I wrote a post about Walt Stack yesterday that got me thinking.

The wheels were turning….the rust was flying.

While I was thinking, I thought of the phrase “I’m not there right now…”

What a great phrase!

It really let me off the hook.

Of course, it’s obvious that I’m not “there” right now. I sit and drive the mail, I sit and write this blog, I sit and watch other people carve out an existence in the deep north woods….I sit and watch funny people do funny things.

I sit.

I don’t get up at 2 in the morning and run 17 miles…or swim in the icy bay off the coast of California.

That’s not where I’m at right now.

The deeper I got into that phrase, though, the more I liked it.

It gives the false and nebulous impression that I might have been somewhere like it at some point in my life.

I was a world-class endurance athlete….sometime in the past….before I started “sitting” all the time.

Of course, that’s not true. I was a turtle….slow and steady….enjoying the wind on my face as I shuffled through another mile.

I wasn’t “elite” at anything.

But people don’t know that. They might think that I’ve retired from competition….or that I’m just taking a short break from being a world beater.

And, on the other end of the statement, it makes it seem that when the break is over, I’ll hit it hard again and burst from my shell and fly.

So…one magic phrase is explanation, excuse….and promise.

That works for me.

Of course, in Walt Stack’s case, I’m sure that one morning….maybe one very hungover morning, considering his habits…..he slipped into a pair of sneakers and walked and then ran out his front door to start a decades long odyssey.

He wasn’t….and then he was.

A wave of the hand….a blink of his eye….and he was off and running.

None of this happens by accident…none of this happens “to us”….but we don’t become something “grand” all at once, either.

I’m not there right now.

What’s the old phrase? “Wherever you go….there you are.”

Wherever….and always “someplace”.

The little spark that makes a little flame that makes the frog jump off the log…..no, that’s another story….that either makes something that warms and uplifts….or burns your house down.

“or burns your house down”? Crap….that’s not good.

That’s bad.

I stand and stare at the elephant with a fork in my hand….forgetting what I’ve heard about a “bite at a time”.

All I can see is what the end is supposed to be….to the point where I can’t make the little chunk I’m living “right now” better.

I need a better pair of reading glasses….I’m missing stuff that’s close at hand….I’m missing some details….I can’t read the instructions.

I’m not there right now.

It’s hard to be “present”….between what I remember about the past, and what I’m trying to figure out about the future, it’s hard to live in the moment.

I love the cloudy promise of a phrase like “I’m not there right now”.

I can make it if I can just figure out how to jump out of my own way.

I already know that.

Right now.

“Bail My Boat” David Wilcox