Running In Place

I’m not sure where to begin, I have had a weird couple of weeks - not because of any specific external occurrences, just some internal wheels turning and I’m not quite sure what set them in motion.

It kind of started with me just suddenly getting very down and emotionally overwhelmed about my work with hospice. On the whole, I find it very gratifying and feel pretty honored that people would allow me into their homes and into their lives at this precious time. I can very often find renewal in the most unexpected things and can laugh with people in what seem to be the most dire times. But lest I sound too romantic about the whole affair, the truth is that dying is hard work, and my work - which is to alleviate suffering to the best of my abilities - sometimes fails. And sometimes that gets the better of me.
So anyway, this is not a “poor me” post, just a precursor to all the other (good) stuff.

1) Good Stuff # 1 - After half seriously considering resuming my former career as a bartender, things started to shift back into alignment and I came out of my funk. One super-cool thing was (and this is total ego parading by sharing this) that I ran into a lady I used to work with prior to nursing school - at a job that I left to attend nursing school. She, herself just graduated from the same nursing school this past May and she told me that I was her inspiration for pursuing nursing at all, and that she’s so happy she did. I mean, c’mon, I’m in crisis, I’m questioning my career if not my sanity, and I trip over this person who I haven’t seen in 3+ years and she lays this on me. This wasn’t the only thing that put me back in one piece but it was probably the most overtly “so wildly coincidental that it borders on divine intervention” episode. So the moral of this is Dude, show your gratitude! If there’s someone you are thankful to for something, anything - tell ‘em. You might be the hand of god at just the right moment. Ok, I’m waxing a little dramatic - next topic….

Good Stuff #2 - For a little while now I have been percolating this return to an awareness of my sense of the world and my impact on it. I grew up in an ethically vegetarian household (a ?farm? actually, where all the goats, sheep, cows, chickens, ducks, geese, etc. were pets and not food). My mom was a closet hippie and my little sister is a total granola girl. I moved to the big city (of 60,000 ) and just managed to move farther and farther away from that mindset. Maybe it?s running ? honestly, I suspect it is ? that somewhere along the way made me care what I put in my body. Not just in terms of avoiding junk food, which was the first incarnation, but now in terms of avoiding pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, adrenaline, preservatives, chemicals, etc, etc, etc ? which is the current incarnation. Taking that further still, I start to think about my cosmetics and animal testing, my cleaning products and their effect on ground water, my coffee and fair trade farming, ?walmart culture? and the effects on local businesses and foreign laborers. Yikes!! What the hell is wrong with me??!?! Well, so be it. Running bit my ass out of nowhere ? all of sudden it just mattered, now this. Unexplained, but here on my doorstep so I guess I will let it in.

Good Stuff #3 ? Indeed I did save the actual running stuff till last just to keep the fair reader hooked. Throughout all my wild ponderings and machinations I have been running. Have been building up the minutes running and fretting over the soon-to-be-lost minute walking - pretty much until today. Today was one of those days ? when you?re la machine ! 15 minutes running and 1 minute walking x 2 for the 3rd time this week ? and this time I knew that I would be ok when the time came to just run. I was strong throughout, not necessarily fast, but consistent - and finishing strong, and I got one of those renewing moments when I can clearly see my progress (which is always there but oft overlooked). As the time and distance I run increases, and as I call on my body to continually go a little more beyond its comfort zone each time, and consequently have the internal war as I jog down the path - stop or keep going - I have tried on different mantras for size. Onward and After are of course the 2 most notable that come to mind, but - for my own self - I was having some trouble making them work for me. For me, I was finding that anticipating the future (the next minute, the next tree, the 1/2 mile mark, etc) was taking alot of my focus away from the moment and I would really begin to struggle. A couple of weeks ago, I stumbled across a quote from Eido T. Shimano Roshi whom a friend of mine studied under, and it has really seemed to work for me.
Eido Roshi says: “The essence of Zen is so simple that it can be described in one short word: JUST. Just! Just this! Right here, right now!” So for me, when I am sapping my energy by anticipating how far I have to go - I try to come back to where I am and keep repeating - Just. Just Now. This has helped me tremendously.

Now, to completely negate that train of thought - here’s my plan for the future: Next week I run 30 minutes, the week after that I start my 5k training for the Jan. 1 Resolution Run. I’m even going to go to the stupid gym and do the stupid weights. Believe it or not, I’m trying to keep a positive attitude about what I guess I’m considering a necessary evil (weight training, which is not running and no fun!!).

Ok, this concludes a moderately non-running, somewhat angst-ridden, annoyingly existential post. I am so not kidding when I say Thanks for listening