I seem to be training for something.

I don’t know what that training is for though.

This is odd.

To me, anyway.

This is what I pondered as I was trying to force myself to speed over Gates Pass on my bicycle today early in the morning while my toes were numb from the wind chill and my arms were freezing because I purposely wanted to test my ability to push through the discomfort of being cold.

Building up the ol’ willpower it would seem. It’s what I do when I don’t know what to do.

Many years ago in a land far far away, New York City, I dropped out of the world after wasting way too much of my life working for a publishing company.

I did what came naturally and started pushing the bicycling distance envelope. Why? I don’t exactly know but my whole life I’ve been testing to see how far I can push myself.

I didn’t eat all day when I was in high school. Morning and night. Nothing else. Bicycling with no water on hot summer days. Training myself to focus my concentration in noisy environments by turning on the tv, the radio, and trying to read. [note: Most kids these days have been doing that since birth and they toss in a computer too. I’d guess, as a group, kids a much better able to deal with information than people my Gen-X age and immeasurably better than people much older than me.] Even as a small child I never closed my jacket in the winter as a kind of test to see if I could cope with the cold.

So what the fuck is that all about? I’ve accidentally been training myself in willpower enhancing ways for as long as I can remember without knowing what or why I was doing that and it’s only in the past week that I stumbled across a good explanation of what I was doing.

Now I’m lost again, trying to find my path in this crazy mixed up world, mixed up for me anyway, the people who have the talents and skills I admire never seem to have that lost path kind of trouble…although that could be simply that I don’t know them and can’t read their confused and perplexed minds.

Anyway, I’m in training for training. I’m building up my stamina, strength, and ability to cope with discomfort for reasons I don’t understand except for the obvious one in that I have nothing better to do right now (other than to edit video, finish two stories/scripts, and to do the break down on the script for the movie where I seem to be doing both DP and AD roles, and maybe to plow through the Indian homestyle cookbook I got a few months ago but haven’t had the motivation to experiment with).

I bicycled past a military recruitment center on my way back from the ride this morning and I thought, “I wish I was 10 years younger because I think I’d really enjoy Marine boot camp.”

And that leads me to another curious notion…I can put up with almost any physical discomfort and I know I can push myself farther than I think I can if I need to after getting dangerously close to death from dehydration. What I seem to lack the courage to do is to push myself to do anything that might just change my mostly wasted life. I don’t know why. Will power should be will power and I should be riding home the instant I finish typing this to do some real work.

Instead, I’ll probably wander around 4th Ave, maybe get a beer, see some stuff and then head home when the world starts boring me and read rather than doing all the stuff that I’ve started or working on the few projects that might get me out of this hole I’ve furiously dug myself into.

Curious indeed. Where oh where are all the teachers who set you on a path like they always have in the movies?

Movies are life the way it should be: stunning, dramatic, filled with beautiful people and exciting times.

By the way, Christopher Nolon is a wonderful director. I’m reminded of this since I rented Batman Begins. he really knows how to capture the essence of the character and I’m not quite sure how he’s doing it. Or, at the very least, I can’t begin to imagine how to imitate that skill.

Which I find almost as frustrating as knowing the lostness of the way that I never knew while not having a real clue, or the courage to find that clue, as to the path to choose. Almost as frustrating…not at the same level but I really hate when I can’t figure out how the magic happens.