Under a clear, blue sky
Sunday morning. It is so completely gorgeous here today. This is the sort of day that the Convention and Visitors' Bureau wishes they could clone and adequately represent to every soul in America. The sky is that robin's egg blue that I've never been able to find in a dress and there are puffy clouds out over the mountains. On a practical level, the clouds over the mountains are a very welcome sight because that's where the fires are still burning and the clouds, and rain, are helping to bring them under control. I, however, am secure enough to admit that I'm loving it for the pure aesthetic joy of it. It's been such a crappy week and I just need things to remind me about beauty and what it can do for your soul.
I woke up this morning, walked upstairs, fired up the laptop, and started writing. Yes, NaNoWriMo has begun for me. I did over 1,500 words in two hours this morning and it felt so good, so right. Last night, I was still unsure of the exact direction I wanted to take my protagonist, but, as I talked about it with Chris, it came together in my mind. Once the skeleton was in place, the actual writing this morning just flowed. I'd forgotten how much I wanted to write a novel when I was younger, before I sold my soul to the small company that would become VLSCI. Writing was my life, unsurprisingly, given my English Lit major and Poli Sci minor, and words just sprang forth on demand. Once I settled into corporate life, though, the need for business writing choked the creativity and inventiveness out of my writing, replacing it instead with clear and concise professionalism and the ability to translate highly technical engineering documents into documentation for non technical people. I think that, at some point, I stopped fighting that transition, even began to embrace it with the same passion I'd once held for my creative writing, and yet...something inside me always yearned for the feeling of creating something beautiful, something that stirred emotions and created pictures in the readers' minds. As I talked to Chris about it last night, I realized that this, too, is one of my life's dreams, just like the marathon. How many people can say they've got the opportunity to knock two of their "Things to Do Before I Die" off in one year? If all goes well in the next four weeks, I very well may be able to.
I also had an epiphany about the marathon this morning. (Note to self: Perhaps I should get up early more often?) I've signed up as a member of Team Diabetes, which uses the marathon as a way to raise money for the American Diabetes Association. I've talked here before (see October 14th) about the money I'm trying to raise, but I don't think I ever mentioned that Team Diabetes actually has their own training program that walks around the same area as the Roadrunners do, but on Sunday instead of Saturday, which is far too crowded with all of the training teams doing, essentially, the same routes. Anyway, I finally opened up the binder they'd sent me and looked at the schedule for Team Diabetes' training, and I think it's far more viable as an option for me than the Roadrunners program I've been trying to do. With an entire week off for the fire and the pain I'd been feeling on the long sessions lately, I think that the Diabetes program will allow me to slow down a little and yet, still finish. Where the Roadrunners are already doing 13 mile sessions, Team Diabetes is doing seven miles today. I can do seven miles. I can do eight miles next week. I can do this schedule, and that's very exciting given that I was contemplating having to give up my dream just yesterday, even as I started shopping to replace all of my stolen training gear. So, with my shiny new shoes, and my neat-o new hat, I'll set off tomorrow morning on the treadmill at work and rebuild my endurance. I can do this. I will do this! (Thanks, Georgia, for the tip. No more trying to force it, I'm going with the flow. This schedule just feels right for me and the other one was just too much. My body knows what it needs, what feels good, and the only thing I have to do is listen.)
Weeks until LA Marathon: 18
Weeks until Christmas: 7
Exercise yesterday: None, and that's OK
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