A deer walked into my yard last night.

I’m finding it strangely difficult to express my reaction to that.

* * *

I grew up in Oklahoma. It’s kind of a barren place. We had one tree in our back yard; it was sort of the centerpiece of the yard, all by itself, maybe six feet tall when I left there.

Somehow, I got the impression that it was a terribly fragile thing.

One day, a tree started growing in our front yard. I don’t know how it got there; maybe my parents planted there and I didn’t know it. But I thought this was a rare and wonderful and magical event. Something was sprouting. On its own. In Oklahoma, land of the dust bowls.

* * *

The other day, I had to trim some branches off a tree. It was leaning into my garage.

It pained me to do that. There were severed branches larger than that whole tree in my Oklahoma back yard. But here in Ohio, my yard is filled with trees. They frequently spring up where we don’t want them, and they frequently get cut down.

* * *

There was a lake next to my Oklahoma house. Not a real lake, mind you; there were lots of small, artificial lakes scattered throughout the cities to help with flash flooding.

There were ducks at the lake. I tend to think of ducks as decorations rather than living animals. They just sort of bob up and down, limbless, unless you offer them breadcrumbs.

But every now and then—maybe once a year or so—a great blue heron would visit the lake. And it would just stand there, all statuesque and enigmatic. I never saw it from less than a hundred yards away. I was convinced it was eight feet tall, and probably knew way more about the world than I did. It wasn’t just a random migratory bird. It was a sign. Of what, i don’t know.

* * *

So a deer walks into my yard.

And my first thought is, does it want something from me?

Of course, on any kind of rational level, I know that it hasn’t gone out of its way to visit anybody in particular, but there’s a certain logic to this: the whole concept of there existing wild animals is a little abstract to me. I hardly ever leave city life. But hey, random people I don’t know, or don’t know well, do occasionally walk into my yard. Neighbors retrieve stray dogs, phone company employees squint at power lines and inspectors from the City make sure everything’s up to code from time to time.

So in a wild animals-less universe, if there is a me-sized—not pet-sized, but a me-sized—animal in my yard, it must be there for a reason.

And it would only be polite to ask said animal if there’s anything I can do for it.

Which, of course, I can’t do.

So I find the whole situation kind of puzzling.

I won a 100 yard dash once in middle school. Got a shiny ribbon and stuff.

Now that I’ve started running regularly, I often find myself thinking about that.

I tend not to start any kind of new endeavor, whether it’s learning a new skill or improving my existing ones, unless I am absolutely confident I will succeed. I’m trying to get more comfortable taking risks with that sort of thing, but in general, I tend to stall if I’m not absolutely confident in my ability to succeed.

In the absence of real evidence suggesting that I may succeed with something, I frequently resort to making disingenuous arguments to myself, to support my position that I will succeed. The most common is working on nice-looking assets for a project before digging into code or story or whatever, so that I can look at the assets, and imagine that the finished, polished product that uses those assets already exists.

If it already exists, I must have been able to finish it. It’s sort of mental time-travel.

I think the 100 yard dash is another such disingenuous argument, but subtly different. At some indeterminate point in the past, I was singled out for being a successful sprinter. I could do this at one point. I just need to get that back.

The same sort of mental gymnastics apply to many things I do, come to think of it: I need to recapture the creativity I had as a teenager. I need to be the supportive, witty friend I was in college. I was a more daring cook ten years ago. I want my dancer’s body back, and I miss the focus I had when programming for DOS.

In all likelihood, I am a better artist, friend, cook, and programmer than I have ever been. I put a great deal more thought into taking care of my body than I used to. In all likelihood, I am steadily improving. But in terms of convincing myself that improvement is possible, it helps to believe that I am simply regaining skills I once lost. If I had them once, I can have them again, right?

Which is all just to say that it’s time to drop the reminiscing about some sort of youthful golden age and simply accept risks for what they are. Maybe I’ll sign up for a 5k in addition to the Warrior Dash next year. Maybe this training won’t go anywhere. Who knows.

In some ways, that makes it more exciting. More worth doing.