The Confidence of Youth

Wow! Almost a month since my last post! So where did all that discipline talk go, huh!? It has been a trying few weeks since we last spoke. I was sick for a while, battled through some personal issues, but still managed to increase the exercise intensity, continue with my Italian lessons, and most importantly there is now a website up and running dedicated to our cause. There are still a couple of dead links, but the meat of the site is fully functional, with the remaining to be complete by November 1^st 2008. What is the site about you ask? Well here is an excerpt that describes things quite succinctly:

Walking Hungry is a site dedicated to the mission of Scott Zielke of Chicago, IL and Ashley Green, a native of Knoxville, TN and their journey through three European countries in an effort to generate awareness and funds for Action Against Hunger/ Action Contre la Faim (ACF). Through this site you can check up on Scott and Ashley’s progress via their blog, view their photos as they work, and read the press coverage of their effort to combat hunger. You can also follow links to see who has donated funds ACF via Walking Hungry and decided that they too want to be a change in someone’s life. Additionally you can contact Scott and Ashley by clicking on the contact link. Most importantly though, you can donate as little or as much as you choose to help make someone else’s world a better place.

So there you go, that’s the news. That is what I have to report as far as progress goes. Now if you’ll excuse me while I climb a top my soapbox, I’ve something to say. In my last post I spoke of discipline. Today I would like to talk about a subtlety of discipline…motivation.

The confidence of youth

Perhaps one of the most drastic, least talked about changes from childhood to adulthood is motivation. Now of course I cannot speak for everyone so I will refer to myself throughout this post and if the sizing is right, you’re welcome to try on my shoes. As a kid I was so involved in everything around me, sports, friends, school, and all the obnoxious things I did for fun because it made me happy. And I was happy! I loved my childhood! Through most of my life I was a three sport athlete, a 3.0 student, and had tons of friends. How is it that I was able to balance these extra curricula’s, my grades, and my friendships? Was I that self motivated at the tender age of 14? NO! Not me! I had everyone there to do it for me. My parents got me involved with sports, my coaches trained me and pushed me to be better, my parents made sure I did my homework, they grounded me when my grades weren’t good, and my friends called me and asked if I wanted to hang out! It wasn’t me motivating myself to do what was needed; it was everyone else telling me what to do and me saying YES! Then one day I got shipped off to college…

Excuse me! Can someone please tell me what to do? Things weren’t all that bad. I had some great roommates (all friends I had had from middle school) who helped to motivate me to go to the gym, to be involved with the school, to achieve now so I could succeed later. But then came the next step. I moved away from everyone and everything I knew and started my life in Sevierville, TN.

A beautiful picture of my old home town in TN

I can remember my plans for moving there <laugh>. I had found an apartment online and made the down payment with my credit card, after all I had no job while in my first college years. I had no job lined up for my time living in Tennessee either. I didn’t know anyone, or really where it was I was moving too (except that it was next to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park GSMNP). I didn’t even have a car! I planned on just riding my bike every where (obviously not considering the difference in terrain between the Smokey Mountains and Illinois)! That’s the confidence of youth in action! I didn’t know what it was to fall down hard and have to pick yourself back up, I only knew what it was to fall ass backwards into the next day.

Once I moved to TN I stopped eating healthy, stopped exercising, I found a job, I found a school to transfer too, my parents very generously donated a vehicle, I made friends, I hiked a lot, I was happy in a content sort of way. My job came naturally to me, school was never that difficult, friends were never a problem…life was easy. But there was something missing from it all…it was if my life was steaming but I wanted it to boil! It was Andrew Carnegie who said, “People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents.” At the time I was content with my mediocrity, I had achieved that mediocrity all on my own after all.

When college graduation came in December of 2005 though, I felt compelled to experience something more. You can get a flavor of my post-collegiate years by reading Being Scott Zielke, an earlier post of mine. “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting…” (The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho). While I believe that statement to be true, it is the fulfilling of a dream that makes life heavenly. With that said let me also say that my life right now is very interesting, and it is my deepest hope that soon it will be heavenly, if only until the next dream settles into my soul.

So that now is my self motivation. What was once the confidence of youth is now the rock of ages.