You know how when you’re approaching a milestone, it feels almost inevitable to look back and reflect on what’s gone down in the past decade or two?

I am standing on the cusp of 40 and thus far have failed at my younger adult dreams. I haven’t written a best-seller, haven’t started a world-changing nonprofit, haven’t produced a pack of adorable children and lived an Insta-worthy life with them. 

I do have the best kid in the world. I’ve done some work I’m proud of and I’ve started this weirdly delightful blog.  And I have a secret superpower. I am an ice skater. 

Unlike Wonder Woman, I started training this superpower later in life. And by “training this superpower”, I mean “hoisting my body inches off the ice to rotate half a turn in the air” and “spinning around and around and around without toppling over OR throwing up”. I’m downplaying the glamour here, obvs, but when you can finally pull off a new skating trick, it feels absolutely magical. 

But before you get to that – that being something you’re proud of – there’s a lot of this. 

Skating doesn’t allow me to do the thing I thought I had to do in my younger years – throw a short, intense burst of effort into something, then go out there and impress everyone. I’ve been at this for about fifteen years now, often looking incredibly unimpressive on the face of it as I work the old adult skating ladder of progress. Which looks a lot like the ladder of progress for, well, just about anything.

This ladder begins at zero. You want to do a new skating move and right now, you can’t. So there you are on a massive piece of ice with knives strapped to your feet, trying to figure out how to maneuver your adult body into doing something foreign. Keep in mind you’re doing all this in public, most likely surrounded by skaters a fraction of your age whipping off double and triple jumps and seemingly endless spins. It’s humbling. It’s awkward. But if you want it, all you can do is focus on where you are at that moment and keep going, finding joy in your time on the ice no matter what happens that day.

Eventually, painstakingly, your attempts at this thing becomes the real thing. It might be messy, awkward, slow, and terrifying to execute. It may be almost unrecognizable, as in, it may be impossible for anyone except you, a very patient coach or very supportive skating friend to recognize what jump or spin or move it is that you’re actually doing. 

CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You have made the most important move up the adult skating ladder. Your element is no longer nonexistent. It’s godawful!

You may not look impressive to the outside observer. Does NOT MATTER!! You went from nothing to something, and now you get to mosey on up the old adult skating ladder of progress. Time to take your godawful element and make it a bad one.  

This is where the old skating-is-life-training thing comes in. You’re not going to get it right the first time. Or the hundredth time. But you are going to get it better. 

In our culture we put so much love into applauding the flashy finished products and I think we can easily trick ourselves into believing that Some People’s Lives consist of rolling out of bed and churning out shiny perfection all day long. 

But what about the building? What about the years of slow or sometimes no progress but keeping at it anyway, waking up in the morning and pushing forward with only yourself and a small cast of your dearly beloved as cheerleaders? The rest of the world notices the splashy successes. But they almost always comes after yeeeeearrs of shoulder to the wheel….or blade to the ice.

In this season of life, when there is still so much personally and professionally that I want to learn and do, I’ve decided building is my theme. Maybe it’s yours, too.

I don’t know how to do all those things I want to do, not just yet. But thanks to skating, I know that it’s possible to take something from nonexistent to godawful to not bad and beyond.

Thanks to skating, I know how to build.