Yesterday was emotionally and physically grueling. I am working near home now. It is a weird feeling. When I am on the road and working, my sleep is interrupted and I am exhausted, but for all intents and purposes, life is totally on hold. I eat, sleep, work and work out. There are no other priorities. When I am at home and all of life's details are tugging at me, it becomes very difficult to be so tired. At the moment, I am not busy enough to wear myself out, relax about money and finally fall asleep as I normally would. Instead, my sleep is interrupted but there are none of the usual upsides working in my favor. The result... one very incoherent, cranky woman.
On top of that, one of the other braiders (that is what I do... at least for now. I'll discuss the new job later) has a pair of pretty aggressive German Shepherds. They ran down my old dog and punched a few tooth holes into her back. That was upsetting enough. Later that morning, I found out that a friend is gravely ill and has been suffering with far more pain than I ever realized. Those things, mixed with my angst and anxiety over moving away from my beloved town, in a base of exhaustion and stress, and made bitch soup.
The soup chef ran another 5K last night. Not only did I feel leaden while I was running, I allowed EVERYTHING to piss me off. I was running near a group of children to whom a race course was a playground and their antics and capers were irritating and slightly dangerous. They were hurdling cones (IE. jumping at them, not over them and sending them flying into the crowds of runners), yelling, screaming, weaving in and out of traffic, while starting and stopping without care for who they tripped or interrupted, etc. It was enough to irritate me on the best of days. Yesterday, it made me borderline sociopathic. I was wishing for a pox upon all their houses. (Not really but to post what I was actually thinking on the Internet might be irresponsible)
When I warmed up, my legs felt totally leaden. I could barely move. I felt tired, dehydrated, and stiff. I warmed out of it okay and found a pretty good rhythm. Then they called everyone to line up twenty minutes before the gun. It was cold and we were packed in so tight that I couldn't stay warm. I had no strategy for dealing with this (let's face it, I have no strategy other than try not to fall down and watch out for stationary objects). By the time the gun went off, ancient oak trees could have run faster.
I wasted as much energy as possible being pissed off instead of settling into any kind of zen space. Then I started thinking about all the events of the day. I was disgusted with myself for not running faster, berating myself for worrying about a little discomfort when this friend is dealing with pain I cannot even comprehend, feeling sorry for myself that I am going to have to leave a town I love (for a fantastic new job in a fantastic city... it's just not a warm city. Like 10% of Americans would kill to have any job and right now I have two that pay well... add disgust with my own lack of perspective to the list), being angry that these dogs have turned one of my dogs into a midnight snack... AGAIN (Hate them), and generally feeling like poo. This is not the formula for a good race.
AND yet, I managed to cross that finish line faster than I ever have before. In the spirit of the evening, I was frustrated and disappointed in my time because I wanted a PR by a LARGER margin. Okay, maybe there needs to be a bit of an attitude adjustment on all fronts... except maybe the dogs. If they snack on my sweet puppies again, I will have Shepherds Pie for dinner!!!
At present, I am cleaning my house (and by cleaning, I mean procrastinating by blogging) because that is the shortest route I know to a good outlook on life.
I'll let you know how that works out.
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