Ani is the girl in my calendar I have known the longest (not counting my childhood friends from the previous month).
At the same time, she is also the girl I know least in person of all my “models”. Since we live in different cities, our acquaintance is more of a long-distance one. My main impressions of her have been gathered through social media. (Which doesn’t mean in the slightest that there are few of them.)
Speaking of different cities, she and I are actually connected precisely through one and the same city. And the city in question is the greatest city not only in the north-west, not only in Bulgaria, but, as anyone born there will tell you, in the whole world.
PLEVEN!
There must be something in the water and the air of this little patch of land in the hot bosom of the Danube plain, because it gives the world mostly vivid personalities. Besides the subject of this month’s blog – Ani – Pleven has bestowed on us media diamonds such as Slavi Trifonov, Gala, Anna Tsolova and a host of other celebrities I can’t think of right now.
All of them, of course, are overshadowed by the brilliant and elegant figure of their most regal fellow townsman, namely – My-Husband.
Besides the greatest city, Ani and I are also united by the greatest star sign.
We Sagittarians are extroverts. If we don’t have a good natter on social media 10-odd times a day – mainly, of course, about matters concerning ourselves – we start to wilt and wonder what the point of this life is.
And what puzzles us most of all is how other people manage to live in peace when they haven’t had an update today on our extraordinarily interesting doings.
What we love most is regaling others with our successes, I won’t lie to you.
But if we happen to have a failure too – we’re not shy about spinning it into perfectly good material for a post, with lengthy reflections on the circumstances surrounding it. If by now you are not convinced of the pathological extroversion of our sign, although I’m sure you are – I’ll just tell you that my age-mate Mashin Men is a Sagittarius too, and I can rest my case.
Otherwise, we Sagittarians do have our good sides too – for the most part we are free of malice and genuinely happy about other people’s successes.
The third thing that unites Ani and me – and this is no longer a joke – is our love of running. In principle this criterion unites all the participants in the calendar. But I mention it because, for Ani and me, it is also the basis of the main difference between us. It lies in the different drive with which we pursue our goals.
Since the founding theme of the whole series of blogs about the girls from my MILF calendar is which of their traits I would like to develop in myself, with Ani it is the drive and steadfastness with which she goes after things. As well as the fact that the inevitable temporary setbacks that stand in every person’s way do not shake her in any way.
I consider myself very goal-oriented. I like to set myself a goal, map out the path to it and start working through the steps towards it. It gives me pleasure and lends meaning to my days.
But with me nothing is ever at any cost. If I see it isn’t working out, I give up relatively easily. I try to reach the goal in a different way, guided by the well-known maxim that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.
If I don’t manage to achieve what I want with a different approach either, I usually decide that it is a sign it simply isn’t meant for me and set my sights on something new to focus my efforts on.
Whether this is right or not depends on the particular case, but mostly it isn’t. I have given the example before of a former boss of mine, 10 years younger than me, who was looking for funding for a tech idea of his. He did the rounds of investors (often accompanied by me) with nothing but his idea and his firm conviction that it would come to fruition. He got dozens of rejections – that didn’t faze him in the slightest, and to this day his company is up and running, with world-class names among its business partners.
In his place, I would have given up after the 5th “no”.
But precisely for that reason, I worked for him, and not he for me.
Well, Ani has a stubbornness and belief in her own abilities similar to his, which I don’t possess.
About a month ago, she announced publicly on Facebook that at the National Championships in Veliko Tarnovo she would run 5 km in under 20 minutes. I know from my own experience how hard it is for a woman who only started running in her 30s to achieve such a result.
For one thing, it is physically hard – I myself only managed to get under 20 min for 5 km at the age of 42. Since then I have gone under 20 a few times and I know it isn’t quite so unattainably out of this world. But the first breakthrough seems impossible, precisely because of the psychological barrier of the round number.
We all remember the story of the first sub-4-minute mile – for years it was considered beyond human capability, until Roger Bannister did it in 1954. Since then the floodgates have opened – 1,755 athletes have officially gone under 4 min for the mile.
The basis for comparing the two achievements is questionable – the two results are of completely different magnitudes. One raises the bar of how we perceive the limit of human capability as a whole, while the other is merely amateur. But for me the comparison is valid, since it explores how our mental and physical capabilities interact.
Fate evidently keeps track of how consistently and devotedly I write my blog about the MILFs, and wanted me to have observations of Ani not just online but first-hand too. So it decided to send me, completely unexpectedly for me, to the same place and time where Ani would attempt to get under 20 mins for 5 km.
The place turned out to be the stadium in Veliko Tarnovo, and the time – the hottest you can imagine, even though it was already getting on for 6 p.m.
We met Ani herself, who, despite being in the grip of pre-race nerves, congratulated me on my 10 km personal best, which I had set the day before. That made a very good impression on me, because before a race that matters to me, I am so tense that I can’t take in at all who I’m meeting and talking to, let alone remember what the person in question was up to the day before.
Ani didn’t get under 20:00 that day. Given the heat, it was no surprise.
But don’t go thinking the story ends there. It would have ended there if Ani weren’t Ani.
Perhaps, if someone fails to reach a publicly announced goal, they will find it most expedient not to make much noise about it.
Not Ani. A new status of hers followed on Facebook with an analysis of the run in question, in which she reaffirmed her intentions, as well as her firm conviction that one day she will run 5 km in under 20 min.
Something I am sure of too. A person grows through their experiences, and Ani does it publicly.
I personally have seen my fill of statuses about their authors’ successes or pseudo-successes, in which they reproach us with pathos for not knowing how much hardship went into them. I don’t know why, but the preachy note of the “you only see the tip of the iceberg, only I know what sacrifices I made to finish (say) this half” kind fails to provoke in me the much-sought admiration. My gut reaction is – either tell us everything that only you know, or don’t bother us at all.
I find more inspiring the posts in which people also reveal their difficult moments. We all go through them, and if they didn’t exist, success wouldn’t have the same value and sweetness.
And I am sure that success lies ahead for Ani with her “5 km under 20 mins” project precisely because of these traits of hers that I want to have – her unshakeable faith in herself, her consistency and her sense of purpose.
As Einstein said of himself, though it applies to all consistent, ambitious and goal-oriented people:
“If you ask someone to look for a needle in a haystack, most people will stop as soon as they find it. I, however, keep looking to see whether there are other needles.”
