Despite Rip's caveats and regrets on those "standards", I will admit I still used to look at them from time to time and think "man, once I get to 'Category so-and-so', I'll have 'arrived'..."

But frankly, by the time I hit that category or got close the next one, I had my own, better informed, personal standards that had replaced them. For one thing, those standards don't fit my anthropometry, so I was constantly bemoaning one lift's progress while exulting in others'. It's silliness, really...but pretty common.

So one day I looked at the chart and was amazed at two things. First, that I'd basically gotten what I'd dreamt of back then, but hadn't thought about it in ages. Second...that it didn't matter anymore. To adapt the old quote about money (variously attributed to Henry Ford, Rockefeller, et al....probably Mark Twain, too, since almost everything eventually gets assigned to him...), how many pounds on the bar does it take to make Donaldson happy? Just a little more.

I've learned how to be content with my progress while being productively unsatisfied with my numbers.

And you know what? That's precisely what's gotten me some pretty decent numbers as a result, five pounds, two pounds, one pound at a time, over the course of years of aggregate progress and learning. I still have moments where I'm writing out my plan for a workout and I come to a halt, thinking, "I'm warming up with weights in my press that I used to dream about maxing on the bench," or "I distinctly remember the moment I first barely locked that out with an alternating grip for a single, and it's boring as a double-overhand warmup now."

Now it's all about how to sustain keeping the next PRs coming, getting better at managing my stress and recovery without screwing it up, getting better at being objective with my programming, and such. And that against the backdrop of the fact that, some day, the last PR is coming, and I'm raging against the dying of that light as long as I can.

As C.S. Lewis said, you don't get second things by pursuing them directly. You get second things by pursuing first things.

In other words, it's become about the process.

At the risk of violating my Scandinavian modesty genes, I'm pretty sure that's a benchmark of maturity as a lifter. It probably shouldn't take the better part of eight years to get there, though...but I'm glad to be there, however late I am.