Waiting for Awesome … and Elvis
May 4th, 2012
When I was a high school freshman, I played on the tennis team. I was terrible. I was certainly one of the most inexperienced players out there, and I lost every game I played. I remember thinking at the time, “I should have started this sport in junior high. THEN I’d be a good player.” I didn’t play on the team the next year.
I’ve been at writers’ conferences where the same thing has happened. Not tennis — I mean, this feeling, when everyone shows their pages and I look at the other writing in the room and I think, “If I’d started getting serious about this sooner, I’d be okay right now. Everyone else smokes me.”
Except, that’s the whole point, isn’t it? That we don’t start out perfect, but that we inch toward being better. That we do it when we’re not awesome so that one day we can be sort of awesome. Or really awesome if we’re lucky.
I hear this a lot at the place where I work out and where, now, I teach indoor cycling classes. “I’d come but I’m afraid I’ll look stupid. I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Dude. You know what? We all look stupid. And we all didn’t start out knowing what we were doing.
So, here’s a picture I both love and hate, and it illustrates what I’m talking about. It was taken at Elvis Fest in Ypsilanti last year. And I remember I saw it and I was like, “THAT’S how big my arms are? That’s what I look like from the side? Uuuggh, kill me now.” (Okay, but I also love the photo because, hello, hilarious Blues Brothers impersonators and, um, is that tattooed Elvis or something? Who is that guy? This photo cracks me up and horrifies me all at once.)

I love and hate this photo. Blues Brothers and tattooed Elivs? Yay! My body from the side? Less than yay.
The point is, the body in that photo above didn’t look awesome on an indoor cycling bike. Or running down the street. Or whatever. My body STILL doesn’t look awesome doing those things all the time. Better, sure, but I’m not THAT different than I was in the picture above. Ten pounds, maybe. But I feel different. And if I don’t do this stuff when I’m not awesome, then I can’t get to … anything better. It’s something I’ve learned about exercise and writing — two of my fave topics evvaaarr — but it applies to everything, I think.
Do it when you suck. When you look fat with Elvis. When you’ve gotten a thousand query rejections but you keep on writing anyhow.
Just so you don’t stay in the same place.
Uhthankyouvaaarmuch. Elvis has left the building.
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