We woke up this morning in our comfortable bed, in our beautiful bedroom. After a big hug, I walked over the PVC floor, down the stairs with carpet, through the sage green kitchen, the terracotta hallway, into the yellow painted yoga shala, with the same PVC floor as we have upstairs. I opened the light green curtains, rolled out my yoga mat, and started my practice. How different was all of that, only a year ago.
On the 5th of January 2022 I had no bed to step out of. Instead I rolled off my mattress, which wasn’t in my bedroom, as that room was being painted. Instead it was on the floor in what had to become our office. Had to become, because there was no paint on the walls yet. Even worse, there was no plaster on the walls. However, we did have our desks, for almost 2 weeks.
Paint job
If I would have made the same walk from my bedroom downstairs, I would have done it over old clothes, that were protecting the new PVC floor from paint splashes, as the painters were doing the landing. Going down the stairs, I would have walked over old, wooden steps. Entering the kitchen, I could have looked at the black kitchenette for one of the last times. The next week somebody was going to take it apart, and put it back together in his own house.
The living room was in those days a construction yard, the toilet a project still to be done. Walking into the shala, I would have walked on a concrete floor. No curtains to open, as we didn’t have any. My yoga mat would have been in the middle of another construction side, as we were building a bathroom in the shala.
Impatient
We’re busy people. As I told you, we have our own company and work a lot. We try to be as efficient with our time as possible, but sometimes we’re a bit impatient. We like things to be done quickly and perfectly. I think there’s nothing wrong with that. I do think we forget sometimes where we were a year ago. How much work already has been done. What we have accomplished.
The easiest example is our house. We made this beautiful house our home, but not just our home. It’s our office, our yoga shala and our film-studio. To become what it is now, has been a lot of work.
Back to trail running
So, what does this have to do with trail running? Everything and nothing. Nothing, because this is a story about our house. Everything, because also in running we sometimes forget where we came from. We complain about our time at a half marathon, but forget that only a couple of months ago, we were happy that we finished the first half marathon of our life.
Or we’re angry that we didn’t break our personal record on the 5 kilometers, where a couple of weeks ago, we even couldn’t run 5 kilometers.
I guess what I want to say is, sometimes it’s good to think back, where you were only a year ago, and appreciate where you are now. In my case on the sofa in the living room. A sofa I didn’t have a year ago, nor the wall it’s standing in front of. Or the floor it’s on. Or…. well, you get the picture.
