2319: Outfitted...

I've been listening to Hollywood's Bleeding a lot this week. Post Malone released it in 2019, and playing it back has brought on a good bit of nostalgia. When that album dropped I was a freshman in college, maybe three weeks into class, still finding my groove and meeting new people every day. I had mostly settled into my friend group by then. The running joke among them was when I was finally going to stay on campus.

For those who don't know, I attended Tougaloo College, which sits ~6 miles from my house. So I made the executive decision to commute back and forth every day like it was a job. I still got my college experience, but when the night was over I was back in my own bed at home. College days swiftly pass.

I bring that up because it was one of the first times I did something the way that made sense for me instead of the way it was supposed to look. It would not be the last.

Today, as you are reading this, marks my final day working at Fleet Feet Jackson. It has been a life changing experience. I gained a community I can count on for an early Saturday long run, and more than that, friends I will keep for a lifetime and make the time to check in on and talk with about every part of life. That is invaluable, and it is exactly what I hoped and prayed would come out of this opportunity.

Honestly, I had no idea what a gap year was supposed to look like for me. It was the first year of my life that was not built around something academic, and that did not feel right. I thought taking the job was a mistake, that it had little to do with what was ahead of me in medicine.

I could not have been more wrong.

Think about a physician and a patient. The encounter is personal. The patient describes what is not feeling or functioning the way it should, and it becomes the physician's responsibility to use their expertise to diagnose and treat the chief complaint. Outfitting a customer at Fleet Feet works the same way. The conversation is individualized. Someone tells you what is going on with their feet, the aches, the pains, the discomfort, and it becomes your responsibility as the outfitter to use what you know to find the shoe and the insole that address it. I had to live it to understand how closely the two line up, and it is something I will carry with me through my medical education.

There are no instructions for a gap year, and there are none for life either. It is all about how you maximize where you presently are. That is all any of us can do on a given day. Focus on yourself. That may read as selfish, but I mean it in the most encouraging way I know how. The only goal post worth measuring is the one behind you, where you and only you have come from and grown from. That is what matters at the end of the day.

It is easy in this day and age to get caught up in where you think you should be by now. Remember that there is no instruction manual, and that life is not linear for anyone, however much social constructs have made it seem that way. Life looks a lot more like this:

Be where your feet are and keep going.

Peace,

Zechariah Davis

🎵 Song of the Week

"I'm Gonna Be" - Post Malone

🗣 Quote of the Week

"Plenty of growth can be found in removing your vices, but the real leaps are unlocked when you stop clinging to your comforts." - James Clear

📖 Scripture of the Week: Proverbs 4:23

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