It's all about the numbers

I've been struggling to prove something to somebody for most of my life. The motivation to do something, play football, completing a video game, applying for jobs I have no intention of actually taking, trying to beat my best time during a rowing or running workout, a considerable chunk of my motivation to do those things was driven by a need for a sense of accomplishment by achieving something that other people could see. Activities that should be about having fun, playing video games for example, became a contest. I immediately grasp onto the competitive aspect of any activity rather than focusing on what I find inherently appealing about it. 

A good portion of the entries in this blog are about getting better, pushing your limits, constantly striving for more and better. That endless striving for improvement, a constant seeking of some edge over an ambiguous other outsider, constantly hangs over me. There is nothing wrong with wanting to improve, but that drive to get better has skewed my priorities. Those things that I do to feel like I'm getting better have far too much importance in my life. I neglect the people I love to keep striving for more. 

Chasing after something to make me feel like I am winning, that I am better than everybody else, that I am adequate, has in many ways prevented me from really getting to understand what I enjoy. I never stopped to look at what appeals to me when I was looking at colleges. Even now, a key motivator for me in getting my workouts in is making progress towards a distance goal. I want 2 million lifetime meters in rowing by the end of the year. I've resolved to run 500 miles this year. This blog was started to track my progress towards a number of quantifiable goals. 

Until I started writing this post, I didn't realize how I've built achieving a numerical goal into so much of my life. That effort to achieve an arbitrary number goal, a certain time in a race, a certain number of books read, so many blog posts written in a week, is at the center of pretty much every "leisure" time activity that I pursue. Why do I deny myself the inherent pleasure of these activities?What do I really like to do? Am I missing out on something that I would really enjoy in the constant pursuit of tracking my progress?