Tag Archives: running

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NEW DAY 33: Just keep moving

My last two workouts have been tough.

Friday was a real struggle. Not even running as fast as I can/normally do, I started feeling almost queasy with 10 minutes left to go. I powered through it — it took every ounce of mental strength and focus that I had, and I kept going. I did it so I could say I did it, so: I DID IT. I’m proud of myself for getting through that, but it felt rough throughout and for a while after. It left me feeling so icky that I skipped a Sunday workout to try to respond to the message my body seemed to be sending me.

Yesterday, I decided I’d do a 60-minute treadmill walk rather than an elliptical run. At the 50-minute mark, I realized I had a massive blister forming on the ball of my right foot that already hurt and was a big enough bubble that it was making my steps weird, and that was causing discomfort in my hip. I had to stop myself 10 minutes shy of the time I’d wanted to hit. (Luckily, my at-home blister remedies have been effective and the thing is already flat and painless.)

In the interim, I discovered that the cut on my knee has gotten infected. Yay! (I’m treating it now, and I think it’s responding.)

But you know what? It’s not all bad news.

At dinner with a friend on Saturday night, he asked: “Are you losing weight?” I said yes, and I was surprised he could tell. He said it was noticeable in my face.

That’s step 1! Next up: neck and shoulders.

I signed up for a DietBet earlier this month. It was already a week underway when I decided to join, which means I had 25% less time to lose the same 4% of body weight that I would have had if I’d joined at the start date of the game. The weigh-out was today.

I won by 1/2 pound.

It’s working.

**exhale**

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NEW DAY 15: It’s aliiiiiiiiiiive!

Forgive me, blog, for I have sinned. It has been **checks notes** 7 years (🤯) since my last post.

Every spring, I have to decide whether to renew the annual cost of owning this domain name. Every year since 2018, I have come very close to hitting cancel. It’s only out of sheer laziness that I haven’t. I finally figured that I’m paying for this thing — I might as well use it. There’s plenty to write, and if all goes well, there will be plenty more.

To say it’s been a strange ride since I last wrote in here would be a laughable understatement. To try to do any kind of meaningful actual update on those intervening years would be equally ridiculous. So I’m picking up here at this time code without concern for what was missed in the fast forward. The plot had its twists and turns, but the ending is still on its way and TBD by plenty of other factors.

What I will say about the time since February 2018 is that it can be characterized by a few choice words. The one rolling around in my mind right now is “almost.” I came close to realizing a lot of my priorities. Some of them, I did realize, only to see them crumble.

Frustrating. Sad. Wasteful.

In the past now.

This year has been particularly challenging, in a way that no year since 2018 has been — not even those pandemic years. I’ve been staggering through events in my personal life that have toppled the structure I had built atop what I believed to be a sturdy foundation, and which have left me questioning core pieces of my worldview. Everything about this time has been erratic. I’ve been emotionally volatile, my energy has been virtually non-existent from the simmering anger and sadness always coursing through me, I have been getting nowhere near enough socialization, my eating/sleeping/activity/bathing/general adulting habits have been all over the place; there has been no routine to speak of.

I’ve felt wronged, insulted, tarnished, judged, abandoned, unimportant, forgotten, betrayed, mistreated, and rejected.

I’ve felt stressed, alone, scared, confused, hurt, angry, stupid, hopeless, devastated, nervous, useless, mournful, and exhausted.

I thought more than once about giving up entirely.

I knew incorporating exercise into my life would make a difference. When I think of the time in my life when I was most emotionally, psychologically, and physically healthy, it was when I was disciplined around being physically active. The two-pronged problem standing in my way for months was a total lack of motivation alongside deep apathy.

Then one day — if you’ll forgive the facile, cryptic, and highly suspect jump cut (again) — everything in the space around me was suddenly batshit crazy. That’s coming from someone who was pretty sure she was the dictionary definition of crazy at this point, so to see that things around me had out-crazied me to the batshit level was… something. The abrupt intensity filled me with a new kind of restlessness that was frenetic, and HAD to be released before I exploded into a million pieces. And so I found myself back at the gym for the first time in years.

For the past two weeks, I have been sticking with my plans and commitments to self to prioritize my overall health.
I am running again.
I am preparing thoughtful meals for myself and not consuming meals from restaurants again.
I am managing my finances responsibly again.
I am writing to detangle my thoughts again.
I am making an effort to keep a social life again.
I am getting out of bed in the morning again.

I am trying again.

**deep breath**