10 things I've learned from running and job hunting

This summer has mostly been filled with these two things: job hunting, and running. I've learned a great deal from both.

Here are some of the lessons (some harder learned than others) that I've come away with.

1. Just get up and get going. There will be a lot of days when you don't feel like it, but I promise, if you just peel yourself out of bed, get dressed, and start moving, the rest will come.

2. Some days you will feel like you are absolutely crushing it. Your mile time will be better than ever, or you will have more leads than you know what to do with. Live in this moment. It might not last forever, but its a good feeling.

3. Some days you will feel like it is absolutely crushing you.  These days are the worst. When putting one foot in front of the other seems impossible, and you want cry and scream and give up. Its okay to do the first two things on the list (in the privacy of your own home, preferably), not the third.

4. Laugh at yourself. This is important. Some days you may fall flat on your face. Its better just to laugh. If that doesn't work and you have to cry, that's okay too. Do it.

5. Some days you will get hurt or even just very tired, take the time you need to rest and let it heal. This is so much easier said than done, at least for me. Running on an injury only makes it worse and only requires more time on the bench. This one takes discipline, learn it.

6. Don't forget to enjoy the view from right where you are.You may only pass this way once. Look around, there are some really great things you might be missing while on your journey forward. While you're climbing the hill, take in the view from the top before you charge on to the next. Take a deep breath. Look around.

7. Enjoy the success of others.  Some people might be faster than you or farther along than you. This is a hard pill to swallow, but in the end its not just better for them, but for you. Life is much more pleasant when you are happy for people rather than mad. Much.more.pleasant.

8. Not everyone will understand you. Deal with it. There will be times when you are thought crazy, or weird, or whatever else, the list could go on. You may be running in the rain, or the heat, and people won't get it. But the truth is, you're out there. And that's something.

9. You'll get there eventually. This is my least favorite. It requires patience, of which I've learned I have very little, but it's true. You really will get there eventually.

10. Don't give up. This will be tempting. And you may even claim to yourself on some days that you are in fact giving up, but don't. Keep on keeping on. Even on a slow day,  you're still moving forward. Remember why you started int he first place. That helps.




That's it. They are simple, and maybe a little lame, but they are getting me through. Happy Tuesday! Keep on keeping on!

findING a job, but mostly finding something else even better

Lately life has been this combination of opportunity and disappointment. Sometimes it looks something like hope and other days it smacks of despair. Transitions have always been tough for me. There are days they feel adventurous, like something lovely on the horizon about peek its head over the hills, all light and goodness. Then there are days when its all so terrifying, and I curl my toes and dig my heels firmly into a steady soil, resistant to change. Resistant to the unknown.

Oh, the unknown. And that is just it. Life is hazy right now. I don't know what life will look like in the next few months, or the next year, or the next five. And really, who knows any of that about life to begin with?

For me, all this comes in the form of starting a career. Which, never did I expect it to be this way. I never thought it would matter so much. But it has to me. And in this whole process I learn. I learn to move forward and to be confident. I learn to take it on the chin when life seems unfair. I learn to keep spinning my wheels, because I won't know right away where they are going. I learn that I can be ugly and jealous and petty. But that I can overcome it and learn to be happy, so very happy for others. Sometimes.

And of course I learn grace. This has been the most wonderful. That in these waves of hope and despair. Storms of my own emotions or disappointment. I can rest.  I am learning the most delicious thing about grace and it's that there is always enough for me. It never ever ever runs out. Ever! Did you hear me? While that is just about enough to surge joy right through anyone, it gets better. Since grace never runs out for me, there is always enough for giving. I am finding that by receiving grace upon grace upon endless, endless grace. I can give it fearlessly. I can give it with abandon, knowing that the stores will never run dry. The dam has already broken and it runs wild. We are all already swept away in it.  That even when life feels graceless, when I feel graceless and run ragged and raw by the blows of life, there is still more than enough. It was never really my own grace to give anyway. Which is what makes it so great for giving away.

All of this to say, after posts like this or this grace finally caught up with me. Which I guess isn't really right, it was always there, its just a matter of remembering it.

the story of shearing day

Up at 5:30 to pile on layers and layers of mismatched winter-wear. Long johns, jeans, sweater upon sweater, hats and scarves. A little while later she arrives and I hop into the car. Bleary-eyed, but quietly wild with anticipation, we hit a drive-through for some coffee and a quick a breakfast sandwich. After all, who has time to make breakfast on a big day like this?

A freeway and a few curving country roads later we arrive and step out into the cold. The farm is on a hill so the bitter chill of winter weather (still? it's March) swirls around us along with a few stray sparkling flakes. Magic. My heart jumps with excitement as we near the barn. I can hear the sheep bleating, not as gentle as some would think. They are hungry (no food before shearing), they are scared (why are we up and moving already?) and they don't seem to mind speaking their mind. Blurting out call after call.

It's funny how I love these sort of days but how unaccustomed to them I really am. I clumsily climb over the pen, limb over tangled limb, and introduce myself to Du-Roy, a white Shetland ram. I look at him and my friend unsure of what to do next. She explains to me what "rooing" is. Rooing?

It is the process of gently pulling away the previous years coat and exposing the new years' coat. The wool is thick, and soft, and greasy with lanolin. (Lanolin is an oil that sheep secrete, and before you cringe in disgust, go read the ingredients on your creams and lotions. Its probably listed.)

We wait on shearers and get to know the flock. A moving sea of sheep slowly become recognizable faces. There are two brand new lambs to cuddle and make over.  Soft and brown. A week old, but already bouncing, skipping, all energy and wool. Their new faces show none of the fear that is written on faces of the others. Red, the English Shepherd keeps his close watch on mom and babies, his eyes shift as we pass the lambs from person to person.

The shearers finally arrive and the real work begins. There are two quiet young men, tall and lanky, that do the actual shearing. All day their faces shift from the focused scowl of a worker, to the softened smiles of a caretaker. The rest of us are bagging fleeces, sweeping the shearing the stations, handing off the shots and medications for each sheep, and wrangling sheep back into pens.

Its amazing the differences in sheep personalities. We start with rams, their fleeces so big, you could just roll up in them and sleep warm for days. Rams, for the most part, fought very little. Then the ewes. Some were quiet and calm. They looked uncomfortable, but just seemed to lay back as the wool fell to floor, soft like a cloud. Others though, struggled and bleated and kicked and rolled. It was a wild fight, and sometimes I wonder, who is really winning?

When it came time for returning sheep to pens, I have things to learn. Some seem to know right where to go. Then there are others. With these, there is plenty of panicking, running, and grabbing, and that's just me. Some sheep bolt past the gate, while others run the opposite direction. A real chase down. Mimosa, a small ewe, standing about a foot and a half off the ground, has me on the ground in a matter of a few seconds. She darts into her pen and we both slowly stand, look at each other, and wonder what just happened. Equally traumatized. With time I am better. Realizing sheep need direction more than force. They need a calming hand, rather than a powerful one. The shearers seem to know this. One of them scoops up the smaller ewes in his arms and carries them gently to the pen himself.

When the sheep are all shorn and the wool all bagged. The sheep enjoy their new lightness, unfazed by the cold. They scratch and shake, and dance their own noisy freedom dance. They rub against each other, reacquainting themselves with what they mistake to be new pen-mates. (Really, they don't recognize each other now.)

 The llamas are next.

 Octavias (above) and Lucky. Both of which have been aware all day that some part of this would eventually involve them. And they don't seem to like it. The llamas stand and spit, and wobble this way and that, but in the end, they are shorn to, and return to their pens.

The wool is carried into the garage heaping armload after heaping armload. Bag by bag. Some other day it must be cleaned and carded.

 We say our goodbyes and head home, cold, tired, and smelling of hay and lanolin. But we are happy.

I arrive home and peel off the many layers in exchange for warm pajamas.

I am asleep, warm on the couch, in a matter of minutes.

learning jazz

I start out
       clumsy

on the keys
I cLunK andIclutter
on the beat up baby grand in the front room from 1926.
It just doesn't sound right,
doesn't sound the way it should,
Whatever "it" is.

Then with time,
it gets better.

Smoother
Kinder
Calmer

lt runstogethersogoodsoripeandreadytobepickedjuicyandhotandsweetandcool.

And
    Then
         It

Swings

Just like it should
                              Unpredictable

but expected all the same.

It starts to sound like red lipstick, and smooth Scotch, and sweat and smoke that hangs over our heads in some dim seedy club at 2am like our problems hovering over us,
out of sight
out of mind, and pressing down on us thick and heavy all the same. Like us.

With a foggy sigh.

Its there somewhere, it just takes time to find it.

celebratING a simple life

I wasn't going to garden this year.

 "I have too much going on."

But in the busyness of this summer. I needed something.

I needed at least one, small, summer, miracle.

One that gives all summer long, and even gives into early fall,

and with a little sweat and diligence, gives all winter,

through cans of salsa, and sauce.

I wanted something to remind me of the beauty of giving.

How if something has roots, and is cared for,

it will grow, tall and lovely, with leaves and fruit,

in the warm summer sun.

I needed something, just one thing this summer,

to carry me through.

It is no bad thing to celebrate a simple life."
--Bilbo Baggins

listenING

It’s funny, how baseball's always been a man’s game.

It fits so well into a woman’s schedule.

It come's in with spring.

 The small radio on top of the fridge,

belts out the game all afternoon,

between ads, and static.

 A pop-fly during the dishes,

a 6-4-3 double when the towels are folded.

You stop for lunch, and the crowd roars over a four-bagger, putting Cleveland in the lead.

It’s April, clothes waving on the line, as history is made, the longest opener ever.

16 Innings.

Night games are the most exciting, at the end of some scorching summer day

and you sit,

The porch swing, powered by the gentle movement of your legs,

fighting off the day’s fatigue, as Detroit takes the Central Division.

It’s funny, this man’s game,

America’s pastime.

but it’s us who listen, and hear it.

It's rhythm, in sync with our own.

No running clock, the work is over, when it’s done.

Image Credit: Google Image

rememberING

Last week it was hot here. Really hot.  Hot seems like an understatement, and I really don't know what word to use to give you the full effect of this sweltering, oppressive,overwhelming, record-breaking humidity and heat.


Mostly I've stayed inside, eating popsicles and ice cream and sitting in the air conditioning, but last evening Dave and I first went for a drive and then a walk. We rolled the windows down in the truck and let the hot air swirl around us. When we walked we could feel the heat pressing down on us. Although it was hot and some would argue miserable, there was a sweetness to it for me. Heat like this reminds me of 10 days that seem so  long ago that I spent in India and Nepal. I went shortly after I graduated from high school and have never ever been the same since.


It reminded me of walking the muddy ridges in the rice patty fields to get to someones house who probably didn't want hear what we had to say (we were "missionaries...but I'm not sure how effective our tactic really was, but that's another post for another time), but all the same, they graciously took us in and offered us tea and conversation. This is where I learned to like hot drinks on a hot day.

It reminded me of asking a rice farmer what he thinks about out there in the soggy rice patty all day. He said "That there are too many mosquitoes." Reminding me that people, no matter where they are, are more like us than they are different.

It reminded me of seeing tiny, old, wrinkled women carrying heavy loads of wood or food or some other necessity, and wondering what other burdens they had carried all their lives long.

It reminded me of the relief or rain, or on the days it didn't rain and mid afternoon heat brought life to a screeching halt. We squatted in old store fronts that somehow had Coke and Fanta (it was the middle of nowhere....where do they get soda at?) drinking and cooling and talking and laughing.

It reminded me of the "untouchables" of Calcutta, and made me wonder who are my "untouchables"? Who can't I love?

It reminded me of people who had much less than me, but didn't seem to mind or even know. As long as there was food and shelter and a community, life was ok.

It reminded of me goats and chickens and children and bicycles and cars and rickshaws in the crowded chaotic (sometimes smelly) streets that make up India and wondering if they have more or less accidents then our organized streets here in the States.

It reminded me of  sandles salwars and sauries and color. So much color.


It just reminded me of seeing the world differently.

This isn't really a statement on which country, the U.S. or India is better, but it is a commentary on finding the good everywhere and in everything, even if its not what we want, or expect. When it gets hot like it did last week, I'm thankful for the sweat, and the slowing down, and the reminder of another time and another place.

So yes, I'm glad the sweltering heat is gone (for now), but I'm thankful for what it reminds me of. I think I'll go make something curried now. :)

Image from Google Image.