Update your Book of Awesome
I said, “I didn’t know you were a cross-country skier.”
He replied, “Yeah. I did it competitively all through high-school, and continued into university. It was awesome! We used to go to the local ski hill and ski up the fucking thing for our training…”
The stories went on for twenty minutes and it was the most animated that I’ve seen Joe in years.
Joe is now middle-aged, overweight and plagued by health issues. Oh, and he recently lost his job. So did his wife. They’re not doing so well.
I like Joe but I don’t think he realises that much of his current shitty situation could probably be tied back to the fact that his glory days were twenty fucking years ago and has been in consistent demise since then. It all probably started that day when he decided not to go skiing because his buddies weren’t going. He decided to stop being awesome.
“You should start skiing again.”, I said.
“Nah.”, he said. “There’s no ski trails near where I live. So I’d have to drive for like an hour there and back, plus the skiing time, and it’s too much to ask my wife to watch the kids for that long. And you never know what the weather’s going to do … “
Lame. Lame. Lame!
I bet his wife would willingly watch the kids for a month if it allowed him to do something that made him happy. He could ski in his front yard if he wanted to, then down his street to the park. This is Canada - there’s fucking snow everywhere for six months of the year. Then he’d come home, hug his wife and kids and be happy, do it the following weekend, teach his kids, take them on skiing expeditions, lose weight, get healthy, and become awesome again.
So this winter I’m going to call Joe and say, “Hey dude. I want to learn how to cross-country ski because I’ve never done it and you know how to do it. I’ll pick you up at 7am on Sunday”. He’ll resist, but I’ll show up anyway and make him teach me.
Joe needs some new tales for his Book of Awesome and I want to learn how to do something new so it’s a win-win situation.
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