Where Have I Been? Where am I Going?

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

It has been a long long, long long long time since I've written anything. And the consequences are not pretty or pleasant. I have come to realize over this short hiatus that when I do not make the time to write I lose ME: My center, my focus, my vision, my plans, my passions, my purpose, my joy...

Running and writing are the TWO essential things that I must do for ME so that I can be me: be a better wife, mother, daughter, sister, friend, coach... I've been feeling like life is nothing but one drag-of-a-day after another. I wake in the morning as the stunning, brilliant eastern sun floods through our windows, and all I have been feeling is: God. I gotta get through another day...

So where have I been? Mentally? Emotionally? Because I haven't gone anywhere - and yet I have gone somewhere. I have lost myself. How this has happened I know not, but I am at a point where I at least see it now.

When you spend your life caring for others, and caring about caring for others, that this matters, that they matter, and that you want to be there for everyone, it can get out of hand. The lines between YOU and Them, between doing good, doing your duty, doing what you want, doing what you must, clouds everything else. And then you count for nothing. There's nothing left for you. Part of the problem is when you feel you give so much, but you aren't so sure others are there for you. You pour out your energy, but nothing is poured back in.

Usually I see the effects in a reduced desire to run. But I actually haven't lost my running mojo, I've lost my life mojo, which is much scarier.

And then my friend Sandra made a comment a couple weeks ago: "You have some exciting stuff coming up."
And all I could say was: "Yes. I do, I know. And yet I can't seem to enjoy it." When I said that, something slapped me, hard, in the face.

So. I am writing this for me, as I head off for my last long run, before I really start to taper for Boston. I will think about this for the whole 16 miles of solitude. I will find a solution. I know ONE part of the solution is to promise myself that I will start writing again, just for me. And so this is my start, because all long journeys must begin with that first step...

“It is not that we have so little time but that we lose so much. ... The life we receive is not short but we make it so; we are not ill provided but use what we have wastefully.” ~ Seneca the Younger