Emotional Spaghetti Points

plate of spaghetti

I'm having a bit of a crisis regarding my bike riding. Why? Why do I need to ride so much. This was triggered by the realization that I might hit 2000 miles this year. That's a huge jump over last years record-setting 1573 miles.

According to the old zen joke, the reason I ride my bike is in order to ride my bike. You'd think that would be enough for me. It's not. If it was I wouldn't record each ride in a big spreadsheet. Though originally I used the recording of rides to maintain motivation.

So anyway, last night, lying awake at 3AM, unable to identify the exact reason I ride, I decided that I'm riding to earn emotional spaghetti points. I used spaghetti because it is all tangled up in a blob, which pretty much matches my emotional state. I include the words emotional and points because they add to the abstraction of the concept. Nothing about this is concrete.

Do I overthink too much? The very question answers itself. Yes I overthink everything too much. My brain rarely shuts off.

But why do I need to earn emotional spaghetti points? This hearkens back to why I started riding in the second place. In the first place I needed exercise because I was too fat and too diabetic. The second place is that some of the usual builders of self esteem are unavailable to me. Riding replaced those.

However I still hold out hope that one day, perhaps a single day, those self esteem builders will be available again. In preparation for this hoped event I am banking my emotional spaghetti points. The more emotional spaghetti points I earn, the closer I am to my reward.

Of course, none of this will ever happen. The points needed to achieve the reward continues to grow faster than I earn the points. It is doubtful I will ever have enough. Knowing this, why do I persist? What is the point of chasing goals that matter only to me, and exist only as a substitute to what I really want?

Because I need to do something. Even if I know that something is useless. I can't do nothing. I can't accept that there is no hope. I must hope, and if emotional spaghetti points are what I need to maintain hope, then so be it.