All of this started on January 17, 2010. What happened that day? I started living my life.
You see, I'd been a victim for nearly 30 years. Full of excuses and reasons and explanations and lamentations about why I wasn't getting what I wanted. I was a very angry girl. I was sick and tired of giving everything I had to do what you're *supposed* to do to be happy (i.e. to dating, finding a mate, landing a good job, finding friends with similar interests, spending money, etc.) only to come up short. At the end of pretty much every day, I was miserable. And it was my own damn fault.
Then something happened. I started to admit to myself how miserable I was. Cracks started to show in the foundation of the life I'd built for myself and I quickly tried to patch them up with aggression, anger, sarcasm, and - worst of all - blame. But it wasn't working. The patches I created didn't fix anything, they just seemed to divert attention away for a bit until I could figure out how to delude myself back into thinking that the particular part of my life that started to fall apart was really OK and another area had begun to fall spectacularly to pieces....
Obviously, this is no way to live. And I wasn't living. So then, on January 17, 2010, I started my new life. I took about a week before that to write out a strategic plan for my life; a 20 page document that details what I want my life to look like and what I thought that I could reasonably accomplish in a 12 month period. Then I got to work.
Since 1/17/10 I've been living my life very differently. I take chances and meet challenges and try new things. I have real confidence - not just the kind you pretend you have to do better on a date or to make others think you know what you're talking about when you're well aware that you don't. Just taking control of what I wanted my life to be - and assuming responsibility for my life in whatever state I find it - was an incredibly difficult but incredibly powerful experience. And I live it again and again every single day.
So, what's this blog about? Well, two things, really:
First, I want to talk about how I'm doing along this path. As I move forward I'll reveal bits and pieces of the plan I wrote down 6 months ago and how I'm doing. I'll give details about successes and failures I've had along the way and challenges yet to face. I'll talk about really taking control and running my own life without excuses, without victimhood.
Second, I want to talk about running. Running is something I've discovered very recently and that has already had a huge impact on my life. I find myself wanting to talk about running all the time with everyone I can... but many of my friends are not runners. I need an outlet - a new way to express the joy I feel when I've just accomplished a new distance or an improved time. I want to talk about running my life on the road - and how running is an incredible analogy for just about every single challenge we can have in life.
Tonight's Run: 1.82 miles in 21 minutes. Slow and steady in my Five Fingers shoes.
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