Blissed Out
Topic: Daily Eruptions
It's very late and I'm operating on only 4 hours sleep from last night, so I can't be here long, but I just had to say I had the best day I've had in AGES! I turned in a shitty first draft of a personal essay to the first meeting of an online writing class I'm taking--check out www,writersontherise.com--very late last night which was a huge high. My first completed draft of an essay in four years...man, time flies! (If you've been following along, you'll know that a shitty first draft is a good thing, even if it doesn't sound like it.) When I got up this morning, I expanded out my thinking on why I'd been resisting training well for the marathon to why I resist doing so many things that I initially am excited to do. I don't want to get into it now, but I think I can safely say major gestalt switch. Amazing! Tad and I and Hans and I have been talking about this forever, and I thought I saw it the way they did, until this morning when I realized that now I see it the way they do. Long story short, it's about locus of control....

More later. Just happy to say I'm happy and really experiencing a breakthrough on the magnitude of the one I made in college that ultimately saved my college career. This one, though, if I can integrate it, is going to be even bigger. YAY! Blissful, blissful day.

Learning...slowly
Mood:  happy
Topic: Marathon
Where to begin??

Yesterday was my long run day. I got up at 3:15 a.m. and was out the door by 4:20 with a goal of finishing 26 miles by 1:00 p.m. Ophelia brought the heat and humidity back to the state, so I was glad to be out running under the full moon before the sun heated everything up. The run started out well. It was supposed to be "24-26 miles, easy" according to the online training program I've been following. I don't know about anyone else, but for me, there is no such thing as an easy 26 miles. Still, I didn't want a repeat of the last long run, so I ran very conservatively. For the first half of every mile (for the first 12 miles), I ran for 1 minute followed by 1 minute walking and for the second half, I ran two minutes followed by 1 minute walking. I felt like I could have continued this for a long time, especially if the temperature stayed cool. At mile 12, I changed my route, so I was doing 3.5 mile circuits rather than .5 mile loops and getting some hill work in.

My plan for the workout was to try to be as efficient at each stage of the day as possible. By mile 15, however, my mind and heart were no longer in it. I wanted to sit down in the grass and cry. Instead, I called Hans who was cranky because I was interrupting his viewing of Sunday Morning who said I wouldn't know if I could actually finish a marathon until I actually competed in one. Not helpful or supportive, but I decided to keep going. The most efficient I could be was 1 minute running, 1 minute walking, so I continued this until mile 20. That sounds pretty lame, but I was actually happy, because by mile twenty on all other occasions I had already given in to just plain walking. As soon as I hit mile 20, though, every time I ran--no matter how slowly or granny-like I tried to do it--I started getting tiny little cramps at the intersection of my calf and the back of my knee. They weren't the charlie horse kind of cramp I am used to that locks my calf into one giant knot. They were very specifically located and sharp and actually felt more like I would imagine something tearing would feel than like a cramp. So I resigned myself to walking the last six miles.

I got to mile 25. It was already well past 1:00 p.m. and I made a decision.

I am not running the Marine Corps Marathon next month. Nor am I going to ask for a deferment until next year. I am not ready. If I could somehow manage to go at my own pace, and not get sucked into the pace of the crowd at the beginning, thereby avoiding the otherwise inevitable asthma attack, I think I could drag my ass over the 26.6 mile course. But it would not be fun or exciting or exhilarating. It would be torture, for me and for all the volunteers who would be waiting on me to finish. And, if I couldn't do that, and I started too fast, I would have the asthma attack, I would run out of energy too soon, and I probably wouldn't finish. Neither option is attractive to me right now.

Why should I race up to D.C. on Saturday, spend all the money on gas and a hotel room, then beat myself up for 9+ hours while Hans visits the new Indian museum alone, just to drive home Sunday night. If I'm going to spend that kind of money on my first visit to D.C. with Hans, it should have something fun in it! We both lived and worked there and we've always talked about going and showing each other our favorite things in the city, but I wouldn't have the energy to spare or the time for that this trip.

On Sunday it became very clear to me that forcing myself to endure the marathon next month was breaking the promise to myself I made at the end of my 2001 Half-Marathon finish. I promised myself that I would not do that to myself again until I was healthy and well trained and really ready. I am not healthy, well trained, or ready and I really have nothing to gain from punishing myself this way.

In February, when I needed to make the decision whether I was going to commit to this year's race, holding the marathon out as a goal was useful because it got me walking and I started eating better, although we all know that went out the window months ago. So, in some ways, this commitment served its purpose. I don't hate running anymore--one of my primary goals. And I can comfortably finish 8-10 miles and feel really good. Definitely more than I could ever say before. So good for me! I'm in a better place now than I was a year ago. On the other hand, the marathon training did not teach me the discipline I was hoping for with either my exercising or my eating on any kind of long-term basis. I was sporadic in my training, focusing on and completing the long runs on Sunday, but blowing off many of the shorter runs and weight sessions during the week. In that way, the marathon, by giving me a goal and an end to always be looking toward, really was a distraction from my true purpose of finding a healthy lifestyle that I can maintain every day.

I could spend the next six weeks intensely focusing on eating healthier foods to support my training and being a slave to my training schedule in the hopes--not of improving my speed because it's too late for that--of improving my overall fitness level so the marathon might be less painful and more enjoyable. Or, I could spend the next six weeks focusing on listening to what my body wants and learning how to take care of it on a daily basis so I can ultimately be who I want to be.

There will always be marathons and triathlons and every other kind of crazy endurance event I might want to try. But I'm not ready for them yet. By aiming to finish this particular marathon I was trying to reap the reward without doing the work to get there. I was skipping steps. Trying to move into a house I'd built that didn't have a sound foundation and was going to fall down around my ears at any moment. I don't feel any sadness in letting go of this particular goal. I want to hold onto the conditioning I have achieved, and build on that, but otherwise I'm ready to let this go.

My next task is to learn patience and love and to get back in touch with my body so we can be partners rather than enemies. And I need to remember that, just as I am not my thoughts, I am also not my body.

In other news, I finally got in to see a very kind psychiatrist in Greensboro today who said I seem to think things through well and had my recovery well in hand. At this point she didn't recommend, nor do I want, medication for depression. She told me to watch the episodes that look like hypomania and keep working with my counselor and to call her if anything changes, but she didn't think I was presenting as bipolar. Very good news!! (I'm sure Hans will disagree because he is absolutely convinced that I am bipolar and no one's going to change his mind. Will someone remind me again, why am I living with him?)

Overall, I am feeling peaceful and optimistic and really at home in myself today. Nice! Will have to remember to feel this way more often....

Jennifer Weiner's BFF
Mood:  quizzical
Topic: Books
I'm sooo out of the loop with all the text messaging lingo and new acronyms...does BFF stand for Best Friend Forever? No, I don't have anything better to occupy my mind at the moment.

Living Vicariously
Mood:  silly
Topic: Books
I know I've written about Jennifer Weiner before, but here's a link to her blog http://jenniferweiner.blogspot.com/. I read her blog regularly (although I'm taking a break from her books after Good in Bed and In Her Shoes because there are only so many neatly happy endings I can take in close proximity), and her most recent post describes probably just about every 30-something female writer's dream.

Happy Blog Vomit
Mood:  happy
I haven't had time to blog for real lately. I'm in a rhythm in my head, though, where I'm blogging pretty much non-stop. Problem is, I don't get to the computer--or have enough down time if I am at the computer, which is more likely--to actually type up the nearly constant blog posts I'm writing....

It's been a really nice morning! I got up at 5:00 a.m. which I haven't been able to manage for several weeks, between the depression and the lingering morning darkness. There was a lovely little message in my inbox from Scott, one of my three fans, that got the morning started on a positive, "I'm loved!" note. I'm really glad he and I reconnected last summer at Matt's get-together.

And, speaking of Matt's get-together, he's planning another one next month. It's the weekend after I get back from Florida and two weeks before the marathon, and I don't really think I can afford to get there. Although, there is this little voice in the back of my head saying, "You know, you could skip the marathon, and spend the money you were saving for D.C. on a weekend trip to Michigan.... Wouldn't seeing all your friends be much better than punishing yourself for 8 hours in a city that no longer feels like home?" Not sure about that yet. Little bit afraid of bringing up the subject with Hans....

And, speaking of men who are afraid of me, it seems I've driven yet another one away (again). I now live within 30 minutes of Marc but haven't called him yet to get together because I'm not sure I've been the best company lately. (Plus, he's married to a girl and girls don't tend to like me hanging around their husbands much.) This morning, though, just after I received Scott's message, came a message from Marc announcing that he's moving to the Mile-High City! That means that once John recovers from his spinal surgery and is able to return home, Chad, John, and Marc will all be living in Colorado. They're going to force me to do a "Ones Who Got Away Tour" of their state one of these days! Especially if I could somehow tie in a visit with each of them with a workshop with Pam Houston. Haven't they figured out they can never really get away?

One other random event this morning: I am periodically a good telepathic "sender." I'm not sure I'm sensitive or tuned-in enough to receive, but with friends, I can often send out a distress signal or sometimes a question or comment. Hans is particularly adept at hearing me speak in my mind, although he doesn't always catch the message. Sometimes, he says I'm thinking so loud it's distracting. Usually, what happens is we'll be somewhere in a crowd where it's not easy for me to verbally say something, but I think it, and he turns around and says, "What?" Definitely not an objectively verifiable experience, but it happens often enough that it's a little freaky. We had a complete conversation once in the space of several seconds that resulted in Hans pulling the car off at an exit that we both wanted to stop even though there hadn't been time to say so aloud. (That was on our first road trip together, through the four corners area. The last time I did a let's-go-see-an-old-boyfriend-in-Colorado trek to see John. Interesting experience taking a new boyfriend to stay a few days at the house of an old boyfriend....)

And, on the Big Ride, I shouted Grant's name in my head once--during a VERY MANIC manic episode in Sandusky, Ohio--and he turned around and said he'd heard me! Fun.

This morning, though, I did it with a stranger. I ordered breakfast at McDonald's again (BAD girl!) and the woman at the drive-thru window was very busy talking to her manager while she was running my debit card. She handed me the sandwich, but not the orange juice, and in my head I said, "Please don't forget the orange juice," because I was worried I would forget and drive away without it. She immediately opened her window and said "What was that, ma'am? Did you need something else?" She did this while handing me the orange juice and I just shook my head and said, "Nope, that's it."

I know, it takes so little to amuse me!

More on The March of the Penguins, The Constant Gardener, Gilmore Girls, Katrina, and Hammer Gel later....

Oh! And I'm so glad the banner ads atop this blog have changed to ones about meditation rather than medication!! Although, I did use the word "manic" in this post, so I'm tempting all those yucky, depressing, and somewhat sinister bipolar ads to come back.

More Bad News for Animals & Science Out of Louisiana
Mood:  rushed
Topic: Daily Eruptions
Click here for news from the scientific community affected by Katrina. The story is sad and scary on so many levels....

No one talks about the numbers of lab animals lost in disasters--they're disposable anyway, right? The story mentions that none of the 5,000 animals at a primate research facility escaped, but it says nothing of how many of those animals survived. (The story does say that the facility "reported only minor damage," so maybe I'm supposed to interpret that as no loss of life?)

The thing about this disaster is that it teaches so much about interconnectedness. There are ripples and waves going out in so many directions. The storm's effects go so far beyond the immediate loss of life and property.

4 x 1 mile
Mood:  lazy
Now Playing: Tipitina by Professor Longhair from The Big Easy soundtrack
Topic: Marathon
Today's long run was only a four times 1 mile. The weather is better and I finished the 4 miles feeling pretty good physically, but it seems I've lost all mental and emotional motivation for finishing the marathon. In terms of meeting my marathon goals, being able to finish it will most likely be the only one I achieve. The weight loss and speed goals didn't receive enough attention over the last several months and so aren't even going to be close to what I'd hoped for.

So if I "run" the marathon next month, it is going to have to be with the understanding that I will be bussed over the bridge and that I will be the last or very nearly the last finisher, and this will have to be okay. If I am not okay with those things from the very beginning and if I am not out there just to be in the moment and moving through whatever presents itself with each step, then I shouldn't even put myself at the starting line.

Next week is the 26-mile training run and I have some mental work to do in the next seven days to make sure those miles go better than the last long run of 23 miles went, and to practice getting my head in the right place for the actual event.

My Own Weakness
In the last two days I've decided I have the strength to read the Internet headlines about Katrina, and I've even clicked on two of the more hopeful sounding ones. One was about Snowball (potentially?) being found and one was about a 6-year-old boy leading five toddlers and an infant to safety. In both cases I ended up sobbing because apparently there isn't a single story out of New Orleans that isn't also crammed full of one kind of horror or another. I'm just not equipped to deal with any of it. Not the racism that is apparent everywhere. Not the classism. Not the decisions about who lives and who dies. Not the stories of separated families, abandoned elderly people, emaciated babies. Not the mental images of cats and dogs swimming, or drowning, in metal crates as the water rose or being consciously abandoned by humans who somehow think their lives are of lesser value. I'm only good in a crisis if I'm in the crisis. In this case, the crisis is in me.

Missing Meditation, Missing Me?
Mood:  surprised
Topic: Daily Eruptions
I understood when I was on the Big Ride that I was participating in an extended meditation experience. I wrote about that quite a bit in my memoir. I also described it as "living poetry" in which taking the time to actually write poetry would have taken me out of the poetry I was living. Essentially, I was in the moment practically every moment, on the bike and off.

In the subsequent seven years, I have achieved that level of openness probably on one occasion only, during the week I spent at Reclaiming Camp. Again, I was in safe space and this time involved in active, actual "planned" meditation with a large number of other people.

The amazing thing is that even though I have lamented the loss of myself and have been trying to figure out why I can't "bring her home" from the Big Ride, it never occurred to me that it was the meditation element of those experiences, and NOT necessarily the "safe space" element of those experiences, that made them what they were. I have been feeling as though someone had given me permission to be my best self on those two occasions and blaming myself for not having the strength of character to give myself that same permission in my "Real Life." All this time, I've been thinking that the Big Ride and Reclaiming Camp were somehow outside of my Real Life--that I couldn't find my way to my self here the way I can when I step out of my Real Life into one of my adventures.

I have been absolutely exhausted lately and really tired of this depression. Grasping at straws may be one way to put it. So on Tuesday I decided that I was finally going to read Full Catastrophe Living by Jon Kabat-Zinn. It was first recommended to me when I was depressed in college, and I know it is the primary text for the local Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course I almost (long story) took last fall. I have owned the book since last spring and it has sat beside my energy healing books untouched all these months. As I was reading chapter 2, "The Foundations of Mindfulness Practice: Attitudes and Commitment," it occurred to me that the reason I didn't bring me home from the Big Ride was because I didn't bring meditation home!!!

According to Kabat-Zinn, there are seven attitudinal pillars of mindfulness practice: non-judging, patience, a beginner's mind, trust, non-striving, acceptance, and letting go. I engaged with each of these principles over the course of the Big Ride summer. They were natural extensions for me of the journey I was on. By Day 2, when I fell and broke my cycling computer and was the last rider leap-frogging the SAG van all afternoon, I was immersed in meditation and patience and non-striving and non-judging and self-trust. I already have strong experience with beginner's mind and I got a big dose of letting go when the ride ended. But it never occurred to me that it was the meditation--the active creation of space in which to practice these seven attitudes--that I needed to bring home in order to bring my full, whole self home with me.

It seemed that she was simply incongruous with the Real World, that she would not be appreciated, or understood, or tolerated here--certainly not encouraged or supported--the way she was in those "other" experiences.

I can't say that an hour of meditation every day is going to bring on the sudden return of myself to me, but I am going to try. Wouldn't it be amazing if meditation, this thing I've been playing with but never committing to, were the key to me, and I've been carrying it all along but never thought to use it in the lock?

To learn more about mindfulness, visit www.mindfulnesstapes.com

Dream Journal Entry
Mood:  happy
Topic: Writing
I had a dream this morning with Holly Prado in it. She was my poetry thesis advisor for my Master's at the University of Southern California. And this morning, she was in my kitchen, settling herself at my kitchen table (actually, it was the kitchen from the last house, because here, my kitchen table is in the dining room) and reading two essays I handed her before getting down to discussing the fistful of poems I had scrounged out of the pantry to show her. This is, of course, an unusual dream because Holly lives in SoCal and her students visit her at her house, not the other way around. When she put the essays down, she became a man about my age who looked something like a mix between Richard Marx and Michael, the gorgeous boy I asked out thinking he'd been sent to USC specifically for me but with whom it became painfully obvious I had absolutely nothing in common. He was excited about one of the essays (not so much about the other one), and Holly/Richard/Michael asked, "So, have you decided you're a writer yet?"

To read one of Holly's poems from her latest book of collected works, These Mirrors Prove It, visit www.cahuengapress.com/prado3.htm or click here to read her bio. Sorry, no pictures of Michael to show you, but you can find Richard Marx easily enough.