Archive for the ‘ Health ’ Category

If I could

I want to sleep. I have a lot on my mind though.

I have not slept well often in the last several years. Post traumatic stress is a motherfucker on your subconscious.

I have special people to me, in my life, that suffer it’s awful effects. I wish that I were able to take all of their pain and make it my own so that they would no longer have to worry about the next minute, hour, day.

I know that I am strong, I don’t think that any of them are weak, it’s more that I know I was given broad shoulders and that I’d gladly carry their portion of the burden for them, even for just a little while.

Long enough for them to be able to reach deep and find a genuine smile. Some laughter amid the pain, hope rising from the ashes.

I wish I could.

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Right this moment there are more people on the planet running than were living a thousand years ago.

There’s a website called reddit – you may have heard of it.

At any rate I read a comment about running that resonates and I thought I’d share it:

This is sort of how I started running too. When my life was falling apart and I thought nothing else could go right I started going to the gym to force myself into something social everday. Just to interact with people. Just to do SOMETHING.
And then I started running. And then it started being about me. And that feeling. And the act. And how free it was. How independent. How strong. How I didn’t have to hold back anything like I did with the rest of the world. On the treadmill, on the trails, on the track, in my running shoes I was allowed to be raw anger and pain and frustration and loneliness and strength, too, because fuck the world that doesn’t think it takes strength to be alone.
Fast forward six months – my first 5k. Six more – half marathon. A year – marathon. I’m still the only one I know who’s done it. I’m about to start training for the triathlon. And yeah, I like my body a lot better now, not so much because of the way it looks but because it is a powerful, independent, free extension of the strength I carry and I can show that any time.
So you, more power to you. Run. Run for as long as it makes you happy. There’s nothing like that first ten miler that you take in the middle of the night without your phone or telling anyone where you went and you think it’s never going to end and when you finally finish your legs are fucked for the next three days, but fuckitall if it wasn’t worth it.
Running’s like that. Welcome to the family.

Actual post on reddit with comment.

A little off-topic but ever in my heart and thoughts – to my best friend holding down that bar, keeping my seat open: I’ll see you again someday buddy, but not yet.
David R. Greenslade
Kandahar City, Afghanistan
04/08/07

Running from/with injury.

“The modern world is not necessarily a runner’s world. Many other physical variables affect our ability to stay healthy. We detrain our glutes and tighten our hamstrings sitting at our desks for hours, grow tight in the shoulders from stress and eat genetically modified foods with consequences we don’t yet fully understand. The variables are as different as the circumstances of our lives, with one thing in common: They all hamper the body’s ability to deal with the forces of running.”

-Philip Latter, April 2013 Issue Running Times

That pretty much sums it up, I have no problem quoting when someone else can say what I’m trying to say more eloquently than I can.

Tears or Tears (read, read – both ways)

I can honestly say that I don’t know if it was sweat or tears in my eyes for that last mile – but I hit both my goals and I feel absolutely exhausted/amazing.

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Run

Running, again, finally.

Last year, I tore a muscle in my lower back. March fifth, to be exact. It’s taken over a year to rehab it back to running strength. It took several months before I could walk without pain, it still bothers me but not enough anymore to keep me from the runs I’ve missed so much.

Much worse than the hamstring I tore back in oh-six.

At any rate I’ve run a bit under forty miles in the last eight days. Longest run so far has been a seven-miler Friday night, I’m hoping to break that PR later this evening.

I’ve had to completely restructure my stride and I’m still learning how to use it to its fullest potential.

I started a new Nike+ account since I’m no longer the runner that put those old numbers up. All new PR’s to be made and broken:

Actually rather refreshing, I’ve got new all new mountains to climb.

Clarifying

Insomnia.

When you have insomnia you’re never really asleep but you’re never really awake either.

I don’t sleep well, I never have. I don’t keep what one might call regular hours and I’ve learned to function productively on very little rest.

Sometimes, just sometimes, I can sleep for more than a few hours at a time.

I think that this post is going to be a bit more about the mundane parts of my life. I’ve got a headache and that’s not really conducive to exploring the things I generally like to discuss here.

I still feel compelled to write though, even when my thoughts are moving at the speed of cold sap. That’s actually weirdly encouraging.

My back hurts. I pulled a muscle in my lower back a week or so ago. Pretty much awful, I’ve never had back problems so rather naturally I was unprepared for just how limited your world becomes when you can’t tie your own shoes.

I’m stuck at the dividing line between the end of one novel and the beginning of the next. Foggy, gray area you have become my home.

My poor beaten up civic has been acting oddly all week, maybe it’s sympathy pangs, that car and I have been through a lot together. Side note on that: I have, since my first ride at sixteen, named my cars after early twentieth-century starlets.

Strange? Maybe.

That scene in the first matrix movie when Smith is having a bit of a breakdown interrogating Morpheus is close to the surface. I must escape this place and in this mind is a key, my key.

I am seriously going a little crazy since I can’t run. I need to run. It’s something that I don’t think I can really live without.

This annoying injury makes me feel old. I’m not a fan of that feeling in any way. I will say this though; still no gray. Not much leaves marks on me, yeah I’ve got some (fairly serious) scars but I’ve earned every single one of them.

I think that my blog has been far too serious and somewhat depressing for a while now. I hardly ever write down the things that make me happy, or any of those things that make me laugh. When there are days between posts you can be certain that I was smiling enough that I didn’t need to write through anything.

I think that I need to change that.

Here’s something. Sandwiches. I freakin love sandwiches. Probably my favorite food. I love bread, and cheese, do not get me started on cheese. Sandwiches have an endless variety in terms of fillers and condiments. One can never be bored with a sandwich if that sandwich has been properly made.

This is from a conversation I had today about cheese and sandwiches, it illustrates my views perfectly:

Cheese is the most important part of a sandwich – adding both flavor and texture and also getting another food group into your hand…that being said, I think it’s chief virtue is that it provides a stable platform for condiment deployment.

I tend take an engineers view on sandwich construction. Probably because my undergrad/grad roommate was an ME guy. And handy with a grill.

But I digress, I’m quite happy right now. I want to get back out of Ohio like no other, (why did I ever come back here again?) and I really really want to tie my shoes again but other than that life is quite good. I do like to explore some serious concepts here, but a large percentage of the time I’ve already worked through it by the time I finish a post. Sometimes I don’t even post them, unless it’s something I think might help someone else or provoke some discussion. I just delete them after I’m done because the act of writing it down solved whatever it was that I was dealing with and I no longer have a need to share it. For example there is a post sitting in my upload cue dated February twenty-eighth.

As for the concept I brought up in my last post, I’ll get to that after I’ve gotten some sleep. I will say this though, right at this exact moment my heart sleeps under a starlit sky, the beat of a desert night keeping its rhythm.

Utopi-end

I wonder why I never realize how happy I was at a particular time until I’m looking back.

Strange.

L. O. V. E. Is just another word I never learned to pronounce.

Properly, as it were. Or maybe I just don’t know what it really means. I suppose, looking back, that those who have tried to show me seem rather under-qualified and overly-confident in their abilities (considering the poor quality of the collective resume).

And yet I’m still smiling, apparently my shine is un-tarnishable…and confidence is a stain they can’t wipe off.

In other news I’m going for a run, 2012 marathon trifecta training starts…now.

I have begun to streamline- I am a machine of graceful lines and hard edges, aerodynamic in a rough fashion; as I excise the aforementioned excess my edges begin to become smooth once more.

It is truly a glorious day to be alive.

Hmmmm

Have you ever noticed how many pharmaceutical commercials there are these days? It’s a little weird. What I really want to know is why do so many of these drugs cause anal leakage? I feel like that is a rather unacceptable side effect.

Just sayin.

For once, I really don’t have much else to say. Odd, I know.

Maybe later.

Welcome to the show

I think this is going to be more of a disjointed general update, rather than a focused update.

Of sorts.

At any rate I’m healing, it’s been a mixture of good and bad news. The scarring has been minimal considering the seriousness of the injury.

That being said, the docs don’t know if I’ll ever regain full use of the right side of my upper lip. C’est la vie, I was too pretty anyway.

I haven’t been able to run, which is annoying since it’s one of my better outlets for dealing with emotions that I am unable to articulate with language.

I feel like a curious mixture of both hope and despair. That being said, I am in no way depressed, just reevaluating and speculating.

I have always found that my life nearly always gives me what I need, the reason for this escapes me but I’m sure it will become clear in time.

I am becoming more and more excited about moving. There are several choices on the table, all of them involve sun, sand and salt water. This makes me smile (well half a smile, it’s all I can currently manage).

There are things here in Ohio that I will certainly miss, but the lure of new adventures is simply too great to ignore. I enjoy starting new chapters, it’s a blank slate, there is purpose and direction, but the pages are waiting to be written and I find that filling those spaces with experiences is something I cannot live without.

Life here has become routine, stagnant; an unhappy medium, something I simply cannot let myself become comfortable with.

My life has always been about going big. I have always felt that you can create your own greatness, your own story can be whatever you want it to be. You just have to want it enough. I have always been a creature of passion, of extreme desire to succeed; on my own terms.

I will not become an old man, filled with regret.

There are still so many stories to be written, songs to be sung and adventures to be had. My ambition is to make sure I capture as many of them as I can.

Bore, boring, bored

I think that if I were reading my blog I’d be bored. It’s all very important to me, it’s all very much interesting to me; I’m just not sure how interesting it is to anyone else that may happen to read it.

Speaking of people reading my blog, my page views have sky-rocketed lately and honestly, not too many people (that i know, or know of, in the ‘real’ world) actually know about said blog.

Strange wot?

So if you’re reading this, do me a solid and leave me a comment: I’m curious and I’d appreciate it.

And right back in we go:

Maybe I am kind of boring these days, but I am very much happy, healthy and hale.

In other news I ran 1.62 miles today, slowly, with walk breaks. But I got to run and it was absolutely glorious.

I solemnly swear to never try to push through an injury like that again. The last two weeks were so incredibly frustrating (with regard to running) that I never want to repeat that again.

I need to write this idea for a book/movie/game down. It’s basic right now but I really think it’s got potential.

I may add to this later, but for now I’m good on typing.

PS: I ❤ my iPhone.

Nosce Te Ipsum