I am my rescue

After almost a week of being sore and sick, I spontaneously decided to go on a run with my best friend today. It was hot, the shoes weren't mine, and it was only for 2 miles, but it felt good. 

I've been biking all over the place recently but somehow I feel like that's just not as much work as running is. Going from doing it every day to not doing it for practically two months is quite the jump, so I was proud of even a little over a 9 minute mile.

The second mile started to feel euphoric, like my body started to recognize something it had been missing and couldn't get enough. And then I wanted to die, and throw up [not necessarily in that order]. But once I had cooled down, it felt like I could go back out and do it again no problem.

Sometimes I get all annoyed and frustrated-- why can't my body do this? Why can't my body do that? Or I complain: I'm so tired. I can't do this, it hurts. But it takes a second to sit down and say to myself: "it's a give and take".

In the traffic to SFO airport we were listening to a documentary's audio over the car stereo. It's a good one, would recommend it-- PlantPure Nation, a film that basically talks about the numerous benefit of a whole foods/plant diet and why getting simpler and purer with our food is, essentially, better than any diet one could try. Listening to it I realize I don't nearly listen to my body enough.

9/10 times I don't get enough sleep, I don't drink enough water, I don't eat enough [or when I do eat it's generally not the best food in the world], I don't exercise often or at the intensity I would like... I have a tendency to linger behind screens [lols while writing this] and I probably am not optimal at getting a daily dose of human interaction. There's only one thing getting in the way of all that.

And I look at her in the mirror every day.

Sometimes I'm just hit with the fact that I have the power to do pretty much anything I put my mind to. I could sit down and teach myself Russian. I could get up every morning and see the sunrise. I could run a mile every day [unless I was sick or injured or dead]. I could start my own garden and grow vegetables to live off of. I could vow to de-clutter my life, to donate my excess, to have only what I need.

I was scrolling through Facebook recently, being unproductive, the usual.. when I saw this video about this woman who ended up a single mom and decided, after seeing only $11.42 in her bank account, that she was not going to have the life she was heading towards, that she was going to give her baby boy the life he deserved, all by acknowledging that she alone was her rescue, that she had it within her to pull her up by her bootstraps.

So today's one of those get up and get 'em days. Paperwork, regular work, draining hours watching children that aren't mine, planning a trip to Ireland. All worthy things to get out of bed for, all things that can get done if I have the mindset to just do it.

I think Nike was on to something.