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Seeing Interesting Things

February 15, 2007 :: 10:33 pm

I think maybe I’m approaching Project 365 all wrong now. What I tried to explain in my previous post about it is that it’s not fun anymore; taking my daily photo is becoming one more thing on my to-do list. Because I go the same places and see the same things almost every single day, I’m not seeing anything unusual or interesting anymore.

I think that maybe I do see interesting things all the time, but it doesn’t register. I need to learn to NOTICE when I see something I like, and stop to record it, rather than letting it flow in and out of my stream of consciousness as I’m on my way to do other things.

The other thing I was thinking, along the same vein, is that I need to try harder to notice the simple beauty in everyday things. Like the curve of a tree branch, or a discarded cigarette butt, or the texture of a crack in the sidewalk. Or even like right now for example, the bottom of the lampshade in my office has a really nice curve to it. I don’t think I would usually think to take a photo of that.

I’m too worried about taking The Perfect Photo, every day is portfolio-worthy.

I wonder if it would be different if I weren’t posting my photos publicly to Flickr, where the world can view and comment on them (not that too many people have). Am I, in a sense, performing for this imagined audience, instead of really thinking about the goal of my project?

Brett suggested that I wake up 15 minutes earlier each day and take a photo in those 15 minutes. That would basically limit me to the inside of my house, for the most part… but I think that I’ll try it, and try to maybe find a part of my house that I haven’t ever seen to take a photo of each day for a week. I think that there are a LOT of individual spaces in my house I haven’t seen yet.

Yesterday Yvonne alerted me that the plants outside the front doors of our building were covered in icicles. Perhaps a sprinkler system malfunction? Anyway, they were still there this morning. I’m not sure that the temperature rose above freezing either yesterday or today.

Category Art, Deep Thoughts | Tags: | No Comments
Having trouble with Project 365

February 10, 2007 :: 11:27 pm
I’ve been having a lot of trouble sticking with my Project 365. I haven’t missed a day yet, but it’s getting harder and harder to come up with something to photograph every single day.
- I have a lot of routines in my life, especially on weekdays, and these routines seem very… well, routine. I get up, get ready for work, drive to work on one of two routes, park my car, walk to the office, work until lunch, eat lunch, come back to the office, work till 5, go to the gym or run errands, drive home on one of two routes, spend time with Doc, eat dinner, maybe watch a little TV, maybe work on my computer, get ready for bed, go to bed. I’ve tried taking photos on each of these “legs” of my daily journey, with varying degrees of success, but it’s unsatisfying. It feels like I’m not really trying; if I take a photo out the windshield of my car as I’m stopped at a red light, I’m really doing it just to get the picture for the day out of the way, and not because the view out the windshield is beautiful, or interesting, or inspires me. Later, when I post the photo, I can usually come up with a little description that makes it seem like it was my intention all along, when really I feel like I’m totally faking it.
- About 75% of the time, I get to the end of the day, it’s nearly bedtime, and I haven’t taken any pictures. My brain is frozen; ideas and inspiration are locked out. I roam aimlessly around the house, trying to think of fucking anything worth photographing. It’s too dark and cold to go outside, and it’s too late to go somewhere else. I open cabinet doors, looking for an interesting composition of bottles or jars. I think about taking yet another photo of the cats. I wonder if it’s worth it to take a picture of my messy desk, or a lamp in my house, or my feet. For example, right now it’s almost 9:30, I need a picture, and I don’t want to leave the house because I’m tired. What the fuck do I do?
- And I have GOT to stop taking pictures of the cats. Seriously. They cannot be my fallback subjects, my easy way out.
- Someone commented on my initial Project 365 post, “It is nice to see someone play with photos instead of trying to take the perfect one.” But I’ve begun trying to do that. I didn’t start out Project 365 with the intention of taking a GREAT photograph every single day; the point was to just take A photograph, period. Kind of a “can she stick with it for a full year” type of personal test. However, my own sense of perfectionism (and not doing anything halfassed) has since pulled me down the path of You Must Take A Fantastically Fascinating Photograph Every Single Day Or You Are A Failure.
- I don’t have daily opportunities to do anything or go anywhere interesting. Maybe I need to force the issue and figure out a way to make that happen.
- Maybe what I need to do is give myself specific assignments for short photo series.
At any rate, here are some of my recent photos… the ones that I like, that I don’t feel too ashamed about the half-assed way I went about taking them.
Category Art, Deep Thoughts | Tags: | 2 Comments
Belize: Day Six

January 17, 2007 :: 9:31 pm

This morning I did not have any adventures planned, yet I got up early anyway. This whole trip I have been getting up before 8 a.m., on my own. I suppose it’s probably largely due to the fact that we have been going to sleep somewhat early (11 p.m. or so).

Doc went diving in the morning, along with Brett, Kurt, and Megan. I think that he’s really enjoying it. The divemasters have cancelled the trips to Blue Hole and Glover’s Reef, so all the divers are just staying on the barrier reef this week, which I guess is still probably pretty damn cool. I puttered around this morning taking pictures, and then took the laptop to the lobby so I could upload some of my photos to flickr.

Even though I technically have an internet connection while here, I haven’t really been using it as much as I thought I would have. I mean, I know I’ve mentioned getting online for three or four days now, but when you compare it to my normal online schedule (averaging about 70 hours per week, I would say, between work and home), it’s nothing. The connection is slower than molasses in January, but I don’t know that that is necessarily a factor. I have not missed TV at all, I have not once had the urge to make a phone call, and I also haven’t wanted to listen to any music on my iPod. It’s weird how my nearly-total disconnect from the fast-paced hurry hurry world of my normal life, where I constantly attempt to absorb as much audiovisual information as possible, happened so quickly and easily.

Maybe that means that when the apocalypse comes, I will survive because I adapt well, and society will value me because I have skills that don’t require electricity.

Speaking of activities that don’t require electricity, later in the morning I sat in a beach chair in the shade of a palm tree and watched for Doc coming home from sea.

Once he arrived safely back on land, we ate lunch (I had a mini pizza with bacon… WAY too much bacon, and y’all know about how much bacon it would have to be for me to say something like that).

At 2 p.m. we hopped in a van and drove several miles out to a spot on the Sittee River, where we disembarked and got into canoes and kayaks. The kayaks were not the kind where you basically enclose your lower half inside the boat, and if you tip over you’d better hope you can right yourself quickly; these much less scary “sit-on-top” kayaks were very flat plastic boats with flat areas to sit on, seat backs to hold you in place, and little grooves for your feet. The canoes looked much safer, but we were told that the kayaks, despite their smallness and flatness, were actually more stable. So Doc and I decided to be adventurous and climbed into a blue kayak.

Which immediately started to fill with water. We were both horrorstricken by how fucking enormous we must be that we could sink a kayak between the two of us. We were both on the verge of scrambling back out onto the dock, but they told us that they were actually SUPPOSED to partially fill with water — that’s just how these kayaks worked. We were not entirely convinced, because there didn’t seem like there was much kayak to fill before the damn boat was completely underwater. But we decided to give it a go. So we paddled down the river, with a few inches of dirty parasite-filled tropical river water sloshing around our legs, feet, and unmentionables.

Not that I was paranoid about, you know, parasites and my nether regions. Not at all.

We paddled down a short stretch of river, shaded by graceful tall trees and under a nice little bridge that I was almost too tall to fit under — Doc paddling for power, and me using mine to steer. And then we emerged onto a very large pond, in full tropical sunlight. The temperature zoomed up into the high 90s, and I started to sweat. As far as we could see down the river, there was no shade at all. I began to think that this was all a Very Bad Idea; it was miserably hot and still and we only had a little bit of water between the two of us, and I had no clue how far we had to go before we reached the pickup site.

I began having flashbacks to the day that we canoed down the Brazos river for six hours in 100-plus degree heat, with only one gallon of water for four people (us plus Ginger and Kathryn, I think). The river was so low that we had to walk our canoes through the shallows for much of the time, and poor Doc had a screamer of a cluster headache and was getting badly sunburnt.

So I was having all these visceral memories of the Canoe Trip From Hell, and my mood plunged. I wanted to get this stupid adventure over with as quickly as possible, and so I attempted to paddle more quickly so we could get ahead of the pack and zoom on ahead. Doc was much calmer (probably actually enjoying himself!) and kept telling me that I didn’t need to paddle so quickly, or at all, and basically to just stop and look around a little. I kept thinking, snakes, mosquitos, heat, sunburn, headache; I was miserable.

Then, around the next bend, we saw it: a rain squall coming up the river, headed right for us! It was wonderful. We got soaking wet, and the temperature dropped. My mood immediately improved. I began to slow my frantic paddling and enjoy looking at the huge orange iguanas in the trees and on the banks, the turtles, birds, and various other wildlife. Kathryn even saw a crocodile. Luckily I did not, nor did I see any water snakes.

After about two hours, we reached a little dock near where the river emptied into the Caribbean Sea, and we hauled our canoes up to the trailer, got into the van, and went back to Hamanasi.

At dinner, I wasn’t feeling all that well and I couldn’t eat much. I didn’t even want dessert. This may have been partly due to me feeling extremely uncomfortable because our dinner group had expanded at the last minute to something like 14 people, and the Hamanasi staff was balking at putting together a table that big when we hadn’t let them know ahead of time (and rightly so), and members of our party began moving tables around on their own and insisting that Doc and I not eat dinner by ourselves, which we were attempting to do in an attempt to alleviate the clusterfuck. After nearly a week of social interaction, I also felt like my supply of social energy was running dangerously low at this point. (I am, after all, an introvert and I need lots of alone time.)

Our group had made plans to go out to a little bar in Hopkins Village called King Kassava, to have drinks and hang out with some of the Hamanasi staff and village locals, and up to this point I had planned to go, even though I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to it (me + strangers + alcohol = much awkwardness on my part). However, I realized during dinner that I was becoming more and more anxious about the prospect of going, and after a discussion with Doc, who understood that I was feeling anxious and graciously agreed to do whatever I wanted to do, I told everyone that I wasn’t feeling well and had used up all my social energy for the week. Of course there were protests (“we’ll come back as early as the earliest person wants to come back!” — it never works that way, and I said so) but I held my ground. We came back to the room and watched a movie instead.

I think I made the right decision. Kathryn told me later that I would definitely have been uncomfortable at King Kassava — she very much felt like an outsider there, and if she did, I certainly would have, even more so.

I wonder sometimes if maybe I’m developing an anxiety disorder. I often am terrified at the prospect of going to places where there will be people I don’t know, especially when I don’t know how or if I’ll be able to escape.

Category Belize, Deep Thoughts, Diving, Sociology, Vacation | Tags: | No Comments
Project 365

January 4, 2007 :: 10:53 pm

I have assigned myself a Project 365 for 2007: to take one interesting photo every day for the entirety of 2007.

A Project 365 can be anything you want it to be — taking a photo, writing a poem, collecting a found object — and the only rule is that you do it every single day for the whole year.

I decided to take a photo each day. I’m not requiring of myself that it be high art or amazing technique or anything like that; in fact, I suppose it doesn’t even have to be interesting. As long as I do it. My original idea was to take 365 self portraits, but that’s a LOT of pictures of me. I don’t think I want to see 365 pictures of myself. So I’m going themeless, although I’m sure some of them will be self portraits.

Actually, in a way, all of them WILL be self portraits, because every time I choose a subject for a photo, I reveal a little something about myself…

Anyway, at the end of the year I will basically have a photo diary of the past 365 days. Sometimes I have trouble remembering what I did two days ago, so I think it’s going to be very cool to be able to look back and see something that I did or some place that I was or something that I saw, every single day.

I’ll also have a nice big collection from which I can pull the best shots and add them to my portfolio. (Oops, did I just give away my secret identity there? Oh well. It’s not like 98% of y’all don’t know me already anyway)

I guess part of the point is committing to the challenge of doing something every single day besides brush my teeth and shower (yeah, I’m pretty low maintenence!). But I also think that it’ll challenge me creatively, as a photographer (make that a wannabe photographer; I’ve dated enough of them, worked with enough of them, and married one of them, to know that my talent ain’t shit in comparison).

So if you are interested in watching my life progress before your very eyes, you can bookmark my Project 365 photostream.

Category Art, Deep Thoughts, Goals | Tags: | 2 Comments
happy anniversary to me!

November 27, 2006 :: 11:52 pm

Today is my 7-year wedding anniversary! Married for 7, together for 11. Wow. It’s been a great ride so far. I highly recommend marrying your best friend if you get the chance. If you’re lucky, your best friend will also be smart, cute, sexy, talented, caring, generous, communicative, and just as much in love with you as you are with him.

We generally forego giving each other gifts on our anniversary, in part because it’s so close to the holidays, and also because we really don’t want much in the way of material things. Instead, this year, we decided to get something together that we both need. I bet you didn’t know that Year 7 is The Vacuum Anniversary (also known as the Sucking Things Anniversary). Meet our new baby: The Infinity Shark. It sucks! But in a supergood way! It’s like the Dyson for those who don’t have $500 burning a hole in their pockets!

Here’s something I’m learning about growing older. Getting a blender for your birthday instead of that Barbie Dream House – at some point you realize that you’ve crossed over the line and the blender gives you much more of a thrill when you rip open the wrapping paper. The things you want and need get fewer and far between, and much more expensive. I don’t need a cute little thing to display in my house; I need a new vacuum or an oil change instead. Boring and banal? Maybe. But whatever, I don’t care. I’m happy.

Category Deep Thoughts, Doc, Love | Tags: | 1 Comment
credit where credit is due

September 1, 2006 :: 8:26 pm

Before I forget, I must give credit for the name of my new blog site (Something Shiny Disorder) to my good friend Brittney, who as far as I know, coined the phrase for that lack-of-focus feeling.

Hey! Something shiny! That’s really pretty, I think th—
Oh look over here! Something shi—
Wait, look over there! It’s something shiny!

My life is kinda like that.

Category Deep Thoughts | Tags: | 1 Comment
stress fracture update

August 27, 2006 :: 7:22 pm

I went to the doctor last Wednesday for my regular yearly checkup, and I also asked her WTF was going on with my left leg. She said that it seemed like my hamstring was definitely strained, and there is a possibility that I have a stress fracture in my shin. Stress fractures usually don’t show up on X-rays, but she sent me to get my insides photographed anyway (hello, deductible, nice to meet you, thanks for being so high). I am supposed to cut my training in half for two weeks to see if that helps, and it looks like that’s not going to be a problem because my leg is really only letting me do so much before it begins to scream at me to stop.

That’s one of the things that I’m slowly learning: how to interpret my body’s signals. Where’s the line between pain and discomfort? How do I tell if I really should stop or if I’m just being a big baby and need to push myself?

Anyway, I haven’t heard back about the X-ray results yet. I wonder if maybe she sent me to get them because it’s a prerequisite to having an MRI? Which is what she said I may need if it doesn’t get better and nothing shows up on the X-ray. I don’t think I want to pay for an MRI… they aren’t cheap.

Thursday I tried to run after work. I was only going to do 2 to 2.5 miles, half of what I’d normally try to run, but I had to stop after only a mile. Shooting pain was running up my leg from toes to thigh. Yesterday morning, I decided to try again (36 hours off… that should be enough time to heal, right?!). I was able to run 2.25 miles, and then my leg started giving me signals that I’d better quit lest something unpleasant happen. I decided to be smart and actually listen this time, because I’m pretty sure not listening is what got me into this mess in the first place.

I am definitely falling behind my training schedule (I was supposed to do 6.5 miles this weekend, but so far 5 is the most I’ve been able to accomplish). But I have time. The race is not until December. I can catch up, as long as I try to keep my endurance up while I’m recovering. Yvonne and I are ahead of schedule, anyway. Plus, she’s going on vacation to Mexico next week which will give me additional time to recover and catch up to her. She’s always going to be better than me, but that’s OK because it gives me someone to look up to, someone close enough to my level that I’m not discouraged, but enough ahead of me to give me motivation to attempt to keep up.

I made a decision the other day: I am going to complete the race, even if I have to walk more of it than run. I am going to finish it. No “but my leg prevented me from becoming good enough to do it!”; no “I got injured and had to quit!” No excuses. I am in the best shape of my life and am starting to actually become satisfied with my body, and I don’t want that to end.

I also had a minor epiphany related to training. I was freaking out because I know that I need to run probably 5x per week, but I also need to crosstrain in some way. I need to do some sort of stretching routine (such as yoga) to stay limber and strong but I also need to lift weights for extra strength and because it’s good for your bones, and also swimming would really help out the upper body that I’m ignoring by running. But Jesus Christ, there’s only so many hours in the day! How can I possibly fit all that in unless I’m at the gym 2-3 hours each day?! (And some people do spend that kind of time at the gym, but I am not one of them. I have better things to do.)

And then I realized: I am in training for a specific goal, and to that end, I need to focus on the particular activity that will help me achieve that goal. I need to run (primarily), and once or twice a week, do a different activity to crosstrain. I don’t have to do it ALL right now. Later, after the race, I can focus less on running and more on variety. Mixing it up like that will keep me in excellent all-around shape.

Friday at lunchtime I went to yoga class. I haven’t been able to go all summer because the summer classes are at 4 pm, and it’s hard to get away during the workday, and that’s actually just a lame excuse because the real reason has been lack of motivation. It seeemed like yoga was not going to help me increase my running endurance, and so I chose to run instead — getting the most bang for my workout buck. But I convinced myself to go on Friday… and it was freakin’ awesome. It was EXACTLY what my body needed. And now I realize that it’s probably been detrimental that I haven’t been going all summer. I desperately need this type of crosstraining: slow stretching and body weight resistance. So I have a renewed committment to go to yoga twice a week now.

Sometimes, though, it seems like if it’s not one thing, it’s another with me lately. I am way more prone to injury than I used to be. It was the torn rotator cuff this spring (which is loads better now, not perfect but I don’t notice discomfort on a daily basis anymore and I can lift groceries in and out of my car now!). And now I set this admittedly admirable goal for myself and try to do something really really good for my body, and I get the double whammy of hamstring and fracture. Maybe I’m just not being careful enough. But I don’t want to turn into one of those people that’s always being super cautious about everything, oh no, i’d better not participate in life because What If.

I guess that if the marathon can teach me to better listen to what my body is telling me, maybe that won’t happen.

Category Deep Thoughts, Health, Marathon | Tags: | 1 Comment
hitting a brick wall

August 22, 2006 :: 8:55 pm

I seem to have hit a brick wall in my marathon training. I got up to 5 miles a couple weeks ago but haven’t been able to top it. I guess part of it is that I went on vacation (although I did run 3 of the 5 days I was out of town, for a total of 8 miles).

I am having two separate issues with my left leg, one of which is likely either a bad chronic shin splint, or possibly a stress fracture. The other issue has something to do with my hamstring… I cannot stretch that leg hardly at all (toe touches are nearly impossible), and when I run there is occasional pain that shoots either up from the back of the knee through the thigh, or down to the toes. I don’t know that running is making it any worse, per se, so I’m just trying to stretch it a little bit when I’m warmed up, enough to keep as limber as I can without making it worse. Oh, also, my leg occasionally feels weak as I’m running, like it’s about to buckle.

The other thing is, I have had insomnia for a few nights, and I don’t have much of an appetite. My stomach constantly feels like it’s full of butterflies. Don’t know what’s going on there.

So, weirdness all around. But like I told a friend, I’m learning to work with the leg pain rather than let it stop me.

I was supposed to have run 6 miles last weekend, and didn’t, and still haven’t managed to this week. The most I’ve done is 4.5. I may take it “easy” and just do my 6 mile this weekend rather than 6.5, and basically fall back by a week. Maybe I just need a break, what with the leg and all.

I’m sure it will pass. But it’s depressing in the meantime. I feel like a failure.

Category Deep Thoughts, Health, Marathon | Tags: | 7 Comments
cars!

June 11, 2006 :: 3:22 pm

I’m kind of embarrassed by my last post. It makes me seem like a whiny baby. I thought about deleting it, but a larger part of me doesn’t really want to, because that wouldn’t be true to myself. I WAS feeling sad and lonely that night, and I don’t want to edit my personal history to make me sound better — to myself or others. I am who I am. I know y’all love me even if I am moody sometimes.

On Friday I did go running over the lunch hour, as planned. I really liked getting it out of the way in the middle of the day and freeing up my evening, but my energy level did not seem quite as good as it usually is in the late afternoons. Also I wasn’t sure how the timing would work out — getting to the gym, running, showering, and getting back to the office within an hour (it didn’t quite work). I ran 3 miles, although I’d only planned to do 1.5. My legs were really burning and I thought I’d have to stop, but I pushed myself hard to 2.5 miles and by then the pain disappeared, so I went for all 3.

I think I’ll try it a couple more times and see how my energy is, and if I can streamline the timing somewhat.

After work I went to Gloria’s with Yvonne, Nate, Jim, Brittney, Chelsea, and also Bill from our office. There was much laughter, sangria, and margaritas all around. I decided to come home afterwards rather than see if anyone wanted to hang out, because I was a little tired from my lunchtime run and the alcohol.

Saturday was a day of errands — the bank, the shoe store (where I located a pair of black slide sandals nearly identical to my ancient pair whose sole has cracked in half — but they’re MENS shoes, strangely enough; see photo at right but imagine them in black), and the grocery. Central Market sends me these great coupons, usually for things like free meat or $10 off groceries with $40 purchase. So I ended up with a free 1.25 pound sirloin steak (dinner tonight!) and some free blueberries and ice cream. I did not get any exercise in Saturday, but I was intending it to be a day off, so I don’t feel that bad about it.

Tonight we are going biking around White Rock Lake. Nate and Yvonne plan to join us as well. It’s pretty damn hot out right now (97 degrees) so hopefully it will have cooled off a little in a couple of hours when we meet them. This morning I baked some blueberry lemon corn muffins and this afternoon I baked some buns that are supposed to be similar to the ones served at Schlotzsky’s restaurants. We’ll see about that. Now I’m cooking a mini-meatloaf that I can slice for a sandwich tomorrow.

We saw “Cars” this morning. It was fantastic! I wasn’t sure how they were going to make an entire feature film about automobiles, but they have that fucking Pixar magic working in their favor. I wonder if Steve Jobs’ reality distortion field is reaching that far?? One of my favorite parts by far is the end credits. Definitely stay all the way through! I won’t spoil it for you by telling you why; all I will say is Monster Trucks Inc.

“Cars” reminds me a little of one of my all-time favorite “old-style” cartoons — the one about the son of a taxicab who wants to be a racecar.

Category Deep Thoughts, Food, Marathon, Movies, TV | Tags: | No Comments
sometimes you can’t make it on your own

June 8, 2006 :: 8:51 pm

I’m kind of feeling friendless and unloved tonight. I hate this feeling. The rational part of my brain knows it’s not true but that little area is currently being crushed by the part of me that feels depressed and sorry for myself. Sometimes it feels like the world goes on and makes plans without me and I’m being perpetually left behind and left out, never able to catch up. And then little voices whisper “so why even bother, nitwit?” (Maybe you — yes, you — love me anyway… do you? Yes that is a desperate plea for outside affirmation… sad, I know.)

I know that the little voices are the manifestation of Resistance. I just began reading a really interesting book called “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield. In it he discusses the very real force within us all, but especially in creative types, that he calls Resistance, and this is the force that does everything in its power to prevent us from actually fulfilling our life’s purpose. This is why I am a painter who doesn’t paint. But far be it from me to blame some “force” for my problems — I know the force is me. But maybe visualizing it as a “thing” will help me be able to overcome it. I don’t know, I’m not that far into the book yet. We’ll see.

I took a yoga class this afternoon in lieu of running. i’m really glad, because running seems to be making my muscles very tight, and I think that I really need the yoga to help keep me limber. So far this week I’ve only run 5 miles. Friday at lunch I’m running another 3, because after work I’m going to a happy hour with some friends/colleagues.

One last random thing: Luxuria Music offers a fantastic (free) iTunes music stream — sophisticated lounge, jazz, swing, retro… great stuff! You can just turn it on all day and listen. I’m feeling hipper already.

Category Art, Deep Thoughts, Marathon, Music | Tags: | 6 Comments
Out-of-context quote of the day

May 30, 2006 :: 7:52 pm

Overheard in the hallway at work today: “So NOW she’s worrying that her unborn children will drown in our unbuilt pool!”

Category Deep Thoughts | Tags: | No Comments
marathon training, day 3

April 17, 2006 :: 9:35 pm

Ran this afternoon, even though I really REALLY didn’t want to. It was over 100 degrees outside. I went my 3 mile route, and I think I ran nearly 2 miles of that. I had water but halfway through I had to quit drinking it because it was just sitting in my stomach making me feel nauseous and it was SO hot outside that I was afraid if I kept up that pace I might throw up or faint. So I mixed in some long walking stretches and kept crossing the street to walk wherever there was shade.

I’ve got a LONG ways to go. It’s going to be fucking scalding outside for most of my training time before the marathon. I may have to figure out an alternative locale. I seriously thought about calling Yvonne and telling her that I wasn’t going to do it, because today it felt like there was NO WAY I will EVER be able to run 13 miles if I can’t even run 2 without feeling like I’m going to die.

But I know that I’ve got nearly 8 months between now and the race. I’ll get better, and my debate with myself over quitting today is going to seem absolutely silly.

On my return route, I walked past a woman sweeping her sidewalk. She appeared to be my age, maybe a little older. I smiled as I passed and said “Hi” to be friendly (which is totally against my nature… as an introvert, I am uncomfortable with strangers, but I had kind of a revelation that if I don’t start faking social norms I’m going to end up one of those cranky old people that nobody likes). Anyway, I said hello and she smiled really big and said “You are looking so GOOD, girl! You’ve lost weight!” I semi-panicked and furiously thought “Oh my gosh, do I know her? How does she know me?” I took a chance and said “Really? Thanks! So you’ve seen me running on your street before?” And that’s how she knows me. She has seen me running and either she really thinks I’ve trimmed down or she was just being polite. Anyway, we had a short conversation about exercising, diets, being consistent, and the fucking scalding temperatures outside.

Whether or not she actually meant what she said, it made me feel really good. Also, I was proud of myself for having a friendly conversation with a stranger and not looking for the first escape hole I could find.

Category Deep Thoughts, Marathon | Tags: | No Comments

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