Pace

It’s a lesson I’ve had to focus on for my whole life, slow down, be patient. I’ve laughed at and mocked statements like you need to slow down to go faster. With age, millage and experience I can now look back and see that indeed if I’d stopped, spent more time learning, more time planning, I’d have saved a ton of effort in rework mulligans and try agains.
The adage to measure twice cut once is true. Having a disability requires discipline, excessive discipline and patience. You don’t have the luxury to fling shit until something sticks. You, to achieve your goals and do the things you want to do need to slow down to go faster. You need to manage your pain, energy, fatigue, capability, by “pacing” yourself. Your most important asset is your brain you need to allow yourself to have the time to plan learn then confirm, before you execute. You might only get one shot at something on change to do your thing to prove yourself to yourself. Life is not generous with do overs.
Life can be unkind and life will remain unkind. No matter how much planning we do sometimes our assumptions will be wrong, or we will learn the hard way we didn’t truly understand the experience until we were living it. This is a great and wonderful thing! Really! Your alive and living when you’re making mistakes. We all will make them we will all get bruised and cut and bleed from time to time we will all hurt. Pains a big part of pacing, avoiding it is like trying not to breath, it will happen no matter what. Go and live we all learn more from our failures then from our successes go and live. Pace yourself.
Some of my most profound moments in my life were a one shot deal. The feeling I had when I was performing a lead role in an opera in full custom and makeup. The feeling I had when I saw my son open his eye’s and see me for the first time, or the feeling I had in being the first one to touch my daughter when she was being born. The feeling I shared with my wife as we said our vows in the mountains in Washington. These events are once in a life time deals, they will never come again.
Some of the most profound mistakes I’ve ever made are from jumping in too fast or not understanding a situation or letting others influence me, not living my own life my way. I remember the profound embarrassment of singing the national anthem in a stadium of people and messing it up, a few times, once actually forgetting the words. If I’d practiced a bit more or planned a bit more or considered the alternatives a bit more I would have done a better job.
Pace yourself, slow down plan, plan again, then execute, do it. Live