The Endless Treadmill of Improvement

I turned 30 last year.

On social media, there is a bit of meme going around how, upon hitting your 30s, you mysteriously pick up running as a hobby or begin prioritizing being in bed before 10pm. These are all, of course, very reasonable (and healthy!) habits to pick up, but I'd always felt these jokes were always a tongue-in-cheek way of coming to terms with your mortality and realizing how fleeting your youth truly is.

In the past two or three years, I have been driven - by this realization, likely, but I like to imagine it's more mysterious than that - to become good at the hobbies I'm interested in. I do admit that it is enjoyable to watch myself slowly improve over time, but I am oftentimes left feeling that I am on a perpetual treadmill, and this feeling has a tendency to suck the joy out of the hobbies I am enjoying.

I watch myself pursue my hobbies with a reignited fervor and gain incremental progress before inevitable hitting a plateau as my body and mind adjust to the new skillset. Usually, when I hit this plateau, I start feeling a bit of restlessness upon noticing that I'm not making the same leaps and bounds as I was earlier. Social media leads me to believe that I probably have an undiagnosed form of ADHD and/or autism, but I think that line of thinking is dangerous in the sense that it takes away authority and credence from those who are actually diagnosed with ADHD and/or autism. So I won't claim that I am diagnosed with one or both of them.

For some of the few hobbies that survive this No Man Land's plateau, I am thankfully rewarded with a sense of accomplishment. It is at this point that I have come to realize that this cycle feels like an endless treadmill. An endless treadmill of improvement. A treadmill that we are constantly taking step after step, with no real end goal in sight. There are some brief, fleeting moments of lucidity where it almost does feel like we'll finally know what our end goals are - but I myself wonder if that is just some of nice consolation to cope with the feeling of not being in control of your own destiny.

I don't expect there to be any major, life-shattering changes in my life as a result of this. I suppose in some ways this is also my own way of coming to terms with my mortality as well - that no matter how much time I spend on my hobbies, I may never (or maybe I will, who knows) reach the imagined level of success I once thought I could achieve. I also suppose that in some ways, this has helped me be more present in my life - until it actually comes, tomorrow may never happen at all, so I might as well try to do what I can with the time I have now, instead of thinking that I'll have time to do it later.

I wonder if this moment, this realization, is something all of us face at some point in our lives. That despite all of the toil we put into achieving on our dreams, we may never actually realize them all. That despite all of the passion we put into grasping for that promised neverland, where we finally get off the treadmill because we are that good at what we do, the land of our dreams will never materialize the way that we like.

I am reminded of the closing text from The Great Gatsby –

tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms father...And one fine morning —

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessy into the past.

One fine morning we imagine that our dreams will finally be realized, but it's no guarantee. As time ticks away, and we persistly toil on our treadmill, that dream slips further and further away, until we're left with nothing but the glowing embers of our youthful dreams.