New Challenges

When I look back at my life, now certainly beyond its halfway point, I realize that I've always sought out new challenges. Once mastered, I then move on.

This is an old pattern, but something of a problem as I age.

For one thing, it gets harder to find worthy new challenges as the years pass. This is not the result of mastering too many things, of course, but rather a function of settling into patterns and having trouble breaking them. If I'm honest, most new challenges are found by simply striking out beyond the comfortable norms of life, and that gets harder and harder to do as time passes.

It's also at least sometimes the case that new challenges look a lot like just new iterations of old challenges; i.e. not really new challenges at all. Solving the same old problem in a new context is not the same thing as finding a new problem to solve. (Well, at least, it's a strategy which can only work for me for a while.)

My dad once told me that, if he had to do it all over, he'd find a job with a good company and just stick with it forever. And while I understand the instinct, I also recognize just how impossible that would have been for me, just as it was ultimately impossible for him. (He was a high school English teacher, a good gig by any standard, but couldn't resist the urge to return to theater. When that thread had run its course, he needed to move on again rather than go back. In this regard, I'm an apple falling not far from the tree.)

I realize that I feel this way every August as my birthday nears.

The real question may not be how to find new challenges, but how to adapt to living without them.

That's a pretty sad thought, so I'm rejecting it in favor of viewing a time like this as its own challenge. Now, where could that take me?