Skiing 2.0 or 2020

I am going skiing tomorrow for the first time this year. Evans is not skiing. He is a month away from knee replacement surgery and he still has to climb two flights of stairs several times a day while we are in Crested Butte. He had planned to tough it out and ski anyway, but God in his mercy made Evans’ knee pop somehow and that convinced Evans that he should take a pass.

The first post I wrote in what became this blog was about skiing last year. To summarize. I am old. I tried to do too much. I got way too tired. I fell down. It took three hours to do what should have taken fifteen minutes. I did not die. The important thing is that I made myself go again the next day. I did not want to, but knew I had to or I would never ski again.

This fall, I went to Italy with friends. We did an electric bike tour of Florence and the surrounding countryside. It was fabulous. It was also terrifying. You would think I would only remember the fabulous part, but frankly the terrifying is pretty burned into my memory as well.

Which is why, even though I am skiing tomorrow, I am dreading it for all I am worth. The exhaustion, fear and failure are what I remember from last year. It’s like that second day, which went fine, didn’t even happen. When my friend Pam texted to ask me to go I replied yes immediately. Not because I was excited, but I knew if I gave myself time to come up with an excuse my skiing days would be over for good. I want to be a person who skis. Not a person who is afraid.

I don’t know if I’m more afraid of things than I used to be or if I now have the luxury to recognize that I am afraid. Most people are terrified of public speaking. I’ve spoken in front of any number of large groups. It never occurred to me to be afraid. I’ve traveled for business, worked with important and sometimes difficult (scary) people, and met impossible budgets. Ok, full disclosure. The budgets scared me. But I did it.

I don’t really have New Years resolutions, but when I stopped working full time I made some “rest of my life” resolutions. Number one was to be more active and try to undo thirty years of neglect caused by sitting at a desk. Second was to live more fully in the moment and engage with my friends and family on purpose. Third was to say yes if I could at all. And finally, and the reason I am skiing tomorrow, is to do more things that scare me because being afraid is no excuse.

I am choosing to be a person who skis. It will either go well and I will have a great time or I will have the makings of another awkward blog post. Here’s hoping.