Blog Hopping...And Hoping: And A Little About Me

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”  ~ Anne Frank

It's been a Loooong summer at my house and besides running, working and child entertaining I have had neither the time nor the mental/creative energy to write a blasted thing - and this makes me very sad, and frustrated.

So when I was asked by Diane Wilhelm to participate in a little 'blog hop' thingamajig, I thought, "Oh goodie, something to get my writing butt in gear". Of course I received her message at about midnight, after a 3 hour frenetic, exhausting drive through the Colorado mountains capping off a day of watching and waiting and preparing to run and then not running...etc etc etc...at Leadville 100.

So after that "Oh goodie" thought, came the "Crap. I'm exhausted. I can't do more". But I said "Yes".  And here I am plucking away at the keyboard, and I want to thank Diane for the nudge - for thinking of me and spurring me to action. I really need a swift kick in the patooty, but this works too! I have missed writing entirely too much, and without writing I lack grounding. And so here goes...

You can check out Diane's post at: http://www.boldmovesdiary.com/something-different/

The Blog Hop is titled: "My Writing Process" and it covers these four questions:

1. What am I working on?

A better question might be: What am I not working on??? Golly, I have so many things percolating around in there, that it's a mess of craziness in my head. I have a million and one projects: Book ideas, half written blog posts, short stories (Yes, I USED to write fiction - but that's too scary to share ;) , that sometimes I don't know where it begins and ends.

It would be lovely to say: Oh, yes. I'm working on a book - I mean who isn't working on a book??? It seems that everyone I know has either written a book or is writing a book. Even my husband has written a book and is working on another, and I have to live with him! So, yeah. I feel like a total loser.

At this point I just need to get back in the habit of writing and carve out some little bit of time to do it. But my life right now makes this very difficult. And yet, it's true, I believe, that we make/find time for what matters...and so if it matters...

My dad was great story teller and writer, and always bemoaned his lack of time for reading and writing. His sense of duty, to take care of so many things he may have cared less about (though he cared about taking care of others which lead to his actions) meant he never made the time. These opportunities don't just fall into our laps. You really must go after it with a pitchfork. Now that he is gone, I find this a tragic thing. I don't want to follow in those shoes...

2. How does my work differ from others in my genre?

I guess you would call this blog a 'running' blog, but more often than not I'm not writing about running itself but something I thought about while running or something that running and life share in a general sense. As a college philosophy instructor for 16 years, I find it impossible not to bring philosophy into every aspect of my life. So, it is an essential part of how I view the world, and that comes out in my writing. Sometimes my approach is pretty analytic and I pick things apart to make sense of them and other times it's synthetic, and I try to put the seemingly disparate pieces of existence together in an attempt to make sense of things that just don't always make sense.

This blog is also fairly personal, and this is a good thing and bad thing. I'm thankful that my mother doesn't read it. I've opened myself up a few time here and shown things to complete strangers what I have never shown to those closer. Perhaps it's the anonymity of the interwebs that makes me feel comfortable doing this, but for a fairly private person, it's strange and risky and scary. And yet it's the scary posts that I've received the most heartfelt response to - when I reach out and readers reach back, and it helps them and it helps me - and so, it's worth the risk. If I am nothing else I am always ME. What every that is, it comes out, even if I don't know what it is.

I was once told, after I started my own business, that I needed to watch what I wrote. I thought long and hard about that, and honestly, this idea made me feel pretty sick, and it didn't make me feel very good about myself. I have to sensor ME? How depressing is that?  I decided that I had to continue being me, and if people didn't like it then they needn't work with me. Period. I am always who I am, and I don't want to associate with anyone who wants/expects me to be other than I am. That may make me a bad businesswoman. So be it.

“Don't bend; don't water it down; don't try to make it logical; don't edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ~ Franz Kafka

3. Why do I write?

Oh dear...Why do I write??? Well, I've always written, though sharing what I write is a more recent thing - and initially I kept my identity under wraps because it was just too terrifying to attach my writing to ME. I need to write. It's like I need to run. I need to love. I need to connect. I need to go out into nature every-single-stinkin-day. I need see beautiful things. I need to see that there is, somewhere, justice in the world. We have needs and we have wants. Part of understanding who I am is knowing the difference between these two things. My life is richer when I view it through a writer's eyes. It is just that simple. I see things differently when I write - when I'm in the midst of a writing project. 

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” ~ Anaïs Nin

Socrates maintained that we are most human when we are discussing and arguing. I suppose this is my way of being human. Writing is the attempt to reach out, out into that great big world out there, and to connect, somehow, with someone.

4. How does my writing process work?

Oh, I really don't have a "writing process".  When I'm inspired to write about something I just sit down and do it. Some posts take 20 minutes to write, and some take 2 days. I rarely work on anything for longer than a couple hours, and even that is rare. When I sit down to write I am there because I have something that is bursting at the seams and must be released. My ideas usually come to me when I'm running, and my best writing (as in most satisfying to me) happens when a thought is fresh and vivid. When an idea takes me by the throat and shakes me a bit. That's when it's good - for me, that is.

I wish I could be more purposeful, more methodical. I remember reading about John Cheever, everyday, sitting down at his desk in his underpants and just writing. Writers who do it day in and day out and are disciplined - Oh, how I admire that. There was a time in my life when I would have loved to call myself a 'writer' (Okay. I still would), but without that discipline, it doesn't happen. I suppose if I could simplify the other stuff, then that could happen, but now life is overflowing - which is good, and hard. Then again, that is just another excuse...

“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” ~ Ernest Hemingway

So that does it, as a start, for me. For now. And so I hope, as with most things, that this will spur me on, and get me thinking again in a way that gets my life vibrating again. For that's what writing does. And running. And love. And that's why we're here. To vibrate. For all we really are is energy. Shake it up...

Next week:  I'm handing off the baton to two bloggers who I know well and admire as people and writers:

Danica Lucker @ http://www.runworkliverepeat.com/, A fellow 'running' blogger who has supported my efforts from the get-go, and is the real deal in writing and running and parenting and all the other hats she wears.

Peter Beal @ http://www.mountainsandwater.com/ , who is my husband. Yes. Talk about nepotistic. But I wouldn't have ever started blogging without his example and encouragement - and he will also try to take credit for my blog name - but in fact that was a collaborative effort. He writes about rock climbing, nature, art and much much more.

Courage: An Active Virtue

"You will never do anything in this world without courage. It is the greatest quality of the mind next to honor." ~Aristotle

“A man with outward courage dares to die; a man with inner courage dares to live.” ~ Lao Tzu  

I've spent a fair amount of my life chewing over the qualities, attributes, ideas surrounding, meanings attached to, implications of, possible ramifications of, confusions over: Courage, authenticity and integrity.

These were things I delved into in graduate school, though that was hopelessly out of fashion in uber analytic American philosophy. So this became a personal, somewhat private, obsession. I wrote my masters thesis on Integrity but that question remains unsettled as all essential questions often do. But recently I've become more consumed by questions concerning courage. Perhaps it's because I fear I lack this most primary of virtues. Or perhaps it's because I fail to see courage when it's there.

 And I wonder; Am I possibly confused about what courage looks like? What it actually IS?.

So what is courage? (and no. This is not the first, nor is it likely the last, time I've written on this) Well, obviously one way of looking at it is as the virtue of acting in the face of fear, danger, standing your ground (literally or morally). It's feeling fear, recognizing that a situation is perhaps threatening, and dealing with it rationally while still feeling the fear. As Aristotle says: Courage is feeling just the right amount of fear - not too much (cowardice)  and not too little (foolhardiness).  Courage is dealing with a situation based on the realities of the situation itself PLUS your individual ability to respond to the situation. Bah blah blah. I'm not so interested in this kind of courage right now.

Because courage is also something else - something perhaps even bigger. It's not just a reactive virtue. That is, it's not just something we need when some situation is foisted upon us - it is a virtue we need in order to create a meaningful life - and that is the ACTIVE side of courage. When something is pressed upon us we have little choice but to respond in some way - and hopefully we will do well. But what about the courage when we act on something even when we are not forced into it.

Runners get this. As silly as running is, we are a little bit courageous every time we step out the door for a run (it's safer to stay on the couch or stay in bed) - every time we sign up for a race - every time we toe the line with butterflies in our stomachs. AND especially when we do something that pushes us out of our comfort zone - and where that zone lies is entirely individual. And that is an active choice. It doesn't happen to us. We do not have to do this thing. We choose to do it. And that choice changes us forever. We are not the same person after as before. That act of courage contributes to our characters - a courageous character - whether we see it as such or not. But, if you just do the same thing over and over, if you do the things you are pretty sure you can do, does that require courage? Yes, I think it does a bit, but not as much as when we do something that scares us.

We (like to feel/believe that we) are all safe in our little corners of the universe - the ones where we feel confident, in control, safe, or at the very least, not in peril (of course this is a colossal lie, but it makes us FEEL we have control). But that is not what we are here for. What we are here for is to discover what we have to give, where we can go with this one life we know we have (others are as yet unconfirmed). And every single time we do one thing that makes us feel uncomfortable and scared but also a little bit excited, then our lives become greater - for that spreads out into all aspects of life.

Think about something that scares you but also makes you smile inside and out, and you feel a little gitty at the mere thought of it - at the audaciousness of it. And then do that.

 “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” ~ William Faulkner

Courage is found in unlikely places.” ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Why I'm Not a 'Real' Running Mom

 “I’m probably just as good a mother as the next repressed, obsessive-compulsive paranoiac."  ~ Anne Lamott

The 'Running Mom' movement has really, really, gained momentum, and I am happy and grateful for it. I'm grateful that moms have the support of other moms to get out there and run: to carve out time for themselves; to understand that they have a right to claim that time for themselves; to get that they are better moms when they take care of themselves, that they still count too. Let's face the truth - there's still A LOT of people out there who believe that mothers should always put their families before themselves in everything they do. We moms even foist this crap on ourselves, berating ourselves for being selfish if we really want to go for a run. Moms have serious issues claiming time for themselves and feeling okay about it, so the moms running movement is a fantastic development, and it means that so many more moms are out there running, feeling strong and supported and empowered. And this makes them better moms. And let us not forget, that 40 or 50 years ago, women were simply not allowed to run long distances. And mothers??? No way. It went against nature. Things have changed so much, so much for the better, even in my lifetime.

Before I begin: A disclaimer
What I am about to say has to do with ME and me alone. This is not a comment on my friends, who I value and treasure, and who happen to also be moms. This is not about the wonderful groups of moms I sometimes run with - they energize and invigorate me. I envy their belongedness (Hmmm, There's a world) and I'm just trying to find my place in this silly world.

But here's my thing - I am NOT a 'Running Mom". Oh, I wish I was. I wish I fit somewhere, but I just don't, as much as I have tried. I usually feel that I'm in a no-woman's land of neither here nor there, and it can be a lonely place - or at least an awkward place, for me. I don't fit with my kid-less friends, and I don't really fit with my mommy friends - well, not the way they fit with each other.  It's sort of like that truism: Being a mother (biological) does not necessarily make you a mother/mom in the sense that matters - the "mothering' sense. There's reproduction - simple biology - and then there's more. Well, just because I'm a mother (I hope in BOTH the biological and nurturing sense) and I'm a runner, does that make me a "running mom"...OR, another mother runner????

First: I'm old: Older than all the other moms who have kids the age of my kid. Now, I may be immature and 'young for my age' and in denial about a lot of stuff, but I'm still sometimes 20 (or more!!!) years older than many of them. I could be their mother!!! So, this is awkward, and while they are nice to me, the truth is that they relate to me differently than their other mom friends.

Second: I was 'me' for a lot longer than I have been a mom: How do say this without offending people I admire and care about??? I am a mom who doesn't really feel that this is what defines me - but it's part of me. I spent the first 43 years of my life as 'me', no kids, no desire to have a kid until I hit 41. So, this mom thing is a bit of an after thought, and truth be told, I often feel like a bit of a fake in the company of other mom-runners. I mean this wasn't just part of my nature that manifested itself at the appropriate time. I'm all off, as usual. Un-natural. Odd. Oy.

Third: I was selfish for 43 years and that habit is ingrained: I've never had a problem claiming time for myself for running. My husband and I DID argue about OUR time, but we both stood our ground and claimed it. Yes, this can be a point of friction, but we worked things out, usually. That's still something we have to balance. I ran through most of my pregnancy. I bundled up my 5 week old daughter, in a Colorado, January winter, and ran for hours with her in the BOB without the slightest guilt about it. In retrospect, perhaps I should have felt guilt, but at that point, a new-old mom, I had no running mom friends - so I didn't even know how this stuff was done. I wasn't even on Facebook then! I knew running. I did not know mothering. So I muddled my way through. What did the other, 'real' moms think of these mothering gaffs? I can only wonder.

March, 2017: Three moths old

I suppose I approached the whole thing a bit like some of my climbing mom friends. Interestingly I do not see a 'climbing mom' movement the way I see a 'running mom' movement - maybe climbing moms are different? Hmmm. But my climbing mom friends took their infants out to the crags in back packs, bundling them up and attempting to keep them safe from any rock fall potential. Bringing the kid to the crag just seemed to be an extension of bringing the dog to the crag.

April 2017: 4 months old

Perhaps it's just the fact that I ran for so many years before I became a mother. Perhaps this is all 'in my head'. Perhaps I am making something out of nothing. Perhaps, perception is creating my reality. Or, maybe it just is true that some of us don't fit nicely into these things, as I have never fit anywhere. And this is one reason I love running - Runners often don't fit well anywhere, and find a fit in not fitting along with others who just don't fit so well. And mom runners, themselves, may not feel that they fit so well with non-running mothers which is why they gravitate to this community.

And yet, becoming a mother changed me. I may be a little less selfish. I know there's someone else in the world who I would die for without question and who I could not possibly love more, even when I'm angry as hell at her. Being a mother makes my actions in this world more important. She adds to my self, something I could not know before - but even that is a selfish thing - all about me - what she does for me. She renders all my actions more important in some intangible sense, can't quite put my finger on it, way.

And so I am a mother. And I am a runner. Does that make me this breed of 'mother runner'? I don't know. And perhaps I'm not the only one out there confused and conflicted about how these pieces fit together. It's a work in progress.

A Father's Advice

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”  ~ Umberto Eco

My father has been gone for 7 and a half years. He died 4 days after my daughter was born. And I never got to ask him about all the parenting stuff because I had no experience with that and so I wouldn't have known what to ask him. Now questions occur to me almost daily. Though he was 1600 miles away from me I talked with him daily that last summer and fall -  over the course of his illness, while I was pregnant - I was creating a new life, and he was dying. 

Of course I've written about my father many times before, mostly with respect to running. He is why I am a runner - both the encouragement he offered and the example he set, but he made me in other ways as well. I get my philosophical temperament from him. My mother always got irritated and bored with our philosophical banterings and digging into subjects that made her squirm - like the absurdity of God. For us, these exercises were necessary.

 
My dad was a horticulturist. He began working in a greenhouse, in the Garden State, at 16. Now, this was a tough Brooklyn kid. He grew up in Flatbush where all the Irish kids were destined to be cops or inmates, as he told it. His delinquent proclivities lead his parents to send him away to school in Goshen, New York, fearing he was falling in with the wrong element. Soon after, the whole family moved to Cranford, New Jersey. He drove hot rod cars too fast, drank too much, and carried his cigarette packs rolled into his shirt sleeve. He was just a bit of a hellion boy. But, as my mom describes him - he was different from the other boys. There was something deeper there.

So what would lead this tough guy to start messing with flowers? And how did he know, at 16, that that was what he wanted to do with his life (he claimed that he knew right away)? I asked him this once, when I was a teenager. His response: "I knew that I would want to do it even if they didn't pay me".  I will never forget those words. They burned into me and set me on one path rather than another.

We say things to our kids. We never know what will stick and what will bounce off, away, forgotten down the path to oblivion. Today I am grateful for the things that stuck and for the father that I got.

Being Present

"The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present." ~ Eckhart Tolle

Time passes. Things happen in time. But in reality, time is nothing. All there is is now. The past is no more. The future is nothing but possibility. Sometimes we become confused about the real nature of this existence we have in our grasp now. This happened to me recently and now I'm trying to learn from it.

How did it all begin?...

When last I wrote I was in the middle of my great experiment: My week off from running post Colfax Marathon. This was the first voluntary (non-injury caused) break I've taken in, well, ummmm, yeah. Decades. Though I've only been back at the racing thing for a little over 5 years, I still ran and ran and ran, day after day, week after week, year after year - steadily since I was, hmmm, 21ish. Before that it was more on and off. But, for most of my adult existence I have just run and run and run.

So, I took a week off - Okay, technically 5 days (a work week) and then ran a short 6 mile jog with some friends and then took the 7th day off. During that week what did I do?? I biked, quite a lot for me, but short rides by biker standards (20-25 mile rides) and I swam. But zero running. Oh, and weed pulling - I did a fair amount of that. And I tuned into my recovery - I enjoyed my rides - took it all in - went to new places - saw old things in different ways. It was a pretty good week.

And then Monday rolled around and I ran - a sweet, hungry, freeing 10 miles, bright and early on a sparkling Memorial Day morning. And then I went off to enjoy a wonderful time on the Bolder Boulder Women's Elite Press Truck.

 
...and then off to the Boulder Creekfest with the family. It was a frenetically busy, wonderful day.

And then as I stood on the potty line waiting my turn, I pulled off my shoe, standing on one leg, to extract a pebble. As I pulled the shoe back on I felt a sharp pain at my sit bone. OUCH. Oh. What...the...He%%??!!. And it continued hurting, a little, in the worrisome 'what is this' way that these things tend to do. The next day I went for an easy 5 mile jog but all was not well. So, I gave it an extra break choosing to bike the next morning. And things felt better by that night, good enough to give a short gait clinic and run with a local running group.

And as I jog around Waneka Lake, as the sun sinks behind the Rockies and the air cools, I am tuned in completely to everything my body is telling me. I am being present...

Things are looking up...But after a week off, and this little blip, I'm champing at the bit a bit.

The next morning: I leave early for another easy, testing, 5 and things feel much, much better. Not 100%, but better. Phew. Nipped that.

Then I jump on the bike and coast the half mile down to my daughter's school to volunteer for the Heather Heatherwood - her school's end of the year 1 mile fun run.

And, all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. This day is a shiny happy place. All is good and right.

The kids arrive, assemble, and we're off.

 
My husband, daughter and I trot along and my daughter is doing great. Friends crack jokes about how it's cheating that I'm pacing her. We all laugh and soak up this moment. I pick it up a bit to get ahead - snap a picture, fall back into the the flow, and repeat several more times. Each time I tell myself not to push it - but I feel good...
 

I keep reprimanding myself for going ahead too fast - for worrying about the pictures. "Just run with Sophia" I hear in my head.

As we turn and head up the hill, the last quarter mile, I see the fire trucks ahead, and a tall arc of water spraying up into the sky and showering the kids below. I want to get a picture of this, and so I gun it up the hill. As I get about 20 meters from the trucks, I turn my gaze back, over my shoulder to see where my daughter is. As I do so, my left foot hits a drainage dip in the road.

I never even see it coming, though the mistakes I've been making all along have been asking for it. But as my brain registers that my foot is not landing where and when it's anticipating the landing, my entire body responds. I catch myself with my still mending left leg - fully extended - and due to the dip, overextended. In an instant my hamstrings, glutes, and piriformis shoot intense pain to my brain. 'Oh no no no no." I say as I grab my butt and slow to a hobble. My left leg cramps up. I try to jog. No go. I walk to the finish, too slow to get there to see my daughter finish. I am stifling the tears as the day turns instantly dark.

Why the darkness? It's not actually the pain. It's not actually the injury, though I realize immediately that this one is serious (and yes, I am VERY upset about this - mainly because I caused this. Stupidity caused this). The darkness results when I realize that I was not present - not for me, not for my daughter, not for this day and these moments that will never happen again. We can get so sucked into taking pictures that we miss the moments, the actual experiences, and on this day I was slapped in the face with this truth.

I had succumbed to what Plato refers to as the world of (mere) image. A dull copy of the real. Even in the world of perception, there are levels of reality. A copy of an experience is pretty much on the bottom of the divided line. I had chained myself up in Plato's dank cave of ignorance, thinking that what I see is real, through that lens. But what's real is on the other side of that lens.

The rest of the day, I am in tears because I wasn't there for my daughter, for me, for my family. I missed out on something I can never have back. She ran the whole race, and I wasn't there. Why?? Because all I wanted was the damn picture. I should have been running beside her, with her. She will never run that run again. This is a day we can never do over. This is the first time I have looked at most of the pictures that I took that day.

And I hope I've learned my lesson. I pray that I have learned this one thing: Be present.

"Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment." ~ Buddha

Addendum: My awareness of this phenomena first occurred to me in 1999, at the Louvre, in the Mona Lisa room. I didn't own a cell phone at that time. Or maybe I did, but it was decidedly low tech. My husband and I stood before the Mona Lisa, and all around us were others, phones and cameras pointing at the painting. No one else was LOOKING at the painting. WTH??? You can see a picture of the Mona Lisa in any art book. But are you experiencing the Mona Lisa, as it hangs before you, looking through a lens?? Look with your EYES. Be there when you are there.
Similarly, we all know that a picture of a breathtaking sunset pales in comparison to the real thing. The picture is always a bit of a disappointment.

It's Better To Try and Fail, Than Never To Try At All

“I don't sing because I'm happy. I'm happy because I sing.”  ~ William James

Today I volunteered in my daughter's first grade classroom as I have every Tuesday this school year. This is the last week of school and I was tired from being very busy yesterday, so I almost didn't go. I didn't really want to go. But I did go. And now I'm very happy I did.

My weekly job is to go over their spelling words. Now the irony of this hit me square between the eyes from the get go, because, while I have been a teacher for sixteen years (college - so pedagogy is emphasized differently at that level) I have always been an atrocious speller! I blame this on my pedigree - my father's dyslexia, my own tendencies in that direction, and my Irish upbringing of verbal story telling - and my father was the BEST teller of wild tales (and a brilliant writer, though he was shy about that because he knew his spelling short comings) there ever was. I still hope and pray that someday he will, from the heavens, bestow that skill and heritage on me.

But, getting back to my point...

Today I went over the last of the "first grade words" list that each kid had not quite mastered. Some were incredulous: "I'm already on second grade words" they protested. "well, that's great, but you also need to know these too." I tried to explain. And when they get the word 'she' wrong, the response is 'Oh. I know that. I just forgot" with a look in their eye pleading with me to star that word and give them credit. Ah, kiddos, not everything works that way.

Do we want to just 'get it right' or do we really want to 'know' something???

So, today I work with one little boy who I have not worked with much because he is often with a para when I'm there. He has a long list of words to work through. And I will confess, at first I am not optimistic.

We work through the list, and then we get to the word 'hope'.
His eyes travel around the room. He watches some of his classmates going through a Lego catalog (Yes. reading it. Reading is reading.). And then he sighs. He has tried every word thus far.

Some he's gotten starred and others I add to sticky notes for him to take to study.

He looks at me and says, "Oh. I don't know that one."
I reply. "Okay. Try. You know the sounds. You can figure this out from what you do know"
He then looks into my eyes, and smiles. And slowly sounds out the letters, adding that "bossy 'e'" at the end.
"YES!" fist bump - and then I say to him, "If you don't try, you can't get it right. It's better to try and get it wrong then not to try at all. If you don't try then you always get it wrong."
And he tries every word that follows.

Some he gets starred, some get added to sticky notes. But he tries the rest.

Hope that sticks. And this got me thinking...

To paraphrase William James, and use his arguments in The Will To Believe for my own purposes:

It is better to try, and possibly get something wrong than never to try at all. Failing to try may mean you don't actually get it 'wrong' but you also can't possibly get it 'right'. Failing to try means sacrificing the chance to get it right. You may avoid error but should that be more important than knowing the truth?? If we try something new, something we may not know if we can do, we may fail. And that's a risk. But if we don't take that risk, we will never possibly get it right - learn more - know more about ourselves, our limits, and our possibilities.

"Our errors are surely not such awful things. In a world where we are so certain to incur them in spite of all our caution, a certain lightness of heart seems healthier than this excessive nervousness on their behalf...Indeed we may wait if we will, but we do so at our own peril..." ~ William James

With some things this matters, a lot: When matters are not guaranteed. When things may not be certain. When we aren't sure if we really can do something. If these things matter to you, to your life, if these things matter as part of your passional nature, as James puts it, then finding truth trumps avoiding error.

Do something you're not sure you can do, if it matters to your life.

Ha. I didn't even mention running in this one!!!  ;)

What I think About When I'm Not Running

"Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think what it might be. In running, the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms...On days I can't run, I don't feel "myself" and whoever the "self" is I do feel, I don't like nearly so much as the other. And the writing remains snarled in endless revisions." ~ Joyce Carol Oates 

Warning: Snarled mess below...

And that's all well and good, but what if you aren't running? What If you can't run? What if you have made the conscious choice not to run, for a bit, for the sake of your long term best interests?

But a chosen time away from running is quite a bit different from a break forced upon us - due to injury, illness, commitments, etc. And I can honestly say, that this is the first time in my life that I have made this conscious decision to not run.

And, it's okay, and it sucks.

It's okay because I know I can run. It also sucks because I know I can run. And the weather has been freaking awesome - awesome spring running weather (well, if you're out before the tornado sirens begin to wail).

It's okay because I can still do other things, and it sucks because I am doing other things but those other things take so much longer, and truth be told, nothing else does it like running.

And like Oates, I have a hard time thinking when I'm not running. So what do I think about when I'm not running????

I just don't know! Random things float through my head like so much flotsam and jetsam. There's no rhyme nor reason. No order. When I run, I go inside myself and find things I didn't know were there. I tune in and tune out. The world comes into focus and blurs.

And sometimes I fall down when doing this. In fact, in 2009, finally running after 10 months of exactly ZERO running due to injury, I prepared to run the Bolder Boulder (which was 15 months after the initial injury occurred) - which as it turns out, marked the beginning of the new-runner-me. My comeback to running post-injury AND my return to racing (I had no clue then that that was about to happen!) - and the Thursday before BB I fell hard on the trails banging myself up pretty bad - rechiping my previously chipped left elbow, and leaving my legs bloodied and bruised. Yes. That was 5 years ago today.

 

In these pictures you can't see the purple bulls-eye bruise on my elbow or the gashed left hip, but you can, faintly, see the bruises on both shins and my right knee.

So what's my point??? Good question. Where was I?? Oh, right...running...thinking...thinking...falling. See. I can't think. 

Focus, Caolan. Focus.

Okay. So I tried to go to that inside place when I was biking yesterday and almost dumped myself in a mega-deep ditch along 75th street. No Bueno. I try to go inside when swimming, but then I lose count of where I am. Today I 'came to' and couldn't figure out, for a brief moment, where I was, what time of day it was, and I had no clue whether I was on lap 16 or 46. Blah. Sometimes when I run, I find myself somewhere and it takes me a while to figure out where I am and where I'm going, but that's okay. When I get home from a run, I have imposed some order on the madness. It doesn't last long, which is why I need another fix the next day. And sometimes I return home with really good ideas - but here's the rub: Running ideas are like ideas you have just as you're falling asleep. They are brilliant, brilliant, brilliant at that moment. But then they fly away, out of reach. You can see them, but they are gone. The brilliance evaporates into air.

When I was injured, back in 2008-9, when my running days were over - I was taking a class on the Stoics at CU. How appropriate. As April and May came around, and my prognosis became more and more grim, I found myself completely unable to write my final paper. I took my first "I" (incomplete) for a grad class, or college class, ever. Ever (I did write that paper, a year later, just before the pictures above were taken ;) 

So. Now I'm on my 4th day of no running and I didn't realize until today that this is pretty much my 5th anniversary of being back as a runner, but back as a different runner. One who no longer takes what she can do today for granted. A runner who is aware that perhaps her running days will end sooner than she ever could have imagined, or, perhaps not. A runner who really gets that THIS day is what matters. And it's scary to understand just how important seemingly banal, uncontrollable things are to your core essence. Some things are in our control (for instance our values and how we react to situations) and other things are out of our hands. And the Stoics would tell me that I am a little fool for loving something so completely that is entirely out of my control...And I concluded that paper with the following:

The Stoic concept of happiness is very appealing in a number of ways: whether I am happy or not is up to me alone, and it encourages us to recognize and accept that it is futile to try to change what we cannot change.  In some situations, this is required.  However, in most situations, it sacrifices too much for too little.  The task before us, if we are to be happy and virtuous, is to cultivate our characters in a way that allows us to act in a way that is most appropriate and efficacious with respect to a given situation and guiding (universal) principles.  We may be happy when we do the best we can do.

And while a chosen time away from running is qualitatively different from a forced break, not running still leaves me with a muddled mind.

This week of no-running has caused me to take stock again. To think about where I've been where I am and where I hope to go. And I get that where I hope to go may be out of my hands, but I'm going to do the best I can do. And that's what I think about when I'm not running.