Maybe I'll Start a Blog

Posts

Seen On My Run

There wasn’t a pandemic happening when this was scratched into the pavement, I reckon. I came up with a new #SeenOnMyRun game during tonight’s four miler. 1 pt for every discarded face mask you see on the side of the road. 2 pts for every motorist you see texting while their vehicle is in motion. 3 pts for every cyclist you encounter on the sidewalk. I scored 7 points. Three of those came from a cyclist I decided to play chicken with. I won. And then in my head I was like, “that’s right, bro. I’m not gonna be pushed around anymore!” which is a weird thought because I don’t think I let people push me around in life much and also nobody really tries to so it’s like my tired brain just saw that very obvious metaphor and put it to use without regard for the fact that it doesn’t apply. But still. This non-event occurred on a perfectly wide, low-speed block that doesn’t have on-street parking and it’s ridiculous that that dude was riding his bike on the sidewalk right there anyway. Learn the...

Resolution

In an attempt to end the year on a good note, I opted to do both a December daily run streak and Dry December. This is backwards. I should not be doing the healthy things right before resolution time, because then how will I become The New Me in the new year? On the other hand, I have a pretty lofty walk/run mileage goal for 2021, so I can’t really let up just because the calendar changes. And I don’t really enjoy drinking alone, except maybe a porch beer on a warm evening, and since socializing and warm evenings aren’t happening any time soon, it’ll probably be a mostly Dry January anyway. My resolution for 2020 was to eliminate negative self talk. That’s virtually impossible to track or quantify, so I have no idea if I succeeded. Let’s say yes. The fact that I remember my resolution 364 days later is a feat, really. Other than the aforementioned mileage goal, I don’t really have a resolution for 2021. However, I’ll be turning 40 next year, and I have some Feelings about that. ...

I do not dream of labor

There’s a quote that goes something like, “I don’t have a dream job. I do not dream of labor.” I can’t find the original source, but I’d love to know. In any case, I appreciate the sentiment even though in some ways I have had a few “dream jobs,” including my current one. It was an educational journey to get there, though. There was this short-lived TV show called Quarterlife that was on when I was the correct age for it. It might have been a MySpace TV series. Was that a thing? Am I making this up? Anyway, it was bad, but I was feeling my own quarterlife crisis pretty hard and I watched the first episode with interest. Our hero was an early-20s woman working in some low-level position at a women’s magazine, and that’s where it lost me. I would have KILLED for a shitty entry-level job at a magazine. I was working a clerical job at a disability insurance company and in hindsight, it was *fine*, as jobs go. But I had a big ol’ chip on my shoulder about how I, with my equestrian science d...

Run streak

In an effort to cleanse the ol’ mind, body, and spirit as we exit this trash fire year, I’m embarking on a run streak now through 1/1/21. That means running at least a mile a day, every single day. These are the literal darkest days of a metaphorically dark year and it would be very easy to succumb to the desire to spend them under a blanket, doomscrolling and eating mediocre store-bought baked goods. I’m not going to promise I won’t be doing a lot of that, too, but I know from experience that I will feel better if I go out in the cold and raise my heart rate regularly even when I really think I don’t want to. I miss run club and actual races. But one upside of winter is that when it’s cold, Brit will run with me, as she did today. She’s less interested in the running part and more interested in the opportunities to sniff, roll, and scavenge for snacks. Today she found what appeared to be half of a boiled potato and a hot dog bun, so it was basically her thanksgiving.

It’s the right thing to do and it sucks.

When I was a kid, we went to my uncle’s house for Thanksgiving every year, which was pretty cool because he was the caretaker of a 4H camp. It was deserted in November, so we had free run of the place. We’d explore the stables, skip stones on the pond, try to get into the cabins (usually locked) and the mess hall (inexplicably not locked). We learned how to drive by being turned loose with the minivan on the one long road through the property. And we ate pie. Real Norman Rockwell stuff. I say all this to illustrate that I understand why a lot of Americans have warm fuzzies about Thanksgiving and tradition. I do, too. But it is just a day. There isn’t any law of nature that makes turkey and pie and family unavailable to you on days other than the third Thursday in November. If there were no end in sight for the pandemic, I’d understand why so many otherwise conscientious people are doing Thanksgiving travel and in-person gatherings. But there are vaccines on the horizon. Yes, it’s goi...

Welcome to my Xanga

I finally decided to create a second Instagram (and by extension, this old school blog). Because: My other account is sort of professional but I am a social media oversharer at heart which means it sometimes becomes personal or just kind of weird. And I think that’s fine to a point but I do want to be connected to people in my industry without necessarily foisting my every thought or feeling into their feeds. I just got a new phone with a much better camera which means I’ll probably be talking a lot of goofy photos—portrait mode photos of my dog’s snoot, for example—and maybe I don’t need those to be on what is a de facto portfolio for my side hustle. Look, friends. We’re headed into a long, dark, and isolated winter. I live alone, the pandemic rages on, and my therapist is on maternity leave until spring. I think I might want an outlet for my thoughts. Thus the name of this account: this is my roaring 20s version of a c. 2002 personal blog, but with a character limit. S...