Ever since getting out of school, I’ve felt like I was getting busier and busier, which was entirely true with our company’s big bi-annual convention coming up in September. And now that the convention is over with and we are back from Asia (more on that in a post to come), I am realizing that for the last couple of months, I’ve been stuck in drive mode without taking time out to breathe and process all that has been going on in my life. This is made obvious in how infrequently I have posted on this site, the only two times being when I did take a short respite, once for our trip to Santa Barbara and another for our Wedding Anniversary dinner.

Even in writing this post and taking a quick recap of this past summer, I realized I wrote a similar post just as the summer hectic-ness was ramping up. It shouldn’t be all that surprising for me to find myself repeating and having to re-learn lessons that God knows I need. I guess this is the whole point of this blog, for me to keep a written history of my thoughts so that I realize how many times I recursively go through life lessons without actually learning and making them truly a part of my personal growth. And hopefully, the lesson will finally set in.

If I am to have any real personal and spiritual growth in my life, I know that I have to make the space and priority for those activities (or lack of activity) in my life which will allow that growth to occur. I know that I have been using mountain biking as an emotional and physical release valve from my daily stresses, but it is not enough to simply fill my time with mindless activity (not that mountain biking doesn’t require it’s own kind of mental concentration and physical stress).

When I took a Silence & Solitude retreat (just half-day) with my men’s group at the beginning of the year, we were encouraged to be actively passive. I definitely need more of that. The irony is that I realize now that I have been exactly the opposite, much more passively active, allowing my busy-ness and activity to just carry me along. Hopefully, it won’t be another three months before I am writing another ‘stuck’ post, then again, at least now I have a record of my folly, and not just blindly cycling through the same realization over and over again.