Saturday, November 29, 2014

I can do hard things now (maybe because I have an easy life)


That's me at the bottom right. I look like I'm dying.

In September I ran my first ever half marathon. It was in Scotland. (Oh that's right I just flew to Scotland for the weekend and ran a half marathon. No biggie. Yawn.) I would have never thought I could do that--but I did! (Not very fast, my time was 2 hours 16 minutes.) It made me feel so awesome, not just that I had the willpower to run for that long, but also that I was able to practice every week. I certainly wasn't perfect at practicing, but I almost always got my long runs in on Saturdays. I was impressed that I could make a long term, difficult goal and keep it. I was also impressed that I did it to meet no one's expectations but my own. It was a purely Anna thing. 

Now it's November and I'm doing NaNoWriMo, which is a commitment to write 50,000 words towards a novel in a month. Uh, I'm not done yet. I have one day and 2,000 words left to write. But I know I'll finish it. FYI it is pretty hard for me to do. I have been writing about 2 hours every day. After thirty days, that's a long time to be writing. And a lot of it is pretty terrible, but some of it shows promise and I feel like my writing muscles are flexing in a way that they haven't since I graduated. This makes me proud as well.

So basically I am telling you that I am amazing because I am doing hard things that fulfill me.

But also, a little voice inside of me is kind of laughing because I am doing hard things because my life is easy right now. My children are all older than two which makes them lower maintenance; however, they are younger than six so their social lives still revolve around our family and I don't have to ferry them to multiple activities yet. We don't need money so I don't have to work. I have as few social responsibilities as I want, and I have a flexible schedule that I can shape around my wants. My life is easier than it has ever been as a mom! So I can do what I want to do.

I do think, I have matured and acquired  a lot of discipline, but if our finances changed for the worse, if another baby happened, if Chris deployed again, or if illness or any number of unforeseen obstacles fell into my life I am pretty sure I would have to drop my chosen hard things---because I would have real hard things to deal with.

But in the meantime, hooray for achieving goals! Whoop whoop! I am a hero!

1 comment:

Kathy Haynie said...

Whoop whoop indeed! What a great experience - not just the half-marathon itself, but all the training leading up to it. Were you part of a team? It looks like everyone in the photo has matching shirts. Or maybe that's for everyone who did the half marathon? Go Anna!!