credit and a half

I am worthless in here today.
that's what I said to bob and andy in the weight room this morning at 6:35.
bob's response was,
if we compared your worthless and my worthless, I'm sure you'd come out ahead.
that made me feel better, to know that it wasn't just me.

I want to feel energetic and powerful and capable all of the time, and my reality is this: I don't.
and since I can only live inside my own head, and not those that belong to other people, I struggle when doing self assessments.
this is what I wonder: do other people in power camp climb on those bikes in the morning and think, oh God, another day of spinning my legs around and wishing it were over and feeling like I just can't keep going?
do other people in the weight room think to themselves, gosh, why is it that this doesn't seem to get any easier, and how do weights get heavier from one week to the next, and, gosh, why does everyone else make it look easy?

nick was in the weight room this morning, nick my swiss friend who in 2009 lost his wife of half a century or so and also broke his back in a water skiing accident.
prior to this morning, I last saw nick right before Christmas, when he was still having difficulty navigating stairs. he wasn't quite ready to return to working out at the JCC, and he didn't look as though he was quite ready to return fully and vibrantly to the community.
this morning he looked good.
this is what he had to say about it:
I see myself every day, and I can't see any change from day to day. but this week I'm better than I was three weeks ago, so something must be happening.

this is when faith keeps us going. a belief in something that isn't readily visible or measurable each day. a belief in the process, a belief that we are growing, changing, healing, progressing.

this is when I need to go do a headstand. because my headstands are markedly better than they were a year ago. they are not perfect. they are still slightly wobbly and I'm not yet ready to do one away from the wall. but the day will come when they will be even more stable than today's, and I will be able to do one in the middle of the room.

and perhaps the reason that I don't feel stronger and more capable in power camp is that I keep raising the bar. I take for granted the progress I've made and how very, very far I've come. it's no longer enough to survive the experience: I want to excel, to thrive, to conquer. so each day that I perform adequately I give myself credit for surviving, when in reality I should give myself credit and a half because I did it better than I allow myself to acknowledge. I am better than I was two weeks ago, a month ago.
I need to give myself a pat on the back for my iotas of forward movement, whether they appear to be measurable or not.
because they are there.
scooting along, moving me toward . . . the next best version of myself.