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AN EVENTUAL END OF EVERYTHING

I was out running the day before yesterday.  It was one of those running days when, if I was independently wealthy and it was humanly possible to gain the physical benefits from someone else running for you, I would have paid someone to run my 4 miles for me.  I just didn't want to do it.  Now, I do believe that our attitude determines greatly how much enjoyment or grit we have for any given thing in front of us.  Running included.  I didn't have any.  Probably compared to most, I have a great deal of self discipline and drive.  I can push through things that are hard.  I have staying power.  Before you think I am great and mighty (ok, go ahead and think it!), really I am wired this way.  I don't necessarily read books on the subject of self-discipline and grit.  It comes relatively easy for me.  Likewise someone who has the IQ of say 160 is just wired that way.  Which, by the way, has now created a desire in me to take an IQ test.  I am hoping to get an average score of 100.  Then again, maybe I shouldn't take the test.  What if I don't score that high and I am shattered over my false sense of intelligence?    Back to running :)  I am out running, not because I want to but because I know it's good for me.  Because I want the results that are garnered from it.  I am on the last mile.  Struggling to finish, let alone finish strong, I start this dialogue in my head.  Ok Nancy, you can do anything that you know has a start and a stop.  You can endure winter knowing it will last at its harshest only about 3 months.  You can run a 7.5 minute mile because you know you can eventually stop.  Now, you have one more mile left.  Run the mile, damn it!  If you never want to run again, you don't HAVE to, but you are going to finish this run.   That's how I talked myself into finishing something that I had no desire to do.  I break it down in minutes sometimes.  That is how I endured several years of extreme pain.  I would break the clock down.  My daughter, then in high school, would leave for school at 7:45 a.m.  I would look at the clock and tell myself every hour I could do the next hour.  That I only had to do that hour.  When it came and went, that's how I got through the next hour.  I feel the same way when I bite off a home improvement project that is bigger than me.  Especially toward the end of one.  When I was single, I decided to paint my dining room, living and entryway which involved moving all the furniture by myself.  It is a huge area to paint by yourself, especially if you are not a professional painter.  Since I have OCD as well:), I had 2 coats of paint on the ceiling, two coats on the wall, two trim coats on the baseboard, 5 door frames with 2 coats of paint and 3 windows trimmed with two coats of paint.  Toward the end of it all, I was behind myself pushing myself to finish.  I had a similar talk with myself that I had a couple days ago on my run.  There was an end to the paint eventually.  There was the end sight of my driveway eventually from that run.  Today, the first large snowfall came.  As my husband and I went out to shovel, I told myself the same thing, You can do this for 3 months.  No big deal.  The snow will leave eventually.

THE YEAR OF THE LEO

It's the first day of a new year.  I often wonder if this day is magically supposed to feel different than the last day of the last year.  Seldom do they.  When I was a kid, scared permanently from my borderline fundamentalist religious upbringing, I usually thought Jesus would return as the clock struck 12:01 a.m. on January 1st.  In those hours leading up to it, while eating sandwiches made by my grandma with the crusts cut off, I would sincerely repent of things that I knew probably would keep me from heaven.  You know 10 year old stuff; sassing my parents, fighting with my sisters and then throwing the blame on them so that they would get in trouble with my mom, saying I brushed my teeth when my mom asked when I really had only put the toothbrush under the faucet to feign a real brushing, standing up inside constantly in defiance when being told to do most anything by my parents, socking my middle sister in the boobs just to hear her scream.  Mostly repenting of the big things in life.  When Y2K rolled onto the horizon all the world got a bit crazy.  There were religious zealots out there declaring the end of time to come.  That Jesus was coming back (ok, great here we go again with the Jesus coming back on New Year's Day again).  There were non-religious zealots out there who believed that technologically the glitch in the world clock would cause all systems to shut down creating a sort of universal mayhem which would lead to no food or water or electricity or the transacting of the financial world.  A screeching halt would occur that would render civilization as we knew it useless.  I had $800 in cash hidden in a shoe, 10 gallons of water, 2-10 gallon containers of gasoline in the garage, some various canned foods that would have only kept me alive for a few weeks.  I though had no way to keep warm if the electricity went out, no ability to get running water, or access my money in the bank if all systems shut down.  We all counted down with Dick Clark (previous to his stroke) to 1.  Nothing.  It was a moment, a day like every other day.  I came away from that New Year's Eve with $800,  2-10 gallon containers of gasoline, 10 gallons of water, and some canned goods.  It was a great day!  There were years when I was young that I would propound some great goal to achieve in the year to come.  Some great discipline I would obtain in the months to come.  I don't do that any more.  I don't think I need a magic day to start something new.  To change something in myself.  To unleash passion.  March 11th works just as well as January 1st.  What I do though like about January 1st is that I usually do my own Lynn's Year In Review similar to TIME magazine.  I think about how fast time has gone, what all I did the past year, how blessed I am, did I move my checker on the checker board closer to the passions in my life, did I love others including those closest to me the best I knew how, what each season brought to me in terms of projects-relationships-firsts-reactions-progress forward-inward healing.  I had a great year in 2011.  The heartache of 2010 fell away to some degree and love entered my world for the first time in my life.  I had firsts in every season and holiday with a man that I deeply loved.  I moved forward further with writing.  I laughed alot.  I treasured my family and my new family.  I celebrated the handful of friends who have enriched my life and stood with me in mountains of change.  I am a Leo, astrologically speaking.  I found my roar in 2011.