No Summit, Week 2: "Against All Odds"

Welcome to page 199! If you are there, congratulations! From here, you are well over halfway through the book! If you haven't yet made it this far, there is still plenty of time.

This week, I was struck by the obstacles that Jordan has to overcome in order to reach his goal. There are the obvious things - like the mountains themselves - and the slightly less obvious things - like doubts from other people and officials denying permits. Then there is that inner wrestling that Jordan finds himself doing. Sometimes he is merely doubting himself while other times he might rather be skiing or playing with friends.

This made me think a lot about my goals and what obstacles I face. As some of you know, I enjoy writing poetry. On the computer I'm using today, there are at least 100 poems that I quite like. Eventually, I plan to put some of them together as a collection and try to get it published. But then the obstacles come in. They arrive in the following forms:

• self-doubt (are these poems really good enough?)
• what I think others may think about me (NOTE: this is not people actually saying my work isn't good; it's me worrying that they might not think it is good)
• distractions (I could put these poems together and find a place to consider them, or I could go for a walk, or read a book, or play a video game, or...)

So what are your goals?
What obstacles get in your way?
And...most importantly...what helps you overcome those obstacles? What do you see Jordan doing to overcome them?

So I was going to post a video of Phil Collins' super cheesy "Against All Odds" - as this week's treat. I thought about "Against All Odds" as a fitting title since this week is about obstacles, but then I saw something great. Watch what happens at 1:09 - Phil makes a mistake in front of this large audience. And then check out the way he handles it. What a pro. I never thought I'd say this, but...I want to be more like Phil Collins.

 Happy reading!