Tik Tok - Kesha

Today is my long run day. I have my route planned out and I am going to finish the work of it regardless of if I run, walk, or crawl. I am deep in the thick of inertia and resistance. While recovering from the half-marathon, I developed a formidable sense of fear or some other type of weird psychological block. The last time I ran, I wanted to stop after a half mile and forced myself to do sprints in an empty Blockbuster video parking lot just to get sweaty. Today, and all week, I'm afraid I can't do it. I'm afraid I'll get hurt. I'm afraid to look people in the face who have been so excited for me and so supportive and tell them it just didn't work out for me. But I want to push through this piece and get to work. I think today feels like a turning point.


I mean really, 
Tick Tock, Girl. 


I'm not telling you this because I feel like I'm in a dire situation or it's really super important in the scheme of life. I do however want to just lay down where I'm at in the name of being true to this process. I think it speaks to all the folks who, like me, are prone to easily get to the place of I can't do that. Because maybe I really can't, but the more probable story is if I can't do it today, I can do it at some point. I just don't know if I can do it by July 25th. Looking back now, it turns out I did set myself up for a fantastically intense challenge here. 


C'est la vie. 
I guess we'll see what happens in 85 little days.
That makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up
And my stomach flop over.


Nonetheless, the sausage outfit will take it's tour down 16th street today, climb what will be the last hill of July's marathon and head to the water around the ballpark where the Giants will hopefully take to the diamond and bring it on home today. I will do what I can do. 


And in the interest of laying it all down, my book is in the same place as my road work. After a great tear across 25 pages of new text, I hit a wall. The sensations of approaching the page are virtually identical to those of approaching the street. The same fear, the same overwhelmed vantage point, and the same emotional vertigo gazing down the horizon at all that could go wrong. I think in some circles this is referred to as "future tripping". The advice of professionals or other folks who have been here would be to take the short view for a moment. Inhale the moment into your lungs and remain in the experience as it happens. A girl could then appreciate her health, her friends, her peculiar drive to tell a story and be filled with emotions surrounding what actually is, rather than all that may or may not come to pass. Instead of living within the experience of the always impending, wasting life on emotionally experiencing a fiction of maybe, I could simply look at the city I run through, tell the story of the moment in the text, let the marathon work itself out later, the novel unfold at its own pace, and I could just slowly return to now. 


At least that's what I hear.
Hang in there with me.


Love,
Sara Elise