It's December 23d...the night before, the night before. I am probably more behind than ever. There's a closet full of unwrapped toys and other gifts I vaguely recall buying, a credit card bill I'm afraid to glance at, and the nagging notion that this is the first year in aeons I've committed to not bake a thing. Ah, the sweet smell of failure. So what do I decide to do? Start a new blog. This, my friends, illustrates the charmingly chaotic chronicles to follow. I start, I stop, it's a wrap I say...and I start again.
Thirteen months ago I left the blogosphere. I'd had a successful enough run as a reality television blogger. Not a recap artist, but a real life behind the scenes pseudo-reporter interviewing z list celebrities and attending their parties and premieres. Helping them publicize their products and endeavors. At first it was fresh and exciting. Then it became stale...like that last Pringle in the tube that, instead of tantalizing your tastebuds, makes you nauseous and self-loathing, urging you to purge like Calista Flockhart in The Secret Life of Mary Margaret. Don't know what I'm talking about? You're probably too young to remember late 80s/early 90s Afterschool Specials and HBO Life Stories. Look it up though, it's an interesting watch.
So I was done, and I was ok with that. I moved on. I bought a new home and went back to my life as an educator, wife, mother of twins, and dog owner...and fitness addict. I've been busy enough and I've been very happy. I literally had everything and nothing going on. I toyed with writing again, but nothing felt right. I had nothing to say...I probably still don't. It was good though. I was enjoying the ordinary. Writing, blogging...it was a wrap.
It's taken me a long time, but I started getting accustomed to giving up on things. After the hot flare of midlife crisis, you get into an "I'm here and it's ok" phase. Along with writing I gave up another long held goal. After years of saying "I will", I started saying "I won't" to running the New York City Marathon. It took me 4 years to get in when I was in my early thirties. I got in, got pregnant, held my number for another year, got sidelined in training because of complications from that pregnancy, and gave up. It wasn't meant to be. I was content to run my yearly half marathon and leave it at that.
Earlier this school year a colleague asked me if I still planned to run this race that was once my "white whale." I laughed it off and said that ship had sailed. Then he reminded me our school would get two entries and I should toss my name into the drawing. I mulled over it for two months. By the time that drawing came on Monday I had decided I wanted that number...no I REALLY wanted that number. Tossing my name in, I sat nervously, knowing I now wanted this too much, and that probably meant it would never happen. I've never been lucky in games of chance, except for on Monday, when my name was called. At last the white whale was mine for the taking.
Wednesday in the bitter cold, I set out for my first post race commitment outdoor run. One of the few benefits of peri-menopause is the ability to withstand weather that used to make you walk like you were auditioning for the lead in Driving Miss Daisy (again showing my age). All of a sudden the self doubt hit me like a ton of bricks. At almost 41 years old and 21 years running, what if this was the one race I couldn't finish? What if I looked like a failure in front of my colleagues, my family, my friends? That's when the idea hit me.
The race was never a wrap, neither was my writing. By sharing my marathon journey, I could get back to sharing myself in writing. If I failed, I would fail big. I would share my failure. If I succeeded, I would share that too, not for the purpose of the gloat, but the purpose to inspire. See we are all running a marathon. Life is a marathon, especially life in these times. We all juggle so much in so many ways and we succeed and fail multiple times just in a day.
So I'm back world and I'm back in the biggest reality ever. Not the phony glare of reality television, but the reality of life today. Of trying to look like I have it all together; like the perfectly wrapped packages I brought into my son's classroom the other day; while in so many ways it's falling apart...like his hair when I walked in that looked like it had never seen a brush. So here I go, literally and figuratively. I am The Run On Mom...sometimes running on emtpy, sometimes simply running...and right now I'm running out of time to be ready for Christmas. Back to wrapping...
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