One Step at a Time

A lot of things on my mind, a lot of babble, so if you’re not into that tonight, I will not take it personally if you move on.

Silly niggly stressors that are poking at me these days:

–Since I started teaching my evening course this session, my time for running is not working out well. On nights I don’t teach, my hubby plays hockey. Morning runs aren’t working well for me, as he leaves by 5:30 or 6 a.m. (Okay, I’m a baby.) I tried running with Camryn in the stroller; she freaks: Slow down, Mommy! This is NUTS! (At least someone thinks I’m really, really fast.) So, I’ve got to figure this out. Suck it up and get up at 5 or something.

–Lots of niggly things about my job that I can’t post about. Let’s just hypothetically say: how do you teach someone attitude, or passion for a field? You don’t, except by example. That’s wearing on me some days, I tell ya. No more.

–I love my husband a whole lot, but I can’t stand coming home from my night class at 10 or 10:30 p.m. and having to make lunches, sign agendas and Social quizzes, gather library books, sign permission slips, etc.. I’m exhausted. We’ve chatted on this. I’m not seeing a change. Sometimes, when you’re the one who knows better what’s going on, you end up doing everything. Y’think? Sigh.

Bigger Plans:–

I wrote a sitcom pilot with my friend, who is a comic. He’s the funniest guy in the world, and he has an amazing brain. Right now, I feel as if we are two fishies trying to grab at bait in some wierd mall aquarium where we haven’t figured out yet if that’s a plastic worm on the end of the line. We’ve been asked to outline 10 episodes, which is a huge breakthrough, but now we’re getting some runaround. This couldn’t have come at a busier time in each of our lives, so it’s turned into some stress. When you write fiction, you get to know your characters. You imagine them as real, and you think constantly about how they would deal with this or that. You actually get close to them, and it’s difficult to put them up to a test. We’re both feeling a bit overprotective of one of the concepts of the show, and I think that people interested are thinking it’s a disposable one. Art vs. business idea. We’ll see who wins…. yikes.

I need to start forming a serious plan on losing weight. Not a thinking about it plan, but a true plan. I went online and bought a ww membership, but haven’t yet gone to the class. I have a huge love/hate relationship with w8 watchers. I like the healthy eating concept, but the clapping and the generalities of it drive me nuts. I lead adult groups, you’d think I’d thrive on this stuff. I have been to ww one kazillion and twenty four million times in my life. All of their executive’s children have gone to college by the money I’ve given them, I swear. My mom took me when I was a pre-teen and I was — get this — 8 lbs. overweight. That just kills me. Why didn’t she tell me to go outside and run around?? Anyways, I’ve gone a lot throughout the last 23 years, and I’ve had some great successes. Sometimes I’ve gone where I’ve only had 10 lbs to use, sometimes when I’ve had 80 lbs. to lose. But I’ve never actually reached the goal they’ve set for me, and that’s a been a big monkey on my back, I think. Now I’m 36, and I want to lay the “overweight” thing aside. Put it away for good. I think I”ll always have issues with food, in terms of emotional overeating, and that’s something I’ll always have to be conscious of. I’m OK with that. I just need to make a concentrated effort to this year to kick off the weight, and pursue onward with my running. Whether thats ww or not, I haven’t felt strongly about that decision yet. I’ve given myself a week, before I’ll try and get my money back online.

About running (because it is, y’know, a running blog), I have some plans. Another couple of 5ks in the early spring, and then a 10k next summer. I am going to share with you something kind of intimate (ie. that’s a true warning — no one make fun of this, please. ) I had a prayer the other night, asking God for some direction in my life. I have so many passions in life, and I wanted God’s input in what I should be focusing on. I am blessed in that a lot of things give me joy, but I want to do well at what I do, so I know I need to focus. I prayed that, and went to sleep. I had the most awe-inspiring dream. I was running, in a race, with a HUGE crowd of people. It was a hard race, and I was approaching the finish line. I pushed it, and it was glorious … this feeling of accomplishment. At the end, someone handed me a water bottle, and I looked down at my hand, and it was that of a wrinkled old woman. I was old in this race! There were no mirrors, of course, but my hand looked like it was 80ish and its owner had not heard of sun protection, if you know what I mean. If that wasn’t the best part of the dream, this was. I stood at the finish line, with tears streaming down my face, watching my adult daughter ( I could not see her face clearly) cross the finish line. And I just had this whole feeling of awe and pride and accomplishment as I hugged Camryn tightly.

I am typically a vivid dreamer, so this dream itself is not unusual for me. What astounds me about it was how clearly I received an answer from God in a way that I could understand it. It was like getting an email from him:

To: Bev
From: God
Subject: Future

Keep running, girl. It will serve you well and into your years. Focus on your children, my child. You’ve got three little people to impact. Keep at it.

Now, do you think God would help me decide about ww?????