A Regular Forrest Gump Over Here

Yesterday was beautiful—sunny and around 50 degrees. I knew that rain and snow were headed our way for today, so I made sure to get my run in yesterday when the weather was perfect. I intended to go out for about 45 minutes or so and just get in a decent run. I ended up running for 2 hours straight. I just kept going and going. It was really like I was purging something. Like all the sorrow and frustration that I’ve been experiencing lately about my life and my friendships needed to find some way out of me and this was the only way I knew how to get rid of it.

Needless to say, my hamstrings are pretty upset about it today.

And then suddenly it’s better

Sometimes you go to bed feeling like your life has let you down. Everyone is happy, but you’re not. Everyone’s at peace, but you are restless. Everyone can sleep, but your eyes are wide open, staring off into the graying light of your bedroom. Sometimes you go to bed feeling like it would be okay, you don’t mind, if you never woke up.

But sometimes morning comes and the sun is shining. You awake feeling refreshed, lighter, more at ease than you’ve felt in weeks, months. Come to think of it, can you remember ever feeling quite this way? There’s fresh fruit in the refrigerator. There’s already coffee brewing. There’s a sense that maybe today everything will work out okay. Sometimes morning comes and you remember that there’s always a chance to start over, to begin each day fresh and new. And everything feels fine. Not perfect. Not fixed. But better. And that’s good enough. That’s a start.

Rain

I love the moment right before it rains, when the clouds move over my house and the light from outside drops away. I can feel the pause in the air, like the rain is waiting for me to flashback over the storms I’ve witnessed in my life and for a moment, I can picture myself on a cabin porch in the woods with the sounds of rain pelting leaves for miles around me, or on the balcony of a beachfront hotel, looking out over the waves as the raindrops form splotches in the sand. Then the rain starts and I listen to the sound of it against my flat roof and the window panes. I remember that it’s February and it’s cold outside, and I’m thankful that I already took the dog for his walk. I think that maybe I should watch a movie, or crawl back into bed and let the steady patter of rain ease me back to sleep. But instead I just sit in my darkened living room, listening to the rain, and I try to remember what it was like to be a little girl who didn’t mind getting soaked.

One Of These Mornings

I’d like to wake up and just feel great. Like, “hooray, the day is here. Time to get up and get going.” But instead, for me every morning begins with a feeling of anxiety, a sense of dread. What am I going to fail to accomplish today? How much time will I waste? When the day is over and night settles in and I am back in this bed, what are the odds that I’m able to rest my head against my pillow and say, yes, this was a good day?

Just one of these mornings I’d like to wake and be the kind of person who is happy to greet the day. It would be nice to wake up and be someone other than myself.

I wrote something that I was going to post here, right now, but my friend Naomi and I are working on a book and I decided that I liked what I wrote enough that I’m going to save it, tweak it and expand it a bit and keep for that purpose.

I’m supposed to write 10 short pieces this month. That’s part of the book, part of the plan. Ten pieces, each a thousand words or less. I need 10 by the end of January, which should be easy, but of course proves daunting. I couldn’t figure out how to get started. I’ve got 50 ideas running through my head and I’m having trouble figuring out which 10 of those I’m meant to grab hold of and tug until they emerge as 10 distinct, separate stories.

So instead I just sat down to write a blog post because I had a bit of free time in between appointments today and I like what I wrote enough that I’ve decided to make it idea number 1. More often than not, this is how these sorts of things go for me. I stop trying so hard to find the words, and the words just come. Maybe I should stop searching so hard for success, for friendship, for real and lasting happiness? Maybe those things will just come to me when I stop trying so hard to make them appear?

Who knows? Anyway, I wrote something today and I was going to post it here, but I didn’t, so I posted this instead.

Happy Wednesday. A week from today we’ll be half way through this month. That’s surprising to me. It seems fast. I’m pretty sure I’m still dehydrated from all the champagne I drank 10 days ago.