Nothing Good to Say

I've been suffering from a touch of blogger's block this week and just haven't felt moved to post about anything in particular. Fortunately, it didn't develop into a full on case of writer's block, and I've managed to make a bit of progress on an article manuscript. However, the vast majority of my energy this week has been funneled into working on course proposals, grading papers from my 100-level Western Civ class, and worrying about a few things.

The issue of not having a very good work space means that I've been doing a lot of my work on the couch. We filed a claim with the moving company, but that means that we can't take any steps to repair our desk until the claim is processed. I have my writing desk and a table in my campus office, but neither of those are ideal for certain kinds of work that need lots of space for the spreading out of research materials and having books close at hand. My department put in a request for facilities to move a set of bookshelves into my office early last week, but it still hasn't done. That means that my books remain in boxes even though they arrived exactly a month ago. This was all exponentially complicated by the fact that earlier this week, I was told that they were going to pull my furniture out and that facilities would install it next week, only to be told yesterday that they weren't going to do it after all. It's no one's fault, but it is frustrating.

My backyard is a scene of tree carnage. After five of our trees blew down in less than two weeks, we took the advice of our handyman and authorized him to cut a number down. Our backyard looks like a mess, and we've had to ask our neighbors if we could temporarily take down part of their fences in order to get the job done. I feel like I owe them all chocolate and wine.

My dog has also started having seizures. She had one a few weeks ago on a Sunday afternoon. We suspected what was happening, but we had never seen it before, so we grabbed her and drove to a nearby animal hospital. By the time we got there, she was returning to normal. Since they told us that there would be a lengthy wait for her to be seen, we returned home and decided to just schedule a vet appointment as soon as we could. We took her to the vet earlier this week, and the vet told us that unless we saw more than one a month that it wasn't a condition that we should worry too much about. That evening Bailey had another seizure.

Both my mom and my sister are having some health problems, and it's just hard to be so far away. It would have been just about as hard the past few years, but now it takes multiple flights that cost so much money to go to see them.

M. has been working a temporary gig that he landed almost as soon as we arrived. It has been extended a couple of times, but it looks like it's coming to an end sometime in October. They thought they would have a project for him that would extend through most of the month, but the budget for it still hasn't been approved so he may be unemployed again by the end of next week. I hope that he finds something soon that he really enjoys or that he at least tolerates with aplomb. There's a certain amount of guilt that occasionally crops up when you are the spouse that gets followed.

I haven't had much positive to say this week, and I guess that's part of why I've been silent. I realize that all of these problems very much fall into the category of #firstworldproblems. Nonetheless, I hope your week has been better than mine.

My Negative Voice

This week I pretty much bonked on my long run.  On Friday I had run 8 miles with my friend S.  We decided to explore a new route and had enjoyed our run.  However, I had not properly rehydrated after it. I had been planning to do my long run on Sunday, but upon consulting the forecast Friday evening, I realized that Saturday would be much better.  Unfortunately, my hydration and nutrition were already off for running 17-18 miles the next day.  Instead of salvaging them, I ate pizza for dinner, drank red wine at a friend's party, which I stayed at longer than I had intended to, and didn't drink enough water.

On Saturday morning I procrastinated, dawdling over my cup of coffee.  I asked M. three times what the forecast was for Sunday (as if it would miraculously change after 5 minutes had passed).  I finally got out the door and hit the path at 10am.  It was sunny, and I was already thirsty.  I wanted to drink the entire contents of my Camelbak after the first two miles.

In spite of my thirst, the first few miles went well, but at mile 5 my negative voice started coming out.  I have been feeling anxious about this happening for the past couple of weeks, and on Saturday it finally did.  My negative voice told me that I wasn't good enough to do the marathon, that I should just turn around and settle for 10 miles that day, that I should change my registration from the full to the half for next month.  It even tried to trick me into thinking it was just looking out for me.  It cajoled me, saying "R, if you do the half in June you will still have months to train for Chicago."  It was almost powerful enough to get me to turn around.  Somehow, though, I dug deep and managed to fight on for 17 miles.  From somewhere deep inside, another part of me told me to keep going, to keep training for 26.2 right now, to get a win.  Plodding, shuffling, wincing, running, walking.  When I didn't listen to it, my negative voice got pissed and fought dirty.  It continued to kick up demons of doubt and replay past failures of the running and non-running variety.  But I didn't stop moving forward.  Sometimes I talked back to my negative voice, encouraging myself, rebelling against my own negativity.  Out loud I said, "I can do this.  Just keep moving.  Run one more minute."  When that minute was up, I'd convince myself to run another one.    

My pace was ridiculously slow, but I completed the run.  Sometimes that's all you can do.  Sometimes finishing is a victory -- especially when your negative voice tries to smack you down before you even actually hit the wall.  And sometimes you get a win when you need one -- even if it isn't pretty.

How do you quiet your negative voice?  What do you do when you hit an emotional wall on your long runs or in regular life?