Well, it’s early in the morning, and I get up to make my caffeinated drink. It’s actually a pre-workout; It acts as my coffee. I then tidy up a bit and sit down to write. Writing is my new obsession where working out used to be. This is where I feel I get to be the most of me. I used to think that working out was the real me, fitness was my life, and don’t get me wrong, I am grateful for all that working out has done for me. Physically, it has taught me a lot—from discipline to resilience to hard work, to the details of how to build a strong, fit body through labor, and how to use diet and nutrition to direct my physical goals. I am done growing in this area of my life though. This doesn’t mean that it stops; it means I can use my knowledge to keep and maintain my fitness and really focus on other things.

After hitting 40, it put into perspective what I want in my life. I narrowed it down to a few things, since there really isn’t time to be screwing around anymore. Believe it or not, I have had a calling to write forever, and I have written a few books, but it was never really my focus. Writing is where I want the second half to end. So these days, I have been rezoning my efforts to doing that very thing—to write, not on social media or in blog posts so much but for myself. Plotting and planning a deep story that has been brewing over years and years, maybe longer than I have been acquainted with fitness. Writing, an old friend of mine before I ever stood on a fitness stage.

At the end of our life, we have a few things that will come with us, and I hope to see a few things by my bedside—those I have loved and who have loved me back. Yet, most importantly, to be in my own skin in the darkness of my closed eyes, knowing that I had never given up on myself and knowing that I did what I had always wanted to do. I don’t think I could be happy coming to my end, always wanting to write and have never written. I want to finish a long epic novel before my time is up.

So I do many of my normal things—clean up in the morning and maintain the house. I spend time at the gym with my mother three days a week (these are my only long gym days); any other days, I work out no more than an hour and sometimes only 30 minutes. Most days I try to keep my nutrition tight; my experience and fitness knowledge allows me to get away with a bit more. I can maintain a decent physique with fewer workouts (believe it or not, a lot of bodybuilders don’t work out more than 45 minutes of focused work. You don’t need to train for 3 hours and kill yourself for results.) and if you know how to manage macros, you can actually eat carbs and get results.

Fitness no longer consumes my time. After those are out of the way, I find myself spending more and more time at my desk writing. Still reading, studying, still in love with philosophy and psychology, yet adding a lot more story craft to my studies. I feel more at home now, being where I should be—writing. And just as strengthening the body has taught me a lot, writing I have found does the very same thing. Writing actually teaches you a lot about yourself; even fiction writing reflects the self in the creative imagination of what comes out.

I guess that was the real joy I got out of fitness, more so than the applause, more so than the six-pack and the confidence. It was the self-discovery. That self-discovery I can now find in writing. Who am I? What is the authentic self? That is the real question. The world often tells you what to be, but we need to all find our home, for ourselves, and in that, we will find contentment. What stirs your soul? Answer this and there you will be, waiting for you to show up the entire time. When you find yourself, that is self love, and there is where healing is found.

Lucky Nghi