FISCHER: A journey of a thousand miles

By Travis Fischer, tkfischer@charlescitypress.com

Like clockwork, 2024 continues to roll right along.

We’re already coming up on the tail end of January, so how are everybody’s New Year Resolutions coming?

I hear that this is about the time that most people start to drop out of whatever goal they set for themselves when they put up their new calendar. I generally don’t make hard resolutions myself, but I’m not immune to the lure of making a renewed effort toward self-improvement.

Back during the pandemic I saw a meme showing off Chris Hemsworth’s sculpted form from “Avengers: Infinity War” set alongside his considerably chunkier portrayal in “Avengers: Endgame.” The meme noted that one way or the other, we were gonna come out of the pandemic looking like Thor.

Begrudgingly facing that I was getting to be a lot closer to “Endgame Thor” than I’d like, I decided to take dramatic action and saw pretty dramatic results. I came out of the pandemic 60 lbs. lighter than I went in.

However, in the years since, I’ve noticed I’ve been gradually moving back up on the scale. I blame my backslide on the general chaos that my life has been over the last couple years.

Going into 2024 though, my life seems to have finally started to stabilize, so it’s time to get back on the wagon. And by “wagon,” I mean “elliptical machine,” my favored cardio workout that I’ve been without for more than half a year now.

Last week, my new machine finally arrived. A 300-pound box was delivered to my new apartment. Or, more specifically, to the bottom of the stairs that lead to my apartment.

That presented a problem.

Thus I spent a good chunk of my day thinking about how in the heck I was going to haul my newly purchased equipment up the stairs. I’m a decently strong guy, but that’s a bit much.

I used to have a roommate I could rely on to help move things, but that’s no longer the case. Nor do I have any friends in town that I’m comfortable calling up to come out in zero-degree weather to push a massive box up a flight of stairs.

Eventually though, I got some extremely good advice: Take it up piece-by-piece.

So I did. I opened up the box and took each piece up the stairs one at a time.

It was a lot of steps, and the last and heaviest piece was still a struggle, but that simple change to my approach turned an otherwise impossible task into a manageable one.

It seems so simple, but I’m a “carry all the groceries in one trip” kind of guy. I shudder to think about how long it would have taken me to come to this answer on my own.

A lot of people go into the New Year with big goals in mind and it can be easy to get stuck when faced with the enormity of a challenge. Whatever your goal is, you don’t have to do it all at once.

If something isn’t working, or seems too difficult, try a different approach. Break it down into smaller parts and work on that. It may take more steps than you think, sometimes literally, but remember that any progress at all is still progress.

— Travis Fischer is a news writer for the Charles City Press and now has to overcome the challenge of putting the darn machine together.