STOP FIGHTING!

That is my goal this year, to stop fighting EVERYTHING. I'm learning, and I hope I can keep on this path of allowing rather than forcing. Damn, I make life difficult sometimes. Have you ever noticed how everything tends to fall into place when you STOP trying to force things to happen?

I quit quitting, too, for now anyway. Well, I resumed running a little bit and did the same with my writing. So what if I'm a jogger now, and who fucking cares if I'm not the next David Foster Wallace? I found out that when I stop forcing myself to do things, they are more enjoyable. This winter sucked on so many levels, and I got overwhelmed, stressed out and sick, really, really sick. I'm finally feeling better. I'm sure I will have setbacks, but this is my lesson this year: STOP FIGHTING!

For the last few weeks, this one story I was trying to write was making my life miserable. It just wasn't happening. Instead of letting it go for a bit and working on something else, I started fighting it, struggling through painful sentences that were embarrassingly awful and took forever to get out.Today I switched gears and worked on other projects, and WOW! what a difference it made. It helps to have an idea of where the story is going. I can often begin a story and have it lead me to places I didn't expect, but without an idea of how it will end and a general concept, theme or message, it's difficult to get the job done.

The other big thing I need to work on this year is the fear factor. That's one of my biggest issues with running, but I have had tremendous health, energy and emotional blocks related to the sport. It's understandable that fear would surface often when I even think about a run. For now, I'm just trying to get a little bit of consistency without forcing it. If I need an extra day off, so be it. Considering how many days off I took this winter, I'm going to be way ahead, even with any extra down time I take now.

I don't know about racing. I'm very out of shape, and my confidence level is pretty much at zero right now. If all goes well, I might try some structured workouts down the road to get an idea of where I am and whether racing will ever be a possibility again. Right now it's not, but that doesn't mean it will be that way forever. The main thing for me is NOT to force it. If I can race, great. If not, at least I can jog. Shit. I'm lucky I can jog, given all that has happened, plus the fact that I had $0 to spend on PT, rehab or follow up apts. I'm doing this shit by myself.

I'm so incredibly out of the running loop. A million (very slight exaggeration) people ran the Bolder Boulder today, and I went for a trail run in the afternoon. I still can't bring myself to watch that race. It's like some terrible reminder of where I was and all that happened. I get a Pavlovian shock response to it, cringing every time anything related to the Bolder Boulder is mentioned. It's hard to believe that I ran 36:17 on that course. I bet I couldn't even break 50 minutes now. Gah!

Speaking of fighting, while running on the trails today, I saw these two little kids fighting. I don't mean they were arguing, these two were shoving, hitting and making a scene. Of course it's Boulder, so the parent there was ignoring them. At one point, the little girl stepped back and attempted to kick what I assume was her brother. She did a full on I'm going to punt this fucker across the planet effort but missed by a fraction of an inch when he stepped back just as her foot was about to make contact with his chin. Again, the father did nothing. Not my problem, but I predict some trouble in the future of this family.