Ankles

Backstory



Once more with feeling.



5/28/11

Timeframe

I can't imagine doing a triathlon. Not because I don't want to, or because I think it would be too hard, but because I started off this summer wanting to train for both a marathon by December and a 100 mile bike ride by July 9th, and I could not find the time to train for both. There is not enough time in a day. When you work a full time job, need to go out and bike 50 miles in an evening and then hopefully have time to eat, sleep, and have human contact, you literally run out of time. And I think that's how triathletes are born. And any great athlete. It occurred to me while riding the other day that if I only had 2 hours but could only go 35 miles in that time, and I couldn't add anymore hours until the sun went down, I would just have to start biking faster to get more distance in for the time I have. And that's how they do it. There are many great athletes who balance jobs and families. How do they get so good? I'm starting to believe that they are the ones who are willing to push themselves in the time they're given to achieve goals that would normally take more. They're the kind of people who know what it means to want something, define the meaning of dedication, and love the pain. They love to work hard. It's not about sacrificing the balance you need in life so that you can give more time to something else, sometimes it's about using the time you have for one thing to the fullest. When I have time to train I already work hard. And now I need to learn to work harder. Because great people take the time they're given, they set their goals, and they make it happen. I guess that's every moment though. You only have a certain amount of time to sit at a family dinner, to sit down and play monopoly with friends, to walk the path along the creek in the woods, to love another person, to have a conversation, to listen, to learn, to build strength. Milk every moment for what it's worth because each moment has an allotted amount of time and it's not going to wait for you to be finished or feel ready before flitting away.

5/27/11

Intertia

It's not leaving home that's hard, it's uprooting from where you've become familiar and comfortable that is. And maybe it's not just that. When you leave home for an extended period of time, and you leave things behind, it's opportunity that you miss. The guitar you can't take with you but you know you'd like to plunk around with on spare time, the books you won't get a chance to read on a rainy afternoon, the heels in the closet that you'll miss desperately if your friends happen to have a girls night out. It's the what if's and the options coupled with the familiar and sentimental that make uprooting such a shock. Once every week. Four times a month. Twelve times a summer. The last thirteen years. Uprooting is not an event that gets easier with time.

5/26/11

Memory

"Touch me
It's so easy to leave me"

Heard it in the greenhouse while watering flowers. That line stopped me in my tracks. Ironically enough, this song brings back lots of memories.

5/25/11

Inbetween time.

I come home from work every day and I know I should go biking, because I'm training, but I never want to. But I know that the second I start riding it'll be like pulling teeth to make myself turn around to go home. Why is this? I am baffled by how much I love riding but how hard it is to get myself out of the house. What is going on in this inbetween time that is making me not want to go? There is a daily war raging which consists of unmotivation, a desire to be happy, and a desire to find balance in what I want to do with my time. It rages in the inbetween time.

5/24/11

A memory of rain.

I was asked, or possibly I asked, "What is your favorite memory in the rain?" I can remember the feeling of being rained on so hard I felt like I just climbed out of a pool. I can remember the feeling of running through the rain laughing. I know the feeling of mud between my fingers and toes. But I cannot place my finger on a specific memory that I cherish that occurred in the rain. The people I asked about their best memories in the rain had trouble even thinking of any. I find this to be a travesty. As I try to pull out my favorite memories I remember walking nearly a mile in the rain to a lake to go skinny dipping for the first time, I remember biking 110 miles in a freezing chill, I can see the torrential downpour of a Rhode Island storm, I remember my freshman floor sprinting through our campus jumping in puddles. I do remember all of those good times. But I wish I could remember that shining memory made perfect by rain. I want many many memories of the rain.

5/8/11

Never Again

Note to self: next time you tell yourself "Never again," take your own advice and never do it again.

5/7/11