What are you looking at?

Poking

I am inspired.

Since the start of the year, leap has driven me to show up, connect with others, and give old dreams new shape. It's hard to write through this transition because I have all these ideas swirling around and no clue how to express them in neat little paragraphs. But surely I can leap through this, too.

If you follow me on Twitter, you've probably noticed my new fangirl crush on Seth Godin. I've known about Seth for years because of his impact on my industry, but it wasn't until I heard him speak at a marketing conference last month that he made a lasting impression on me personally. His talk of the post-industrial revolution, purple cows, and don't be a sheep MAKE SOMETHING HAPPEN brought me to tears. The whole conference was like that. Most of the presentations directly related to marketing but pulled in ideas that also resonate on a higher level. Some quotes from the speakers (and I'm paraphrasing):

"Embrace the weird."

"If someone asks how your day was, and all you can say is 'fine,' what opportunities are you wasting?"

"It's not about time, it's priorities."

"Where do I find the people who are waiting for me to lead them?"

Godin gave copies of his books to every conference attendee. As a result, I've been reading Poke the Box - "a manifesto of starting" - in snatches over the last three weeks. More than 10 pages per sitting and I literally might combust.

More quotes, because why not?

"If you have quality and they have quality and that's all either of you offers, then you're selling a commodity, and I'll take cheap, please. We have little choice but to move beyond quality and seek remarkable, connected, and new."

"Poking doesn't mean right. It means action."

"If you've got the platform and the ability to make a difference, then this goes beyond 'should' and reaches the level of 'must.' You must make a difference or you squander the opportunity."

"Part of initiating is being willing to discover that what you end up with is different from what you set out to accomplish. If you're not willing to discover that surprise, it's no wonder you're afraid to start."

All of this and more is setting fire to my heart and shining a light on my need to affect change. 

I've given myself a pass these last five years because living knee-deep in morning sickness and night wakings and temper tantrums is HARD, you guys, but most of you know that because you're living it, too. That said, I'm now at the point where I'm ready to step up. Even if it's baby steps, even with a young family and demanding career. If not now, when? 

Years ago, when talking with another mom about balancing civic and domestic obligations, she said (and again, I'm paraphrasing), "If all I do is raise smart, healthy kids, that can be good enough. Who knows what they'll go on to do because of what they learned from me?"

I appreciate her point, but I don't agree.

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Luke and I signed up for a membership class at our church as a way to get involved. One of our assignments was to take a spiritual assessment to learn what our strengths are when it comes to serving God. Hokey, sure, but the older I get, the more I appreciate hokey, so okay.

According to the quiz, my gifts are in administration, leadership, and writing.

The results didn't surprise me - it was the realization I should be DOING something with these on a larger scale. 

Around the globe, children die from hunger and disease. Pregnant women walk the distance of a 5K to access medical care. Teenagers are targeted and killed for wearing a hoodie.

What kind of person am I if I have resources others only dream of and yet do nothing? Do my kids' future accomplishments absolve me of personal responsibility today?

I may never find the perfect balance, but I have a platform. I have ability.

I have a voice.

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I am Dorothy Boyd, abandoning conformity, shouting, "I will go with you!" and crossing my fingers my hunky new boss offers health insurance. 

At the same time, I am Jerry Maguire, writing (blogging?) 20-page mission statements and stealing office goldfish, ready to lead.

(I am way more excited about finding the above link than is appropriate.)

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Even before Seth Godin's book, I've been poking the box with a vengeance. I rejoined the volunteer board of directors for my undergrad's alumni association after a three-year hiatus to get my baby on. Meanwhile, others around me are initiating change of their own. My dad is considering politics. My sister Ryan is going back to school. Obama supports gay marriage. Luke is blogging again!

We are all moving forward.

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What inspires you?

Every street light a reminder

You all will be happy to know I've achieved a new milestone in my sporadic running career: logging miles in the dark.

This accomplishment was made possible by several factors:

• Renewed commitment to improving my post-partum physique; tires belong on cars, not around your waist, amiright?
• Lack of funds for a gym membership/access to a treadmill.
• Lack of funds for surgical reapirs, aka tummy tuck, and intense fear of additional work to my abdomen. Four surgeries in four years is quite enough, AM I RIGHT.

Pair those factors with the knowledge that the sun doesn't rise and set at my command, and there you go. Time to try something new.

Boy, was I in a slump this winter. After coming back from gallbladder surgery, I had little to no ambition for keeping up on my PT exercises or following my training program for the Mini, and it wasn't long before I was avoiding the stairs and wincing in pain during my 40-minute commutes to and from work. Meanwhile, I saw Facebook updates about the race and realized there was no way on God's green earth I was going to be in good enough shape to cover 13 miles in May - not without compromising the little progress I'd made thus far. I was pretty upset by everything and questioned whether running was a good fit for me after all.

Maybe my body's trying to tell me something, I thought. Maybe I've done all that I can do.

Then I picked up an issue of Runner's World and read about a formerly 800-pound man with one leg who qualified for Boston or similar beat-the-odds narrative. I slapped my palm to my forehead. Perspective, Frema. Point taken.

Shockingly, loving running, talking about running, and reading about running are fine and worthy activities, but if you want to actually make progress in your running, you have to run. You heard it here first!  

And that has always been my issue. With everything on my plate - career, husband, young children, budgeting, housekeeping, obsessive planning for the future - I have a terrible time ranking fitness and other "hobbies" a priority (see also: this blog). But as I remind myself time and time again, if I want my kids to grow up believing that exercise is a non-negotiable part of life, and FUN to boot, I have to adopt that same attitude. I also have to remember that I control my day and not vice versa.

I have plenty of time for the things that are important to me. Thank you, Gretchen Rubin, once again, for your simple yet powerful insights.

I am not the only wife, mother, and worker bee on the planet who is pressed for time. Plenty of others in my situation find a way to make running stick. Part of the problem is my tendency to impose arbitrary limits on myself. As in, no running during the kids' bedtime; if there are dishes in the sink; on days I work late; on days I'm late for work; when there's a phone call to return; without adequate daylight. Running is a treat, a reward, too enjoyable to be taken seriously when measured against other to-dos and therefore the first thing to be scratched off the list when it starts becoming unmanagable.

As long as my fitness routine is dependent on a perfect marriage of ifs, I will never get anywhere. I have to be willing to bend some the rules some of the time.

I also have to start over, without pressure to reach what I know is an unreachable goal.

Two Saturdays ago, I e-mailed the wellness director at work asking her to transfer my race registration.

Last Monday night, I set my alarm for 5 a.m., laid out my running gear, and sent what could have been my last few tweets into the universe.

...And success.

Again shockingly, there were no lust-hungry strangers poised to strike at me from behind the bushes, though I did nearly have a heart attack upon seeing a flash of orange streak by at a dimly lit intersection, with jagged movements not unlike the speedier zombies in Night of the Living Dead.

Fortunately, I also encountered non-zombies on the trail, both of them across the street from me, one carrying a flashlight, and watching that single beam dance along the pavement was oddly comforting. Whatever our stories, whatever our fears, we are all in this together.

Rolling away my stone

Let It Be Known that on February 24, 2012, Luke and I submitted a payment of almost five thousand dollars to our credit card company, leaving us with a double-digit balance for the first time since 2010. We celebrated with a cheap bottle of red and nineteen dollars' worth of steak and tortillas from Qdoba. Bring on the cookies, bag up those chips. We can afford it. (Today.)

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After four months of intermittent physical therapy, I can finally run with only minimal aches and pains. Did I ever give you the skinny on that whole thing? A PT evaluation in October confirmed my body was still a mess from my last c-section: severe diastasis at least three fingers wide, weak pelvis and lower abs, compression in the right knee between the kneecap and the femur. It was explained that my core was too weak to absorb the regular impact of running, so the full burden fell to my lower half, which promptly failed the task. PT exercises helped alleviate this until my gallbladder pulled a hissy fit on Thanksgiving, and it wasn't until my birthday I felt like anything close to normal. By then it was January and hello, Mini Marathon training!

It had been my plan to run this year's Mini since being pregnant with Liam, with goals of improving on my freshman effort and marking a return to the sport with a PR. At the start of training, though, I hadn't logged a mile since September.

Here is where I experienced my first lesson in Keeping It Real for 2012 and admitted I couldn't tackle the Mini quite the way I planned. Right now I'm following a run-walk schedule that exists only in my head, and it is this: Get outside three times a week. Run when I can, walk when there's pain, and don't feel guilty if I skip two weeks a day. Just keep on.

To date I'm at three miles, and the official training program hosted their 10K race last weekend. CAN WE SAY YIKES. Moving forward, it's probably best that I focus on races where training doesn't start in the dead of winter, especially when we're not in a financial position to take on a gym membership. But that's okay. The important thing is I'm moving again.

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My kids are growing up so fast. The toddlers are signed up for school in the fall - pre-K and preschool, respectively - and will take swim lessons this summer. They're also displaying an interest in learning how to read. How do you spell "snake," Mom? Daddy, how do you spell "airplane"? Kara holds ballet shows in our living room on a regular basis, inspired by Selena's and Olivia's enthusiasm, and will start her first dance class next month. There is constant chatter from her about turning five and going to kindergarten and next year can she please invite school friends to her birthday party and slow down, child, I'm not ready for this yet. Nathan is making steady progress on the potty-training front and adores all things trains and dinosaurs. Liam is cutting two bottom teeth and pulling up on everything in reach. He was baptised at our church, which we are quickly falling in love with, at the end of February. 

Such the little man.

Their relationship is every bit as adorable as you can imagine.

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I'm not sure how to navigate this new place I'm in, having recently resolved to let the dust settle from several years of activity instead of chasing The Next Big Thing. I've adopted four different life plans since the start of 2012, embracing then abandoning each one wholeheartedly when the sense of peace I waited for didn't come. Taking long-held dreams and examining them under a microscope, I'm faced with hard questions. How much of my goal setting has been driven by an attitude of laziness and a longing for easy? Am I allowing the bottles-and-diapers phase of parenting, which is unique and temporary, to misguide decision making related to the future? Have I been moving towards something or running away?

Then there is this: Who am I holding accountable for my long-term happiness, aside from myself? And where am I left if those people fall short? 

(Can you imagine living with this crazy on a daily basis? I assume Luke has your sympathy.)

I've made a lot of declarations the past couple of months - make that the last few years - about family and priorities and What Really Matters, and it's embarrassing to consider another direction now that the follow-through isn't meeting my expectations. Maybe it's the wrong time. Maybe I had the wrong dream. Maybe the alignment of the two already happened - right time, right dream - and I missed the window. No matter what the case, now I have to admit that it might be time to move on.

(Related food for thought: Linda's post on giving up a dream. Note my passionate monologue on plan one near the bottom. That Frema! So naive four weeks ago back then.)

Picture Linus from the Peanuts Gang being asked to give up his security blanket.

Lucky for me I don't need to act on anything today. Even luckier, there's plenty left to hold onto.