“Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.”

Boy, is this a subtle but completely true statement.

It’s now December and I can come out of my writing hole. November is National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO for short). I have participated every year since 2004 but haven’t been very successful in all those years. Last year and this year I used the month to write at least 1667 words a day every day and although I haven’t been writing novels, this type of “contest” and its resultant discipline has been great for me.

Once again this year I wrote over 70,000 words and essentially finished what’s called a Discovery Draft (some people call it a First Draft but it really is when you discover what you’re writing about. I started out with one intent and then went in a different direction so I’m not sure what will happen.

Yes, it’s a “sort-of-sequel” to “It’s Not About the Miles” but much shorter and more intense and revealing. It’s a very personal story of my journey to my own Red Sea where Jan helped me part the waters and walk through. That sounds pretty benign but it’s definitely NOT benign.

I’m also working on a “journal” or daily reading book of the Life Lessons from “It’s Not About the Miles”. So, fortunately I have a lot to keep me busy.

Unfortunately, though, it’s not enough to keep me totally out of the doldrums of not being able to do any impact activity because of my messed up heel. A month, now, of no walking is driving me nuts.

But back to the quote – “experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want” – to prevent complete disaster, I started going to the gym daily on top of my three times a week and am doing cardio. God, is that boring….but useful. I’m forcing myself to do this so that I can increase my aerobic capacity and also maybe do better on those damn steps if i get into Vol State.

But, I’ve also gotten the experience of not being able to be that active and trying to figure out what I will do with myself when the time comes that I won’t be able to. I had to learn not to run again but to walk, and now I’m learning (slowly, though) what I can do when i can’t walk.

We all get experience when we DNF or when we don’t get into a race we want to be in. That experience gives us more drive to figure out what we did wrong or better said, what we need to do to make our chances of success more likely.

What “Experience” have you gained? Can you look at the times you didn’t get what you wanted as gaining experience?