Four years is a long time when you’re young.

Four years is a long time.

Four years.

Hm.

Four years is not a long time when you’re older.

Four years goes by quickly when you’re looking back on all the cool (and not cool, let’s be honest) shit you did and amazing people you’ve met along the way.

Four years ago I didn’t know anything about rucking, ruck offs or what getting my ass PT’ed to death felt like. I didn’t know that you could spend $20 on a pair of socks and believe it was a good decision. I didn’t know there were so many cool people out there in the world. I still don’t know anything about rucking but I am good at ruck offs. I do know that being PT’ed to death is…kind of fun, especially when it’s over. But let’s not gloss over this- $20 for socks? What has happened to my life?

It got awesome is what happened.

Four years ago I participated was dragged through my first GORUCK Challenge. I showed up knowing only one person while being woefully, incredibly, extremely under-prepared for the event. Luckily for me (and not them) I met some cool people there- bad asses like Brian and Jenks and Kurt and Grant and Aaron. Also, I think that G and Eric were around there as well. This was awesome because these people would end up being some of my really good friends. The details of the event are written down somewhere (I wrote about my first year GORUCKiversary here) but in retrospect, those aren’t important. What is important now are the relationships that were built through sweat, possibly some tears and lots of sarcasm.

Four years is enough time for me to do the following: start school, finish school, not update your resume (Hi Eric and G), visit Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Seattle, San Francisco, make some sandals at the start of a race in Southwest Texas, New York, France, Boston, DC (what’s up Harambe Justice Squad!), as well as many other places, have my FB ‘friends’ list balloon enough that I don’t know most of my feed, take up meditation, buy and sell shit you don’t need. None of that would’ve happened in that period of time without the magics of GORUCK. The list is limitless but mine is limited because I’m lazy and I have a budget.

On my adventures, I’ve been fortunate to have met some quality people from around the country, world and hell, in my backyard. Luckily for them, they are cursed with my friendship for the foreseeable future. Now, some of them are jerks and say mean, hurtful things to me such as the “Cowboys suck” etc. They’re hurtful and wrong at the same time. Honestly, I don’t probably deserve it. Most of our conversations are centered around us saying “sup” twice a day and that’s OK. When the NSA reads our conversations that’s all they’ll see- “sup” x 1 million. But these guys and girls are awesome- that’s really motivating and encouraging and inspiring me to get after it…soon as I’m up from this nap and check Facebook real quick. Now, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows- most everyone’s sense of humor is stuck in junior high and their politics are also incorrect so they aren’t perfect.

But neither am I.

Four years from now, if I never do another GORUCK or endurance event, I might be OK with that. If I don’t have any new experiences of carrying heavy shit down the road in the middle of the night?  No more sketchy water features? No more thigh chafing? I might be fine with that…especially the last one. 29 events and only one event being chafing free in 4 years is respectable.

Four years ago I didn’t know that my life would change like this…but four years later I’ve learned one thing- that life is better with you people in it.

Some of you.