Motivation comes from where one finds it. But from there?

Now I feel like I can take control and start moving forward.  From now on, an outside observer will tell me how I am doing, how I compare with others, and most importantly how I am today compared to yesterday.  Let the competition begin!

I had struggled in high school due to the instability of a left knee minus an ACL.  I was pretty much injured all of the time.  For basketball practice every day I would get the knee taped and wore a bulky 70s era brace.  There was no pre-wrap back in the day and the tape went right to the skin.  As I took it off every day more and more of my skin would come off in chunks.   It hurt.  It was really painful psychologically not playing high school football any more.  I finally had to quit playing shortstop  for the baseball team in high school for first base and actually finished a season.

Don’t think that what people write in high school yearbooks cannot make a difference in a person's life.  Here I am almost 60 and I remember some things very clearly to this day.  There were these two brothers, two grades apart.  Both superb athletes.  The eldest was bat-shit, crazy, pathologically tough.  The other just as tough, not quite as athletic, but not in any way bat-shit crazy.  In my senior year he wrote, in bold letters, underlined, and in quotes, “You are tough!”  In the years since, knowing that a tough guy thought I was tough, has fueled many rehabs.  Six repetitions tomorrow: 3 hours.  Thanks, again, Greg.