This Saturday I will be running my first marathon. I feel a mix of emotions, including nervousness, but I mostly feel excitement. I have some time goals in mind, but I am mainly just excited to accomplish something that would have seemed so impossible for me not too long ago.
Alot can change with a little hard work and some time.
My first blog post of this blog, which I named "Clarity" (thanks Joe for the inspiration), started off like this...
No one likes change...
...except me. While I often find it uncomfortable, I think it stretches me in ways that routine can't. For the past few months my life has been in constant change. I've learned that I'm not good at everything I thought I was, that I am good at some things I hadn't noticed before, and that I'm a much different person than I used to be.
I was reading through that post, which I wrote over 2 years ago now, and thinking about where I've been in my life since then. I'm not completely sure I do like change after all, or maybe it's just that I have had so much change in the past few years that my body and mind just need some continuity for a season. I remember in my Psych nursing class earlier this year we took this survey where you gave point values for certain stressful events you had been through in the past year and added them up at the end. My total value was by far the highest in the class and way over the score listed for the highest risk of stress related disorders. It's funny, I don't really feel the weight of the stress all the time, although sometimes when I stop long enough to think about everything I have to get accomplished in the next few days or weeks it makes me feel a little sick. I think living day to day and not thinking about tomorrow has almost become a defense mechanism for me. I've told my wife Kristi on a few occasions that I feel like sometimes the level of busyness and stress I've had over the past year has somehow changed the chemistry in my brain to where I have these out of body behavioral experiences. Sometimes they are good, and I make better decisions then I used to, and then sometimes they are very bad and I act far too angry or selfish.
I don't say all this to make anyone feel sorry for me. Being at Medicaid and medically fragile clinics recently has reinforced to me that there are many who live in horrific circumstances daily that I have never had to deal with. I also know stress levels can't be used as an excuse for how I treat others, or for how I sometimes wrongly prioritize.
The reason I named this blog "Clarity" was partly because I love that CD by Jimmy Eat World, but mostly because I thought that journaling thoughts and events might help me to gain some sort of outside vision into my life, and I think it has definitely done that. While I haven't posted as much as I would like to more recently, at the least it has given me brief moments where I had to stop long enough to put congruent thoughts down on paper. Looking back, posts which bring back memories or moments of enlightening for me include...
There are many others, but I'll stop there. Reading through the posts I was surprised at some of the things that didn't make it into the blog (no big pregnancy announcement post), and I was surprised at some of the things that did (Oriental House makes an appearance way too often). There is even a blog post which mentions a sociology class that I have no recollection of taking (I hope I did well).
One topic that often comes up in my blog is that of running. When I came back to Greenville I had become pretty unhealthy and so I decided to get back to running regularly. I remember the first day I went out and ran. I don't think I had ever felt that out of shape in my life...it was completely miserable. With time I improved and things went pretty well until nursing clinicals started in the summer of last year, when I completely stopped due to time constraints. However, after a semester of gaining weight and feeling tired all the time I decided I needed to run at least 2 days a week. So in early December of 2009 I started running again for the second time.
By the time Spring came around this year I had run 3 times a week almost every week and was up to 6-8 miles a run. I was really enjoying it and every now and then on a run I would start to think about marathons. My dad has run a few, and it has always seemed like one of those challenging things that would be fun to accomplish in my lifetime. I don't know what possessed me, but I remember mentioning to Kristi one day that if I could keep increasing my mileage I might want to register for the Kiawah marathon when registration opened in August. The miles were hard to get in, especially as the heat set in, but by August I was still going strong and I had been doing long runs of over 14 miles by that point, so I went ahead and registered.
Marathon training has had its moments of both pure bliss and complete agony. One added benefit that I did not foresee is that running has helped me get through this past year by being a stress release for me. I remember times of sheer frustration where I would go run and have hours where I could talk to God about what was going on and think through communicating with those I needed to instead of merely reacting. I remember many long runs when things were getting tough where I would relax and think about the things God has faithfully brought Kristi and I through this past year or two. Sometimes when my legs hurt and I didn't feel like running I would picture myself finishing the marathon, and along with that I would imagine what it will feel like when I finish nursing school. In a way it felt like the training was just another part of the process of working towards our family's future for me. Perhaps running has brought me more clarity than this blog in some aspects.
When I quit Applebee's I said that it felt like an end of another chapter in my life. With each turn of the page I feel a little sad to leave friends and situations behind, but I've learned that something new is always around the corner. I feel that way partly because I worked there for a year and a half, and partly because I feel like the next few months are going to uproot any normalcy I have found with school and work as I finish the LPN portion of the program (and take my NCLEX-PN), continue with my new job at Travinia, come down the home stretch in my nursing classes, and have a daughter who begins to walk, talk, and interact. Since the beginning of clinicals I have looked toward this point of the program as the point where I would finally feel like I could see the end of these busy, stressed filled few years we have had as a family, and I feel like I am hitting that transition period now.
With all the school, work, and family related responsibilities I keep remembering that I will be running a marathon this weekend. They say the last 6.2 miles are mostly mental, and somewhere around mile 22 when things start to fall apart I plan on thinking about everything I've been through and learned the past two years, as well as what is coming up very soon in the future. I plan on thinking about all the tests I've miraculously passed this year in school and how my RN certification is almost within reach. I plan on thinking about my beautiful daughter and wife, and how much we have grown up together over the past few months. And when I finish I'll know that while that finish line marks the end of one chapter, it's represents the beginning of another...
