Recently, I have been feeling stuck, unsure, lost, uninspired and just generally down. This is unusual for me. Most of the time, I'm a positive, happy person and I have my kids and a lot of interests that keep me busy and fulfilled. I don't like to complain, because all of the problems I have are first world problems. I think I know what I need to do to get out of this funk, but it would require some drastic changes in my current life. Therefore, I have not made these changes and that in turn makes me disappointed in myself. If I'm being honest, there isn't much that is holding me back from making these changes, except for my fear in what these changes will mean for my current lifestyle and my current identity.
I know that I need to make these changes, but in the meantime, for the next few days at least, I will try an exercise in forced gratitude, because I know I have a lot to be grateful for. Maybe it will make me feel a little bit better. I will start by listing and describing 3 things that I am grateful for each day.
I'm healthy. It's trite, but it's true. During my run this morning, I was listening to a podcast about a transgender woman who had a mountain biking accident which took away her mobility for 9 months. During this time, she was forced to not do anything and to be alone with her thoughts. She ended up deciding to come out as a transgender woman during this time after 2 decades of living with this secret. All I kept thinking was how grateful I was that 1) I don't have that struggle with gender identity and 2) my body is healthy enough to go out and run most days. I'm not as careful about nutrition as I once was, but I still pay attention, and I still think that running has forced me to make good lifestyle decisions, like going to bed early so that I can get a run in before I have to get the kids up, and eating well so that my recovery between runs is quicker. Being physically sound has allowed me to get outside and enjoy a walk into town just to get fresh air and get outside with the kids to play. Because of good sleep and eating well, my energy levels are high throughout the day and this allows me to function well at work and to be a good, patient parent. I don't take any of it for granted because I know what the opposite can feel like.
My kids are healthy. I try to enforce the same discipline with the 3 pillars of sleep, nutrition and movement with my kids. I can't say they are never ill, but they are rarely ill and they seem to function well at school and at home. I know that I am lucky that they are all pretty healthy. Of course, I have less control (much less control) over my teenager, but I still feed him and I encourage him to get enough sleep, although I know he needs many more hours than he gets. Now that school is in person, at least he is walking to and from school. For the younger kids, I can still set a bedtime and now that they are in school in person, movement is built into their days. I have been trying to hang onto the fact that I can still have a lot of influence on my 4th and 7th graders. I've been blocking time to make sure that I can help with homework, or at least help them figure out if they are behind in any of their schoolwork and just generally trying to spend time with them, knowing that they might not want to spend time with me in a few years. This past weekend I had the best time sitting outside of a local cafe having breakfast with them. We just sat, ate and talked and continued talking and laughing long after finishing our breakfasts.
My current fitness. It's so easy for me to get frustrated with my fitness, knowing where I want to be. But, I need to be grateful about my current fitness. It has been harder to enjoy this training block (for my 50K in November). A big part of it has to do with losing my training partner, who I trained for the 50 miler with. He has had injuries and is just generally way too busy to be running early morning runs and long training runs with me. I can't believe that I'll soon be running 20ish mile long runs by myself. I will really need to psych myself up for those. I might need to start using candy as fuel to keep things interesting. On the flip side, I am pleased that I appear to be getting my climbing fitness back. I still wish that the climbing gym was much closer. If that was the case, I could add in a weekday climbing session instead of traversing back and forth on the short section of climbing wall in my garage. I'm super stoked that my daughter is into climbing at the moment. I'm not sure how long it'll last, but for the time being, I'm happy to have a climbing buddy for weekend afternoons. I'm also proud of myself for keeping up with strength-training and core work. I've been consistently getting in a couple of workouts per week.
Powering her way up a 5.7+ overhanging route
More tomorrow...
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