It’s kind of like dad jokes for a dad. Your kids reach a certain age and you not only start enjoying them but they come to you from the ether. My kids are just eight and five and they’re already flowing through me, and I find them hilarious.
Puns, that’s what I’m comparing to dad jokes. Sorry, I got sidetracked. Like dad jokes, the more you use them, the more you love them. The pun in the title of this post is clear if you know me.
I grew up with a stutter, it still comes out here and there. My stutter can make me stop and restart mid-sentence, just like an athlete stops running and takes off again doing a stutter move on a court or a field.
I like metaphors too. You’re seeing the arc of this piece, aren’t you? Of course, you are, I’m taking you on this journey...writer skills…
I’ve slowed, halted, and restarted toward the same direction and in completely different directions a few times over. I’ve felt lousy about it. I’ve sprinted toward some path in my coaching, my business, my writing, and then I’d stop and shuffle my feet in place for a while
Sometimes I picked up toward the same direction. Sometimes what made me put the brakes on wasn’t something I could run through and there was no sign of it moving, so I’d shamble to the side and run a different route.
Most of it wasn’t a good teacher, or more likely I wasn’t a good student of the game. But I can learn, eventually. We all can. I can learn to replay every step and see the field open up, we all can. There’s nothing wrong with the stutter step, we just got to take off in the right direction after.
And to do that we have to be honest with ourselves on where our legs can really take us.