It’s Groundhog Day. It’s Groundhog Day. It’s Groundhog Day.
Okay, you get it.
January went by in an oxymoron of creeping speed. Now trying to balance back out. Seeing my favorite band, Wilco, at The Fox in Oakland on Tuesday night really helped. Live music always helps.
Here is Wilco doing a cover of The Band‘s “The Weight” in their dressing room with Mavis Staples and Nick Lowe from last December. It takes that load right off of me. I hope it does for you too.
Not running regularly has had a detrimental affect on my writing, mainly in that I am out of sync with the schedule that afforded me the consistency of thoughts turning to words turning to sentences. The words are all still there, but in a nasty knot much like a pile of colored climbing rope a neighbor would pay us kids to spend time untangling while we sat outside on long summer evenings. I start to follow a a promising lead, and unravel a few snarls, then run smack into the giant clump of intertwined mess. My words are being choked by those snags.
However, I have had a recurring thought that I need to get out, even if not my best description, about two phrases I am banishing from my vocabulary. Banishment is serious business, as the lovelorn Juliet knows. Follow along:
It will be too soon if I ever hear someone say TO me again, “I’m just going to be brutally honest…” This was a favorite phrase of my ex-husband, who by all accounts was and is a bully and used the guise of honesty as a cover for merely being brutal. Consider how many times someone has said this very phrase to you and then, without missing a beat proceeded to hurt your feelings with an opinion they have about how you are acting or reacting to something that is causing you pain, frustration or worry. Go ahead. Think about it. I guarantee that 99.9% of the time, it hurt you more to be brutalized by a lack of compassion than to hear the editorial about your feelings from a person who thinks they know what is best for you. People who use the phrase “brutally honest” will hide behind their “good intentions” when in all likelihood they have not even examined the full scope of what being intentional actually means. Honesty is not truth. The truth simply exists and honesty is the courage to perceive truth without bias. No brutality is ever needed.
The next one I have decided to do away with is slightly more controversial since it is so embedded in our culture, and for me has probably been assigned a bullet point when describing my big personality. Here goes:
Tough love. I am breaking up with tough love. Similar to its cousin “brutal honesty” it connotes pain and confusion. From its oxymoronical phrasing to its overuse in popular culture by the likes of Dr. “How’s That Working For Ya” Phil, it simply must be banished from my lexicon. ”Tough love” has become a cover for sass and uninvited judgment. It’s often followed with the meaningless and condescending, “I’m just saying…” Having an opinion, and a strong one at that, is very different from “tough love” so I hope this doesn’t cause too much confusion for my family and friends who do value my intense perspectives.
I don’t need to love to be tough. I don’t need someone using the cover of love to deliver their opinion of my pain. How about people attempt to be courageous enough to sit in the aura of their loved one’s struggle? If someone is repeating a destructive pattern that has them unable to move forward and is causing you frustration, try being compassionate instead of “tough.” Believe me, the stuck person is being hard enough on themselves. Let me also apologize to anyone I have ever practiced this ill-advised strategy upon. I know for sure I have blurted things out about how someone “should” or “could” fix their situations. I have been working hard the last few years to be compassionate first and a problem-solving supporter later.
Whew… that felt good. Almost as good as a five-mile run. Back to the foam roller to fix this knee.
A friend summed up the new year’s arrival for me with this admonishment, “Ok, 2012. It’s only Day 6. Simmer down a little.”
I’ll go into how I am trying to cool my start to 2012 later, but here is what I am using as the basis for my emotional resolutions this year.
Ahhhh a New Year. I am an ardent fan of the calendar’s move from Decembers to Januarys, even if people much smarter than I am would start discussing relativity or some such astrophysics to explain time and space. For me, the New Year is not only a symbol of change, but a tangible shift in perception, from old to new, from tired to refreshed, from stuck to motivated. Although I am not a believer in the making of resolutions if only to be discussed around the water cooler, I am very inspired by reflection, acknowledgement and adjusting my patterns to reach new goals. The good news about all the resolution chatter is that it’s on everyone’s minds at the same time and that is an excellent place to be to take advantage of the collective great energy.
I have also decided that I need a few more days to get my reflections done and my 2012 action plan into place. Slowing down to MY pace instead of trying to match the hyperspeed of the 24-hour news cycle is my first order of business. I want my attention to be focused on the important details, not the din of everyone talking at once. One of my favorite documentaries of 2011 was “Bill Cunningham New York” which follows New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham over a year’s time as he pedals his Schwinn all over New York City snapping photos (on film no less!) of Gotham’s citizens and socialites and what they wear as they go about their days and nights. No other movie brought me as much joy as this one, even in the distinct irony that Bill is an ascetic who could not be more delighted by people and what they wear. The moment that stuck with me the most and will forever is when he says, “He who seeks beauty will find it.” He focuses on the details.
Here is a slice of beauty in my wild tangle of a yard right now, the Meyer lemon tree. These lemons are so fragrant and delicious I am ruined for other lemons for the rest of time. People who used to live here actually stop by to pick lemons from the tree and other former residents won a lemonade contest with these gems. I snapped this on New Year’s Day morning: life giving me some luscious lemons. I accept.
I really only opened my computer just now to check my flight times as I am headed back to Cali this afternoon… but of course, got a little sidetracked with email, Facebook and watching some videos. (Side note, I am in this very moment deciding aloud how to back away from FB. I love my friends, and do understand the technological wonder that is the FB platform instantly interconnecting us all, but I need to adjust my time with it and there is no time like the New Year to make some positive tweaks to the ol’ routine. More on this later.)
I don’t watch that many internet videos, mostly because they all suck, but somehow stumbled upon the Shit Girls Say videos this past week and pretty much have not laughed that hard at a short film since Will Ferrell and Adam McKay’s, “The Landlord” that launched Funny or Die. (Pre-FB I might add!) I emailed it to my three best girl friends and we dissolved into txt giggles and our own versions of shit we say. Then I found myself with a friend at a Christmas party and while gathering our coats in the back bedroom, she responded, “Right?” to one of my comments and I knew she had to see these. We spent the next four minutes doubled over in laughter at the string of bon mots.
I had to know more, so I found this fantastic interview with Graydon Sheppard, the co-creator of the videos and Twitter feed of the same name. Please please please watch them below and read the article and LAUGH YOUR ASS OFF! Don’t watch Episode 3 though… it’s so not good.
A wonderfully awful idea
Made it home (!) after a night of one hour of sleep due to my inability to do every task I suddenly deem critical before leaving town. Oh and a little procrastination in the form of watching “How The Grinch Stole Christmas” on Cartoon Network right smack in the middle of the packing extravaganza.
My absolute favorite part of “The Grinch” is his description of the joyful noise the Who kids make upon opening their toys. Now that I have had eight and a half hours of sleep, I cannot wait to play a little Zoo-Zivver-Car-Zay with my old and dear friends. NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE NOISE!!!!
“And then…all the noise! All the noise, noise, noise, noise!
If there’s one thing I hate…all the noise, noise, noise, noise!
And they’ll shriek, squeak, and squeal racing round on their wheels,
Then dance with jin-tinglers tied onto their heels!”
“They’ll blow their flu-flubers, they’ll bang their tar-tinkers,
They’ll blow their hoo-hoovers, they’ll bang their gar-dinkers!
They’ll beat their trum-tookers, they’ll slam their sloo-slunkers!
They’ll beat their blum-blookers, they’ll wham their hoo-whunkers!”
“And they’ll play noisy games, like Zoo-Zivver-Car-Zay,
A rollerskate-type of LaCrosse and croquet!
Then they’ll make earsplitting noises deluxe
On their great big Electro-Who-Cardio-Floox!”
Minute 3:36…
A couple weeks ago, I was supposed to run the North Face Endurance Challenge Half Marathon, which is a trail half, right here in the GGNRA and an event I have done the last two years. When I ran it for the first time in 2009, I also challenged myself to write daily for the last 3o days of training. It was a massive personal success and so much fun that I ran it in 2010, to considerably less fanfare and much worse weather. I was undertrained in 2010; I finished the race slower than 2009, and injured my left foot into a two week limp and several expensive healing treatments all for the lesson that I had to pay closer attention to pain being different than soreness.
This summer I ran a half in San Diego in August and then did the NorCal Tough Mudder in September. The TM had a much longer course than the year before, so it’s likely I was a little ill-prepared for that too but adrenaline, insanity and Team Mudtallica got me through it. I signed up for the North Face Half anyway, intending to train right and strong, until I realized my left knee and right hamstring were just not ever feeling okay, more like electric cattle prods were being shot into my joints and muscles with every stride, or if I wore high heels. Yes, that was the validation of the injuries: the inability to wear already ill-advised footwear thereby ruining a great outfit.
With a lack of running, my writing jams up too, which as I have lamented before, I don’t like one bit. It being the end of the year and an obvious time for reflection, I have added this conundrum to my list of what to work on in 2012. (I must make a big happy note though, that 2011 was the first year in about the last seven or so where more seem to go well than not, so hey, progress!) In that herky jerky six weeks of to train or not to train I did write several drafts and had one MASSIVE epiphany about a project I want to undertake in 2012. My intention is to beat Resistance back for the next two weeks of 2011, finish the good ones of the drafts and begin to outline the bigger project. This is my way of applying some discipline that I want to be spending on running, and hopefully building a new muscle that can lift my writer’s brain up when my knees need some rest.
Fingers crossed!
Get your ass in gear sugarleg!
With less than seven weeks to go to the AFC Half, I am well aware that I am under-trained at this point, yet my stubborn resistance to get my workouts higher on my priority list is all vintage procrastination. I really do place much of the blame this time on the Boredom Factor, but even that just gets to be a really lame excuse when there is a goal to be attained. At least now that I let myself admit how much the work situation has affected me, I can move past it. And there is no better way to do that than to run.
In a moment of to-do list drafting I came upon a wonderful Lewis Carroll quote from Through The Looking-Glass. It is from the Red Queen to Alice as they are playing chess. I will not go further into English teacher context shrouded quote explication mode, but since it is important to me to know something about the context of a quote before applying it to my life, I can affirm that my small amount of research allowed me to keep this one around for enjoyment and inspiration. It goes like this:
Now, here you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must at least run twice as fast as that!
I feel totally validated by the notion that when we are stuck, we are also running. But it is running in place, running in fear of change, in that hamster wheel that just keeps spinning, but going nowhere. I liken this to my Boredom Factor and that I got stuck because I got lulled into being complacent through a false sense of security. Obviously I am dealing with some business-related factors that I must wait out, but big picture, this is not the right place for me to be working or perhaps even living. So, guess what? Time to run FASTER, twice as fast in fact! I need to meet or exceed my time goal in the half-marathon in August and I need to way exceed even my greatest imagination of the perfect job that aligns my talent and skill. It is out there, and I am coming to get it, and soon. For all the naysayers and the haste makes wasters out there, yes, I agree with you on rushing-is-bad theory, but that’s not what I am doing. This increase in speed is actually an increase in awareness AND action, and that is what I have been lacking.
Here is a hamster who speeds himself up fast enough to get flipped out of his wheel. Don’t go and over-think it my human friends, yes, he goes back for more, because he is a hamster with a brain the size of pea. But see that speeding it up definitely does work to gain some perspective. (Also, how great is this video?)
