Meet for coffee?

The day starts a little later when you don't have to rush off to work.

I have an appointment at 8:45am this morning so I took the opportunity to give myself a vacation day and a long weekend. I have the day off once I fulfill my scheduled engagement. Can you call a routine doctors appoint an engagement? I just did. And I also used it as a reason for not showing up to work so it sounds good to me.

I might stop off for coffee on my way home. I think that sounds like a fun and quiet way to spend a few moments. You can picture it. Ordering a simple black coffee so you don't have to wait around until someone else mixes it up and calls your name when it's ready. It's an easy order, pay, and find a small table in a less traffic area of the cramped room. Sit and breathe it all in. Pull out your eReader and figure out how the author went from sugar-sweet nice to beasty mean. You have to keep reading to see how it all flows together or check back to see if it's a writing team instead of one author that has different writing styles. But the moment isn't lost and the alone time surrounded by others feels pretty okay on a Friday mid-morning.

I might take that time to figure out the rest of the day or just leave it to chance. Either way I don't have to think about that now.
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Boring Weather

We could talk about the weather.

This happens more in winter than any other time of the year. It's due to the fact that I don't care for it - the colder temperatures, the rain mixed with wind, the overall feeling I might not make it from the house to my car without losing a few fingers to hypothermia. Okay, that might be a little drastic but you get the general idea of how little this season means to me or should I say how much? I sure talk more about it more than any other season but then I hear others giving summer a bad rap. I guess it's all fair play although boring.

Give it a minute, it will change. Be open to the different experiences it can provide. If you know the run in the winter is going to cause all the unpleasantness I could possibly imagine than find another way to go for a run. There are other options. And thinking about the other options can give another perspective on how you look at that same thing. Change the camera angle and you'll get a different picture of the same landscape. It might even get you to think of the same things in a way you hadn't thought about before.

Then it isn't boring.
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Agitated Stillness

What would life be without a thought in your head? Empty-headed. Devoid of thought. Still.

I'm not sure if that sounds all that good. I read an article about finding your stillness. The theme of the article is when things start spinning in our heads we should pause, sit back, settle into what is happening and work with what we are thinking. The article said to concentrate on what was causing the thoughts, access how they are making us feel, calmly let them sit inside us. It suggested to face what we are thinking at that moment and find some gratitude and compassion and then give yourself permission to go back to your day to day.

Yikes. That is a whole lot of thinking. It sounds pretty counter-intuitive to think so much if what you are trying to do is settle down and clear your head. Why not just pause and stop. Why all the self analysis. Do I need to have a list of things I need to think about when I'm thinking so hard I can't stop thinking? How am I supposed to remember the steps and what am I to think about next when I already have too many things to think about.

I thought this pausing, calming, meditation type thing is supposed to be less imposing. It sounds like a lot of work to me and I don't think I can remember all the things I'm supposed to think about when I do it. That could cause even more anxiety over all the things I'm already thinking.

If I want to clear my head I think I will just take a break. I will distract myself with something else, take on a different chore, go for a run. Don't think so hard. That seems to be an easier mantra to remember when there is too much going on in my head.
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Make it bold

Don't blink twice or this month might be over. I've been marking little forward slashes across the numbers of the calendar and it looks like it's picked up a rhythm. Some slashes started out small but as we march along through the month they have become progressively larger and bolder.

Can't do anything about those days with the slashes. Can't look back and don't have the time to wonder what I did with them. I can work with the ones still to come and concentrate on today. I can do what I can with right now and work on it to make those slashes bold today so I'm not thinking about yesterday. Besides.

It will all be filled if you blink...twice.

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Weekly recap

Here is the lesson from this past week. 

It seems that no matter how well you brainstorm ideas to spend a productive batch of time it will naturally be taken over by life. Some priorities will be pushed aside no matter what you have going on. The key is to ride it on through because different things can happen if you don't try to hold any course too tightly.

There was certainly no pressure on the holiday where extra time was spent doing whatever came to mind. I did fill extra batches of time doing something I hadn't done before. There were some things I might not have wished to do but then, I guess, you have to be careful what you wish for.

I know I've heard that said before. Is planning another form of wishing?

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Less Boredom

Brainstorming. A process of making a list of ideas to solve a problem.

I should be good at this. I make lists all the time! I used to make lists for all the many things I had to do to keep them in priority order. Now it's more a tool so I don't forget to do the things that are important. Either way, I guess I could use a little brainstorming session to come up with some creative ideas of how to break up a mundane routine. I need to come up with a list of things to do after work so I don't continually waste hour blocks of time. And some kind of fun should be involved since it is my after-hours. That shouldn't be too hard since my ideas of fun don't always match up to the normal ideas of fun. Sometimes my fun might be considered work by others but it's all in the perspective. It should be a no brainer and I could have an enormous list of items in no time at all.

I can get into this process. I can solve that problem, err, except it isn't really a problem. Is not knowing what to do with your extra time after your boring routine a problem? It is if you continue to be bored.
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Be Reasonable

When lost items are turned in at work, we send emails before giving it over to security. Yesterday a note went out that a shirt had been found in the parking garage. Not long after that a note that a make-up bag with eye drops and floss was found. These are ordinary items that would not be ordinarily misplaced if that person wasn't taking on a different routine. A shirt or makeup bag lost might mean someone is using the gym and packed these otherwise left-at-home items. A new routine or plan put into place while rushing to get that plan done may have led to losing certain items.

My last post was about rushing. I wrote it fast because I thought I needed to hurry and put something down. I had only a mere 4 minutes remaining before I needed to leave for work. Four minutes was all the time I thought I had to get it done. It wasn't enough time and even though I managed, it certainly wasn't enough time to decide I needed an adjustment to my plan about things I was doing. Not yet anyway and not after so brief and forced a moment.

Here is an opportunity to give myself and those poor people at work losing shirts and floss a break from all the rushing. This is not a four minute sprint into every new thing that needs to get done. The only adjustment needed so far is a little more thought in how speedy I really need to be to get to my objectives. It can be slowed down a bit. There will be time to get it done and I know it's going to be more than four minutes.

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Goodbye 2016

Say goodbye to year 2016.

The year I turned 60 is over and done and 61 takes over from here as of this very day. I can't predict what the future will hold. I can only make some choices along the way and see how they play out over the course of the coming year. I somehow managed a few things this past year I might not have accomplished if I hadn't made the choices I did during 2016.

I whined for years to myself and others how I would like to run another half marathon. I got down to business this year and ran it October 22, 2016. I almost let the year get away from me but when I knew the date of this race I figured out a training plan with the weeks left before that date to get ready. It was a tough race with many hills. I did it. That was what I wanted to do. In the past I would have whined about how I didn't have enough time or placed some other obstacles to make it impossible for myself to do it the way I had before but I figured there was nothing to lose except my whining. It worked. I got it done.

I also started the year off with a mileage goal. I calculated the average number of miles I have run the past six years and it is about 560. I thought I would go for 800 miles this year. It was aggressive for me but I figured what could it hurt. My last run for the year was this morning and it gave me a total of 770 miles for 2016. I was short of my goal of 800 but how can I not be more than satisfied that I was able to improve by so many more miles even when I am so much older than I was six years ago?

I'm not sure what made any difference this time around but somehow putting some plans into action did the job. I figured if it didn't work I couldn't be any worse off than my average. No one would be the wiser if I didn't run another half marathon or if I ran my 560 mile average. It wouldn't be any big loss except there were no loss this year. There were only big gains.

It's time to say goodbye to a good year - 2016. It's almost over with only a few hours to spare. Sixty years and I might have learned a thing or two. Now to use that momentum into my new improved age of sixty-one.

Hello there, 2017. What do you have planned?
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Warm Retreat

Did I mention I put up all the Christmas decorations already? It's slightly early for me since I usually don't tackle that until the weekend before December 14th but this year it felt like it should all go up earlier. It's now arranged in all it's sparkling glory practically singing out from the corner where the tree is placed. I even started baking some cookies and made a hearty pot roast for Saturday nights dinner.

The dip in temperatures, the time change, and getting over a sinus cold seemed to have put me back a bit but I think I am over those hurdles. The sinus is almost all cleared up again, the time change is becoming more routine, and the colder temperatures will rise and fall. I have my warm retreat of sparking glory to come home to where I can sit and crochet, read, or bake. It's another part of the year. 

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So it goes

Excuses.

It's amazing the amount of motivational tricks I keep up my own sleeve. I have so many positive talks, lines and phrases, rationalizations, that I spew all over myself. It usually starts early in the morning. I will make plans on something I want to do but I need to get to work first and I can't actually start on anything until afterward. So I will plot in the morning...after work I will. I figure out all the details. I make it fairly simple. I convince myself it's easy and quick. I want to do it.

The day goes by. Work at work gets done. It seems like a lifetime I've spent in those eight hours. Time to leave. Now I can put my plan into action. I have all the easy, simple steps to follow. Then I get home.

The motivational ideas that were so perfectly planned dissipate. They vanish as mist into thin air. The time it took in the morning to configure my plan is left to wither and die in less than a third of the time. I give myself a last ditch effort to restore what was so well thought out only to succumb to another day of not getting it done. And so it goes.

The next morning another plan is set. Another day of work goes by. Another set of plans are abandoned for another time.
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Why the alarm?

Alarms keep going off.

I switch them off and go back to sleep. It isn't even a screeching siren sound but some kind of jaunty melody that I must have picked after listening to twelve dozen other tones. I use my phone alarm and it gives me options of various metallic, tin sounding supposed sunrises, morning birds. and ocean waves. At least I think that is what they are from the one-word titles listed. They are good enough to wake me up but then I slide my finger across the face of the phone to turn it off so my alarm hasn't been working lately.

I need to go back and reset the time, the tone, my purpose for having it ring so early. That last thing is probably what I need to reset - the purpose. Until then my alarm keeps going off for no reason.

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Battle of Hill-otes

This past Saturday I ran a half marathon. It was a tough one to conquer since it's only description on it's website was: Description: Hilly. It was telling no lies. It was aptly named the Battle of Hillotes which was a play on the name of the small town of Helotes that it took place.

There was no way I was coming home without finishing. I took the past seven weeks and three days following a training plan I devised for myself by plotting it on a spreadsheet. I took 3 or 4 other 10 and 12 week plans that I had and figured out how I could improvise them into something I could actually use. I don't know if it was a good plan or not but it got me to where I wanted to go and that was crossing the finish line.

It was more than planning. It was getting up at 4:00 am and running 3 or 4 sometimes 5 miles before work. The alarm would go off and I would push to get up. Some days it was easy and some days there was no way I believed I hadn't just closed my eyes to fall asleep. There were a few mornings I was up and dressed to run before my brain realized I was ready to go. Coffee was gulped down in a few, hot sips and left for later. I had a finish line I needed to cross. I had work to do before I got there.

The morning of the race it was a cool 49-50 degrees but I knew it would warm up quickly. It only took until mile 2 to get the feeling back in my numb fingers and that was the last I thought about the weather. I had to stare down some mean hills and not just one or two but six, seven, steep and cruel ones. I got to the top of one and just looked out. The sun was coming up and there was a view to see for miles. This is why I do this. When and where else could I have been in this moment.

Looking back at my splits my pace was fast coming up through mile 7 but the hills had taken it out of me and I slowed to some snails pace the last half. I don't know what I was doing on mile 12 except maybe crawling? But none of that mattered since I had no pace goal. I only wanted to defeat the finish line and I did that last Saturday.

Since there aren't many in my age group that ventures out, I placed second in my category with a time of 2:38:38. I was a good 14 minutes behind first place (damn mile 12)! I can at least look at the bright side that the person behind me came in right at 3 hours which put me a good 40 some minutes ahead. It doesn't really matter since all of this is extra. My only wish was to get it done.

Done it is. I'm re-grouping to see what's next.
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Lots of miles

I could go ahead and give a long list of miles but I did that more than a few times already. I could go back to my last post to see where I left off and add the new numbers to that already too long list. I'll spare myself and you the list.

This past month of September I ended up with a total of 113.37 miles. That is more miles in a month for me in the past six years I have actual stats to compare. I ran 112 miles in October of 2010. It took me six years to do it again but I did last month. I have a total of 40.18 miles for this month and it's the eighth day of the month. That isn't a bad showing by any means. I am 26.38 miles away from meeting the best mileage in any year for me. I won't be doing it as a marathon in one day but give me a week and I'll probably have that stat blown too. 

Miles, miles, miles. I had someone ask me how I could run all those miles without anyone or anything chasing me. It's not the most original comment. It isn't original at all. How many times has everyone heard that one before? I probably couldn't even outrun someone if their intention was to chase me down. It doesn't take being pursued to run. 

Drive, confidence, consistency, strength, discipline, determination, endurance, courage. Chase me.

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Reflecting on Goals

It's the very last day of August. Since it's the middle of the week it doesn't seem to be anything monumental and I'm not sure it should be anything bigger than another day. It always makes me think of tomorrow when something makes that turn to a stopping point. It makes me think toward the future and what I should be setting as goals for these last four months of this year 2016.

It seems too late to be thinking of setting any goals now. That is supposed to be done in January every year. Goals aren't for September. So don't call them goals if reflections are better. I'm reflecting on what I want to accomplish in the next four months. I'm merely thinking of what I would do and how I want to do it. It doesn't matter to me what time of the year it might be at the moment because some things don't wait or shouldn't.

I can't be sitting around until January, twittling my thumbs, wasting my time. If I have the notion to get started and if this last day of the month of August is an incentive to get started, I will use that as motivation. Time to get a move on.
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Make Time Now

There are times it feels as if so much is stretched out in front of you. You want to arrive but there is so much to cover before you get to that place you are trying to see in the distance. It can be as simple as moving toward a weekend. The hurdles of the everyday, mundane are stacked and arranged to block you from that Friday afternoon quitting time bell. It's all you think about as you trudge your way through all the obstacles and wait counting down the hours.

Stop counting. Stop looking so far ahead. Where are you now and what else can you do to make that mundane more than it's been in the past. If you are feeling that everything is so far out of reach it's time to start making time work of us now. Not that distance future we keep imagining because there is no proof it will be as we imagined when we get there. It's especially true if you can't think about what you are doing now. Give it more thought. Stay with the now and when those overwhelming feelings of wanting to live in the future start to creep in, think of how to be grateful and make the moments of now work.

It's about right now and making what you have and do count. It's not about counting the hours away for an unforeseen imaginary future. It may seem to be better but the time to live is now.
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Rise and Shine

Monday morning.

I can't say it's bright and shining because it's still dark outside. But there is no doubt the sun will come out and set everything aglow. The routine is in place and I will battle out the day. I'll make an effort to move away from my desk and take a turn around our campus which is our workplace. It will go on fast or slow but it will still turn over into a new day and then another. 

This moment is the only thing real and then it moves on as you find yourself in that new moment again. Stay with it. Go with that flow and not get bogged down in the worry of what already happened or what you might come up against in the future. It's right now you get to experience so do it. This event that is right now is what you have so use it the best way you can. Watch the day as you are given the opportunity to be as bright and shiny as the day itself. Choose your actions with gratitude and the routine can turn into a better place to be. It's those moments that you choose which makes a Monday morning better than a Monday morning.

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Making it new again

Here is what you do with most new, exciting projects.

You start to a build up and store a bundle of energy . You can't wait to get started and think about all the exciting ways it will make you better, more confident, stronger, give you more expertise and a feeling of accomplishment. It makes you feel energized. You also have a certain amount of anxiety about the unknown and that trepidation can pull you forward and fuel you on to what you are about to embark on doing. It's a natural course of feelings and actions when we are looking forward to that new, exciting project.

You prepare mentally before you start even if it's in different degrees and times. Eventually, you get started or sometimes, if you are like many, you only keep thinking about that new exciting project you want to get started on doing. It becomes a circle of thought. It is sometimes fits and starts and bits and pieces of that one thing you keep wanting to do but never quite have the time. It's that trepidation that was supposed to pull you forward and fuel you and it's only creating fear in your mind that you somehow can't achieve that project you've been spending so much time and effort trying to do.

So now, all you have to show are fragments of things that was supposed to be a started project. It seems a lot of effort for a poor amount of work. You start judging yourself through the fragments. All the energy that started out so positive has given way to a mind set that crossed the line and pulled you the wrong way. It would be an easy fix to quit. It would be easy to give in and say it didn't work out which would be a true statement at that given time and in your judgmental state. You could also try to stir up those original ideas of being better, confident, stronger. You already have more expertise because you have actually worked on those bits and pieces, those fits and starts and fragments. They didn't come out of nowhere. It's only time to regroup and refocus. It time to use what you have already created and get excited about that again.

Everything starts if you make the move. It always starts at different points whether you have done them before or not. Don't spend the time thinking about where you are too long. Each time you work on it, get started again with the same bundle of energy you had that first time and don't bother with the rest. Use that anxiety the way it should be used as a fuel to power you forward and see how much better it works. Everything can be a new project no matter how many times you have done it before. Just remember, it's the first time you are doing it right now.
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Writing: An Enjoyable Challenge

I purposely stopped writing here for a while. I've done a bit of reflecting. Correction. I've done plenty of reflecting but that covers more subjects that I need to discuss in this space. In particular, I've given some thought to this blog.

I started this blog with the intention of getting myself to simply put words down on a page. I had the problem of never getting past a few paragraphs because I would continually edit those paragraphs to the point of never writing any more. This was a discipline for me to stop the editing and just get the words down. It's worked and I went off and wrote about anything and everything and then I got lost. I needed to pause a moment and figure it out again. So I went back to the beginning.

I know what you are thinking. Yawn. But I'm not going into all the unnecessary details about how, what, and why of all this thinking. I'll spare everyone the tiring past of the conflicting thoughts and impressions that have been in my mind. Let's stay with the present. Not yesterday or what went on before, but the here and now. Let's stay in the present. Today.

I questioned myself and asked why keep writing? The answer was pretty simple. I enjoy writing. It's a hobby, a pastime, an enjoyable challenge. I don't have any high expectations of where it will take me but that was never the intention. It was the idea of sitting down and writing thoughts right now. It was to get past more than two paragraphs without stopping.

So why stop.
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