we've been doing it for a little while and, whilst it still matters, and after all I said I would, it seems a little more like work - sometimes hard work - and I look back at the beginning and wonder why that newness can't be there like it was. This is the time when I know there is just to do the work, be your commitment and continue to choose what you're up to, right? Easy to say...

All across my life I can see the times when I have stopped choosing: in relationships, when it ain't so pretty and wonderful, and I think 'is this it, is this all it can be?' and not remember that I chose it. I am 100% responsible for how it goes, how it turns out. So after the initial excitement wains, that is where the real work and dedication begins. It's easy in those first stages because it has a natural momentum of its own.

Now as I bunker down I can choose it to be hard work or choose it to be just as much fun as it was in the beginning, because every time I get on the bike it actually is a new time. It is only my perception that has changed.

The way I see it, this process only starts with accepting the way that it is right now, learning to be with how something is, rather than forcing it to be something else. Its only in acceptance that the opportunity for a new possibility can arise. When I signed up for this ride I knew it would alter my life, and I thought 'wow, how fantastic is that' and now, as I write this, I have become present again to that experience which has and continues to effect my life and it is wow, and sometimes I just forget that.

I sometimes forget I want to make a difference to a group of children who deserve the same chance for living that we expect for our own children, but knowing that you are out there supporting us, contributing to these childrens' lives, that is a great way to be alive.

Okay I'm over it now and it will be back on the bike tonight or a swim depending on the weather.