Unicycling

Fun Fact: I ride a unicycle. 

This has been my requisite “fun fact” for years now. I learned how to ride it in the fourth grade and then promptly turned around and taught two of my friends to ride. We then all started riding to school together. (Quite the sight.) Much like riding a bike, you don’t forget how to ride a unicycle, so occasionally I’ll take it out and ride it around. This fun, “fun fact” in my back pocket empowered me to think of myself throughout life as having good balance. (But, do I? Really?) 

Life is a balancing act… and riding a unicycle, and a bicycle, helped me to understand this fact this past week. 

I have had a hard week. This past week I began to doubt a lot of what I was doing, because I struggled to concisely say what it was that I was working on. I knew that I was juggling a lot, but was genuinely struggling with the same questions that I had been asking myself for a long time. Is this working? Am I achieving the success that I want to achieve? Is the life that I am leading the life that I want to be leading?

To get out of the vicious self-questioning cycle, I’ve learned that you have to play life’s version of Boggle. You have to shake up the lettered die in the square grid. New round. New settling places. New words. You have to ask yourself, or be asked, the hard questions in life. It’s one of the only ways that I have learned to change my mental course. Write it out, talk it out, or be asked about it. 

What do you unicycling and Boggle have to do with one another? (This was my question to answer this week. Or more popularly stated by Leigh Ellen: What is it that I need right now to feel supported?) 

Unicycling is about balancing. So is bicycle riding. You have to rely on yourself to move forward, but you also need to have a general idea of what you’re doing. Add more grounding points, alla a tricycle and car, and you’re feeling much more stable about staying upright. (Forgive the motor vehicle complexity thing.)

So, what did I need this week? More wheels. Right now I am on a “never-ending” marathon of a journey riding my unicycle: Entrepreneurship. But, I can’t ride my unicycle the entire time. It’s fun sometimes to take it out for a spin, but when I’m playing life’s Boggle I need more wheels to keep me grounded, ask me the tough questions, and to be there (in Dallas) when I need to cry it all out…

Thanks for listening, Leigh Ellen.