I don’t know if I can file this as recovery related, but I have been training for a half marathon.  I have been going to the gym for quite some time now and decided that I wanted to challenge myself so that I could have a goal and work to achieve that goal.  It has been working so far.  Having a training plan and a goal has been making my progress tangible.  It is more than just going every day to the gym and not being sure if I am getting any where.  I suppose that’s the purpose of goals.  How this is recovery related I suppose is that I would not have been able to do this 2 years ago.  I used to sit on the side lines or even on the couch when Mare was out at these events.  I used to get annoyed when she would wake up really early to go for these runs in the morning because I may have just fallen asleep.  It used to take me hours and hours to fall asleep when I was drinking.  There got to be many nights when I was just up all night drinking.  I don’t think I would even make it up to bed.  Now I am getting to bed early to get my rest prior to these long training runs.

Today was tough, real tough, I had to do my longest run ever of 18 Km.  It took forever and I almost quit a few times.  But this was a real gut check today.  I got through it and I think I will be ok next weekend.  One week from today is the actual half-marathon.  Today has been a total write off, I finished the run and then had an epsom salt soak and then spent the rest of the day asleep in bed.  I wish I was able to recover faster from this type of training.  But I am still new to this distance type running.  I don’t know if this is going to be something that I continue to do after this, but we will see.  If I really enjoy it I will consider signing up for another, but I don’t know how Mare does this without training for it.  Crazy chic….

I went to an art gallery once.

My father used to live in Ottawa and the military used to have a bus that you could take from Petawawa to Ottawa for free.  A family member in the military could put your name on a list and you could get a free trip to the city.  My buddy Chris and I decided to go and spend a couple of days in the city, so we got on that bus and went to stay at my dad’s place downtown.  This was awesome, we spent the day walking around going to magazine and record stores, hanging at the mall and the culmination of this trip was the idea that we get tickets to the National Art Gallery.  This felt like a thing that I should be into seeing, and I am not sure that either of us knew what to expect, maybe we wanted to go so we would feel “intelligent” or some dumb thing like that.  But we go into this place and I immediately feel out of place.  I am this kid dressed like I am some damn grunge band.  I have 8 hole Doc Marten’s on with ripped jeans, a plaid shirt and long greasy hair.  I am sure that people must have thought we didn’t pay for a ticket to get in.

They gave us these big plastic tokens at a coat check, as they didn’t want you to carry large backs around with you through the gallery.  This fucking token was going to be the source of much frustration for poor Chris.  I am somewhat of a fidgety person by nature and I tend to play with things when they are in my hands.  As we are walking around this gallery I am flipping and twirling this token around in my hands.  The gallery is a VERY quiet place.  People are staring at pictures trying to discern great meaning from all of the beautiful paintings and scupltures.  twirl, flip, toss, CLANK……..

I drop this large plastic token onto the hard wood floors in this church to modern and classic art.  The sound from the hard plastic hitting the bare floor echos off of the walls and reverberates down the hall.  No less than 10 people turn and look at us….

I sheepishly pick up my token and do I put it in my pocket?  NOPE….. right back into my hands it goes and I start fidgeting with it again.  Chris is laughing at me, for now…

I proceeded to drop this fucking token in basically every single room of the gallery.  Chris starts giving me shit in a hushed voice so as not to disturb the other patrons of this establishment.  I drop the thing again, as he is telling me to just put it in my pocket.  I swear I didn’t even realize that I had the thing in my hands most of the time.  But eventually I started to find it hilarious.

After many hours of these shenanigans we finish up with the art gallery and leave.  This was one of the last times I have ever been a patron of the arts.

 

Tailspin, I am stuck in my own head again.  I don’t think I would call it taking back my own will.  It’s more of a situation that I have to sit back and wait for things to play out.  But I have the old stinking thinking where I am struggling to try to control things or at least to come to grips with things in my life.  I am not very good at this.  I know that I have no control over people, places, and things, but I have emotions and sometimes they seem to be shouting the loudest.  I suppose that the fact that I am even recognizing these things about myself is progress.  I been wrestling with the personalities in my office.  I one or two people that I work with that are going to require me to take time away from the office.  Mental health days if you will…..

One of my character defects is that I suffer from a terrible fear of abandonment.  I genuinely have know idea why, or how this came to be.  But it is there and it is terrible and debilitating at times.  I very seldom even recognize when it pops up.  But I have a habit of writing people off when it comes up.  I feel that it is irrational but sadly it’s happened in the past without me even realizing and I have lost friends because of it.  I often wonder if it’s because of my childhood as an army brat.  Either I or my friends, the people that I have grown close to, would move away every couple of years.  I have read studies that indicate that kids raised in this environment tend to be more resilient and able to adapt to their environment.  I recognize that I have the ability to blend into any group of people, to seek out what we have in common and use that to engage people.  So maybe that’s a positive.  But I also always assume that the people that I care about the most are only ever temporary.

How do I fix this?

at the moment I am feeling a resentment building up with this role that I was asked to take on as GSR.  I have to attend this district meeting once a month and it has been getting in my way lately.  I have stuff that I need to do on Sundays and today I have to drop what I am doing to go and attend this thing.  This means that I wasn’t able to go on the Toronto Zoo day date with Mary Anne like she wanted too.  I feel terrible that I have to do this and not spend the afternoon with her.  But I know that living with this responsibility is part of the program.  Someone has to be there to represent our group and I suppose there are worse things I could be doing.  But today is just a little bit stingy.