…when I was meant to be racing. That last day at the Forward with Ford conference they took all of us out to the test track and let us play. I learned this about myself: my competitive spirit done gone away. This video was taken when I was doing the timed test trials with a Ford Focus fitted out with bells, whistles, sensors and video cameras. The track was laid out so that there were places where we got points if we ran over a road sensor and places where we got points for avoiding cones. This was a competition, folks. Don’t I look like I’m driving hell bent for leather?
No, I look like I’m out for a Sunday drive.
I’m not sure what happened to my competitive spirit. I’m think maybe it got destroyed in that part of my brain that the aneurysm obliterated (and today is the 8th anniversary of that event), because since then, I just can’t get all that fired up about competing. In fact, it seems somewhat silly to me. As in, dumb.
When I pulled up to the finish line at the track, two Ford employees came over to check my stats. The look on their faces made me suspect that I’d done something unusual. I had: I’d taken almost three minutes to go around a track that the rest of the crowd did in just over a minute. Did I care? Not really.
Is this a good thing? Maybe. It saves me much angst, not to mention time. People ask me what my stats are on MidLifeBloggers, and I have to admit, I’m really not sure, because I don’t check them very often. And when I do, I mostly don’t understand them. And I mostly don’t care that I don’t.
It may not serve me very well, however, in the blogosphere, where contests for Best of Show seem to be everywhere. Of course, to win those contests you don’t really have to be Best of Show. You just have to get more people to vote for you than the rest of the pack. I really thought I left that BS behind in high school.
Am I alone in this? Did my competitive spirt get blasted away by the aneurysm, or is that a function of–hey! we’re finally growing up? And in case you missed it, check the left sidebar where my Twitter feed is–and vote for me!
