Need to distract yourself? Run!

            I’ve been feeling really uneasy lately and haven’t been able to figure out why.  My bills are paid, no one’s mad at me, I don’t have any projects outstanding that need completion or commitments being neglected.  This uneasy feeling has been bothering me for over a week, and today I think I finally figured it out.

            It’s the waiting.  I hate waiting.  For anything.  For everything.  I hate waiting in line.  I hate waiting for people who are late.  I hate waiting for races to start when you’re ready to run.  I especially hate waiting after I make big decisions, or for that matter even little ones.  I want to follow through immediately.   I don’t want to wait to make the change.  I recently decided to upgrade my near-windowless apartment to something sunnier and perhaps larger.  Now I’m in this uneasy waiting time.  With the holidays coming up, I can’t make a move right away and I also have to play this awkward time balance game of trying to find a place and giving my landlord one month’s notice at the opportune moment.  I’ve found a few apartments that seem to have great potential, but I’m waiting to get an appointment to see them.  I think my recent uneasiness stems from this waiting.  I want to find an apartment, make the move, and be relaxing in my new sunny apartment right now (well…the sunny part has to wait until the sun chooses to grace Seattle with its presence—until then I’ll settle for a view of the rain).

            When I was a lifeguard during high school and college, there was a part of the certification process that requires you to tread water for one minute.  Being a swimmer, this part of the test was never difficult for me.  I could easily tread water for way longer than that.  But I hated performing this requirement.  When you tread water, you expend energy to do the simple task of staying in the same spot.  You kick your legs and wave your arms for the mere purpose of not going anywhere.  When I put forth energy, I want to go somewhere, do something, be productive.  To me, waiting feels like treading water.  All this mental energy, uneasiness, annoyance, and even anger results in merely getting you to the same place you already are.  It’s incredibly frustrating.

            When I got back to NYC from my trip to Seattle with Sierra, I was stuck in a 4 month waiting period.  This was difficult to say the least.  I wanted to get started with my new life in my new city.  But I had to wait.  I still had 2 ½ months of school left with my first graders, and then I had to spend 6 weeks student teaching in a self-contained special ed summer school class to finish up my masters degree (yes, I had to student teach again after 2 years of teaching already).

I miss these ladies.

             I had to figure out a way to distract myself from this waiting.  So I spent a lot of time with my friends, who I would soon miss dearly.  Lucy and I spent a lot of time reading in the park, taking advantage of the good weather.  I also tried to take full advantage of the last few months I had in New York City and rekindle my love for it—I didn't want to leave with a bad taste in my mouth.

Lucy is very good at relaxing in the park.

                   I also ran.  A lot.  As soon as I got back from Seattle, I was back on the streets and back at the cemetery.  I started out slow, but it was easier for me to slide back into things than I had thought.  I had to re-convince Lucy that running did not mean beeping, which took a week or so.  After she was comfortable again, it was hard to hold myself back.  About 2-3 weeks after my trip, I did something that a few months previous I never would have thought imaginable.  I ran a mile.  I had been slowly increasing my running time and decreasing my walking time each day.  I was up to five minutes running and 30 seconds walking when one day I decided that I would stop walking.  And we know I don’t like waiting, so once I made the decision, I did it.

            I ran around the entire cemetery.  Without stopping.  It felt incredible.  And once I achieved that goal, once I felt that feeling of accomplishment, I didn’t want to stop.  The next day, I did it again.  And again.  The next week, I added a few blocks.  I went further than just the cemetery.  And the week after that, I went even further.  Week by week, I added more and more distance.  It got to the point that I had to strategically plan my runs so that I wouldn’t run too far into a not-so-good part of the city.  I’d do loops and weird zigzags to avoid the borders of sketchy neighborhoods.  And if I stumbled a little too far, at least I had Lucy there with me.

The determinedness that running brought to my life was something new for me.  I was a pretty good swimmer growing up.  From age 5 until the end of high school, swimming is what I did.  In elementary school, I was on multiple teams.  I’d practice before school, after school, in the summer.  It was a huge part of my life.  But I never felt determined about swimming.  I remember at swim meets, sometimes I’d swim a race and I’d win it, but I’d get out of the water and my coach and my mother would look at me baffled.  “You’re supposed to be tired when you finish a race,” they’d say.  “You’re supposed to be out of breath!”  I didn’t get it…I won the race.  Wasn’t that enough?  I had no idea what if felt like to really push myself.

During this 4 month waiting period, I pushed myself harder than I ever had before.  Every day I wanted to go farther.  I wanted to be able to come home and say “Today I ran more than I ever have before.”  I felt amazing.  I lost another 10 lbs in those 4 months, so by the time I made it to Seattle I had trimmed off a total of 20 lbs.  I felt healthy, productive, and attractive for the first time in a long time.

All this running helped my awful waiting time go faster.  I had something else to think about.  Every day I had a new goal to conquer, a new reason to feel good about myself.  The running seemed to be helping Lucy too.  She was tired when we got home, the same kind of tired she used to be after running herself ragged at the dog park.  By the time I was ready to pack up my car and wave goodbye to NYC for good, Lucy and I were running about 4 miles a day.  I had somehow managed to make my waiting productive.  I may have physically been in the same place those 4 months, but in my mind and in my body I was most certainly not treading water.  I was going somewhere.