Before and After – not that simple

I’m a sucker for those before & after pics with home makeovers. Something goes from blah to awesome within 30 or 60 minutes. It pops! It’s like magic. What was old is now new again.

Here’s my living room before & after pic from this weekend. After wanting to paint this room for nearly…cough cough cough four years…it finally happened! Went from drab to fab, bright colors, and now it looks like I actually live here. It looks like ME.

But it also made me think of how this before & after thing can be very alluring & seductive. It’s easy to find the “after” point in a home project or similar. In real life? Not so much. Because the question becomes: after what? After a hair cut or weight loss or new shoes or a great pair of boots or what? For real life, there really is no after-picture since it’s constantly evolving. I can’t imagine I’ll ever post an after-pic of me related to this triathlon process. It’s teaching me a lot about myself. I’m struggling to make the early workouts happen as often. I’m finding more excuses than I have in the past. And I really do love the sport! So is it the winter that makes it harder or something deeper in me that’s trying to find the quick fix and the after-pic that doesn’t exist?