Seeking Balance, Arms Outstretched

"I'm convinced that the best time is always now, and the best memory is always tomorrow." - Kilian Jornet

The transition back to structured days feels like learning to walk again after months of weightlessness. After the privilege of a long break from coaching—those glorious weeks of travel and adventure when time stretched elastic and unhurried—I've returned to the familiar rhythm of pool decks and whistle blasts, regular withdrawals of energy mapped against the clock's relentless march.

I love working with our swimmers and coaches, teaching young athletes how to refine technique with increasing grace and power. But my body rebels against the 8:45 p.m. finish, a time that would otherwise find me nestled in pajamas, book spine cracked open against the lamplight. Now the morning sleep stress compounds with each emergency headline that assaults my coffee ritual, their collective weight settling like sediment in my chest.

I miss the untethered days of digital silence—no email pinging its demands, no computer tethering me to distant catastrophes. Being gently unhooked from certain realities offered unexpected gifts of peace. Yet there's comfort in rediscovering my place within daily routines, in the purposeful act of working and giving back. Still, balancing my personal rhythms against the madness churning elsewhere often feels like attempting to surf again—arms outflung for stability, maintaining a precarious crooked stance on my board as the swells threaten to topple me.

The quote that begins this reflection initially lodged in my mind's faltering gears, mental machinery grinding against their simple wisdom. Jornet is a world class adventurer, hiking mountains beyond mountains - could I apply his truism within my daily pedestrian routines? Gradually the gears loosened, lubricating those rusty wheels toward something approaching optimism. I can still believe the best time is now and my best memory is tomorrow, even if I'm not on a plane - or a mountain.  As Rebecca Solnit reminds us: "The grounds for hope are simply that we don't know what will happen next, and that the unlikely and the unimaginable transpire quite regularly."

I offer these words here because they feel both down-to-earth and aspirational—twin qualities that might offer some peace of mind as we all navigate our own unsteady waters, arms outstretched, searching for balance.