Time for the Calm

Being a single gal in the big city with a new full-time job to keep me immersed, not to mention friends and co-workers who enjoy peer-pressuring me out on week nights for a cocktail (or 4), it isn't often that I am able to experience the calm after the storm. Nope, here in Manhattan it is more likely the tornado after the storm that is to be acquainted.

I've always considered myself a fairly level-headed, down to earth, semi-introvert who has always embraced and welcomed solo time... Meeee time. However the past few weeks seem to be such a whirl-wind of activities, outtings and people, that I find it hard to keep track of where my life has gone and even more so, where the crap the TIME has gone...

It's just about the first of May and I see that Spring is in full swing here. Colorful tulips border city streets and budding cherry blossoms give off a tender, candied smell as they sway in the roaring breeze of midtown. The old nursery rhyme is certainly ringing true, May flowers are in the works, alright.

With all of these subtle hints of nature poking throug this concrete labarynth, you'd think I would have made plenty of time to "stop and smell the roses". Yet here I haphazardly sit, typing away at my keyboard after countless days and weeks of absence in oblivion.

And so here marks a new declaration: I have finally decided to put my foot down and expose the calm after the hurricane of activities that has been my life for the past several weeks and sit in peace. Nothing but my box fan rotating in the corner and the unobtrusive, vague resonance of commuters making way on the FDR to distract me...

Yup, I've even put the trusty iPod into hibernation and ran sans songs on my daily jog.

See that? I'm not kidding around!

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I'm A Runner

This is the first time I am admitting it. Putting it on paper, and even allowing myself to agree. Sure I've ran for the past 9 years or so, but I was also always the slacker... The one you'd have to watch in cross country practice after school when the coach would send the team off in groups to hit the trails at a comfortable pace. There I'd be, hanging out with a few other motionless "joggers" behind the clearing in the woods, shooting the breeze and gulping up the last of my gaterade that I didn't necesarily need.

But after high school and college passed by and there were no more "practices" or loud-mouthed coaches to keep me moving, something interesting happened... I actually ran.

Okay, okay, so I'm not exactly fast. Infact, I always offer up the courtesy of explaining to my jogging parnter on any given day that I'm pretty damn slow. But I'm out there, moving, no one to motivate me but myself.

This past year something terrible happened-- I lost my motivation. For the past 3 or 4 months I've been immobile, inert, and allowing my white-girl booty to morph into something involving the term "ghetto"...

I'm not really sure why I stopped or what it was that blew out my flame, but for some reason I just couldn't prompt myself to get off the couch and take measures in the right direction.

New York City today was beautiful... 68 degrees and not a cloud in the sky. I put on my squeaky clean kicks and wrapped my iPod around my white hoodie clad arm. Out the door I went and after a quick stretch I (slowly) made my way up to Central Park.

It wasn't like it used to be... It was laborious on my hips, taxing on my ankles and a huge challenge for me not to walk. I got up to the reservoir and took some time to stretch out. I could already tell where I'd be sore later. I pushed myself on and completed the whole lap, continuing out and back towards mid-town in the direction I had come.

Today is day 1. I'm a beginner all over again... Let a new spring begin...