I am the Ponderer!

Do you remember that song, “I Am the Wanderer”? It was from the Sixties or so, it goes on about a guy that feels the need to wander whenever he gets too close to someone. Well, I don’t have the exact same problem, although I do feel I have the soul of a traveler, no I need to wander just not when I get too close to someone.

I need to wander; I need to see what is around the bend for I am always imagining what is there. I imagine what it would be like to visit this place and see that area; I imagine all the interesting and wonderful people I will meet, even the homeless ones that other people would rather walk over than talk to. For it is those experiences that I treasure.
I grew up reading quite a bit, I was an only child to a flight attendant; I had a father growing up but he died when I was but eleven years old. Needless to say I was alone quite a bit. For me, though, it really wasn’t that bad. I had friends but I also had my imagination, stories and my bicycle to get me through it. It was with these things that I could go anywhere! Not only would I ride my bike ten miles across town but I would journey across the country or the globe, imagining the stories that I would eventually make for myself.

This has carried on all the way to where I am now, I still have more passion for my bicycle than is probably healthy and my imagination has yet to slow down even a bit. What has changed though is instead of me dreaming up a trip where I am riding a horse across the plain in search of that lost cow I am now seeing myself cycling through the high mountains on my way to the coast. You see it’s still there, it has simply evolved.

When I was about Sixteen years old I knew this older man who I would go on rides with; he was an awesome guy if not a bit odd, but engineers often are different than the rest of us. He, however, is one of the people responsible for getting me hooked on bike racing, he would tell me stories of him back in the day racing on the track, putting it all out there on the line to the point where you have to KNOW that you will win, otherwise you are simply the first loser.
One time we were at a race and we were rolling around, warming up, and discussing the agenda for the race. I started to look at different situations objectively, weighing the pros and cons of doing this rather than that when all of a sudden he broke my train of thought with an exclamation. “Zac,” he said, “You think too much, stop thinking. In a race you must learn to not think, just do. If you over think a situation you will miss the opportunity to take the win.”
This sage advice, from an old Jewish engineer from Rochester New York, has stuck with me to this day.

Still, I have a tendency to over think things; I try to listen to what my heart tells me but I always have this fear that I will make the wrong choice. What if I make this decision and down the road the latter choice was best? Ugh! Sometimes, it simply destroys me.
This is why this blog is called The Ponderer’s Musings and I am called The Pondering Guey, for I am the Pondering Fool, I think till all the choices are gone.

Now, my heart is strong and gets stronger everyday for everyday I learn to listen to its inherent knowledge more and more.

If I can simply learn to balance the two I will be perfect, no?
Now go out into the world dear readers and do what the song says, Listen to Your Heart!