Checking in

Good morning everyone! Well, it's been a minute since I last wrote a post, and usual, I'm sorry about that. The creativity has been low around here as of late, and rather than throwing half-assed, poorly thought-out drivel at you, I decided it was best to wait until something inspiring came along to blog about.

While this blog might not be all that inspiring, there are a few things I want to talk about. It feels good to write again. I wish I had this creative energy more often!

First things first, it's just after 6am...what the heck am I doing awake at this hour, blogging away in my bathrobe? The answer? I have no idea. Over the past few months I've been waking up earlier and earlier. I'm not sure if this is a hormonal change, a life change, the changing of the seasons, or what but I can't say that I'm overly disappointed by it. Truth be told, I'm a morning person; always have been. Which is weird considering that I've worked night shift for 17 years. The funny thing is that while I might truly be a morning person on my days off, I'm definitely a better working person at night. I sleep pretty well during the day, and function pretty normally at night, so it all works out. However, on my days off, I'm lucky if I stay awake past 9pm. Sometimes I even slink off to bed just after 7pm, being ridiculed by Simon for my walk of shame down the hallway and into the bed. So yeah, the sleeping habits have definitely changed over the course of the past year. I'm not upset about it, just taking it all in with mild curiosity about what comes next.

Part of the reason I'm blogging so early this morning is that I'm waiting for it to be light enough outside for me to safely go for a run. Yes, I've started running again. Don't alert the press or anything as I've yet to establish any sort of regularity in running, but over the past week I've ran 4 times, which is huge for me. After loudly proclaiming that I was never going to the do the Imogene Pass Run again, after this year's somewhat disasterly couch-to-Imogene run (not recommended), the idea of doing Imogene again has been creeping into my head. It might be a case of enough time having passed since the suffering occurred that I've forgotten how awful it was. But I do remember how awful it was. I remember how much it hurt to move, to breathe, to think, to carry on a conversation. I remember all of those things. And yet...I remember the camaraderie between the runners of all ages, shapes, and abilities and remember how good it felt to be a part of all that. Mostly I remember how fun it was to be in a place with its almost unparalleled beauty, doing a run (hike) like that with some of my closest friends in Flagstaff. There are not many people in this world who have been privy to me having a meltdown, and there's probably even less of them that would support me through it, let alone stick around for it at all, but Tess did. She believed in me and she waited for me when I fell behind, even though she didn't have to and her finish time definitely suffered for it. It meant so much to me. So I can't do Imogene without training this time. I can't even consider it. If I don't start adding running to my list of physical activities for the week I shouldn't even sign up. It's dangerous to go into something like that with no training. I could have been seriously hurt or worse. It's a testament to my physical ability that I can do something like that with no training, but it's also a glaring example of my stupidity and lack of discipline. If I want to do the things, I have to put in the work. End of story.

I'm still enjoying yoga as my place of refuge. It's funny how I can be having a bad day, or just be in a grumpy mood, and the minute I enter that warm, toasty studio and start deep breathing, it all just melts away. I just can't say enough about yoga, and Yoga Revolution studio in particular, has brought about such good, positive change in my life.

I'm continuing to make my way through this concept of adulting. It's weird, and I'll touch more on that later. Being an adult is challenging, and we're living in an age where working and maintaining a home and a family takes so much less time than it did for our parents and grandparents. We make more money, we have more free time, time management has been optimized by technology, and we've reached a point in life where we sometimes struggle to find productive and meaningful things to fill the space. I really never thought it would be this challenging to be an adult. My parents seemed to have it all together when I was growing up, so naturally I thought that I would too. It's possible that maybe they didn't have it as together as I perceived, or maybe our generational and lifestyle differences don't make for fair comparisons. So I'm working on that. Working on my relationships with others, working on being more present at work, working on being a presence here in Flagstaff, working on compromising when I can and sticking to my guns when I can't.

First things first, I have decided I will not drink crappy beer. I know it sounds silly, but life is too short and calories are too abundant to waste them on something that tastes bad. The argument could be made that I don't drink enough water on a daily basis anyway, so drinking water in lieu of drinking crappy beer is an acceptable alternative. I know that makes me sound like a snob, but I like what I like and with this burgeoning waistline of mine, it's probably in my best interest to have some standards...hahaha!

In a completely different area of compromise, I've gotten to the point where I don't allow people to treat me poorly. Friends, family, coworkers, patients; no one gets a pass here for bad behavior. Once maybe if you're having a bad day (props given for apologizing afterwards), but that's it. For a long time I had people in my life who really didn't treat me all that well, and for a long time I put up with it because I figured I must have been doing something to deserve it. So I tried over and over again to be the person that I thought they wanted me to be, to please them, to bring something interesting to the table, to receive less scorn and more friendship, but some of these people would always find some reason to continue to bring me down. After some long chats with a therapist and friends who are counselors, I realized that my friendship is valuable, and that people who are going to treat me poorly are undeserving of it. Here's the flip side of this whole concept: I used to be one of those people who treated other people poorly. It's true. I was so insecure, and unhappy, and jealous that I wanted those around me who seemed to have it all figured out to come down to my level. I could be a very nasty person. There are days that I think back to things I said and did to some of my closest friends, and it makes me cringe. The fact that most of those people stuck with me and are still some of my very best friends is astonishing to me. They should have kicked my ass to the curb and not looked back. But they didn't, and I'm so eternally grateful that they must have seen something in me worth sticking around for. I hope that keeping me in their circles has been as valuable to them as it has been to me.

It's no secret that I've struggled with being so far away from my friends and family back in Minnesota, and all over the country, for that matter. I fly home at least 4 times a year to see them, which some might find excessive, but I find it to be pretty necessary to my emotional and mental well-being. No one knows you like those who have known you the longest, and I crave that companionship so very much at times.  Not that Flagstaff is new to me at this point (7 years in!), but it's still taken some time for me to establish who I am here and where I fit in. In the past year or so, I feel like I've really solidified some pretty amazing friendships here, and I'm so very stoked about that. I was a little concerned that it was taking so long, but making adult friends in a new place is so incredibly challenging...much more challenging than I ever thought it could be. It makes sense though...as adults we've pretty much established who we are as human beings...what we like, what we don't like, where we like to go, what we like to eat, compromises that are worth making and compromises that are not. Adults tend to already have a lot of people in their lives, and it can be challenging putting in the time and work it takes to maintain new friendships.

Flagstaff's culture has also been a challenge for me. It's very very different from Minnesota's culture. That's not good, bad, or otherwise...it just is what it is and it's something that I've spent a lot of time thinking about, dabbling in, and exploring. Flagstaff can be a pretty intimidating place in some ways. There are a lot of athletes in this town, which makes my benchwarmer past even more apparent. That's on me to be insecure about it, and I've gotten less so as the years have gone on. Being a mediocre dabbler in most things athletic, it's been hard to find my niche as I'm good enough at most things to do them in some capacity, but I'm not proficient enough nor do I enjoy them as much to keep up with those who have been partaking in their particular sport for years and years. A lot of people here tend to gravitate towards one particular sport and stick with it through the long haul. You have climbers, hikers, mountain bikers, runners, road bikers...all kinds of outdoor enthusiasts, and sometimes they're not always willing to cross-dabble in each other's sports. Which is fine for them, but it makes it hard to find mediocre athletes such as myself willing to try a variety of things to stay active and get outside. Truth be told, my motivation to try new things or put in the time on established activities is poor. I hate struggling. If I can't be instantly good at something I don't want to do it. Admittedly, it's a huge character flaw, but luckily I have friends who are unwilling to accept my mediocrity and drag me out of the house whenever they can.

Between July and October, I traveled a lot. So much so that it was almost to the point that I was unpacking my travel bag from one trip and filling it back up for the next trip on the very same day. I would travel, come home and work, and then travel again. During this period of time I went to Minnesota twice, Colorado for the Imogene Pass Run, out of town for a friend's wedding, to Portugal for a birthday trip of sorts, and to Seattle to see our friends Jim and Jess and to meet their adorable little girl, Raegan. Before I get too far into this and sound like an ingrate, let me start by saying I realize how incredibly lucky I am to have the means, the time, and the ability to travel as much as I do. I'm also super fortunate to have friends all over the country to visit. As of late, I've noticed that rather than people asking me about how I am or what I've been up to, they ask me where my next trip is, because that's who I've become to them...someone who is constantly coming and going. I've struggled with this a bit. Flagstaff is my home and I've made some very wonderful friendships here, but I've become that friend who is never around, and that bothers me because it makes me feel unreliable, like I'm not just physically absent, but emotionally absent as well. I've noticed that people don't call and ask me to do things with them as much as they used to, and I'm sure part of it has to do with the fact that I'm always declining because I'm not around. I keep saying no, they stop asking; it's a pretty simple concept. These last few days are the first days in a long time that I've been off work and at home, and they've been so wonderful. Simon and I knocked out a bunch of projects that we'd been shelving for months, I started going back to the gym for my weightlifting class, I've been meeting up with friends I haven't seen in a while, we had people over to the house for a BBQ and card games, we caught up on a couple HBO and Netflix series...it all feels so blissfully normal and I'm so content to just be here with nothing but shifts at work and coffee dates on the calendar for the next couple months.

The funny thing is, and I know my friends with children will afford me no sympathy and maybe won't even be able to empathize with this perspective, is that sometimes I'm a little envious of my friends with kids, because for the most part, their options in what they do with their lives, where they go, who they associate with, where they live, how they spend their money, are by and large determined by their children. I have friends whose lives are completely dominated by music lessons, soccer practice, swim lessons, play dates, and bible school; they don't just feel obligated by it, they're happy about it, and it's accepted that it's what you do when you have children. Having things in my life that are required rather than optional speaks to my (and maybe other people's too) need/craving for structure. Give me a day off with nothing to do and more often than not I'll sit on the couch watching Netflix all day. No one is depending on me to do anything, so I don't. But then other days I get shit done and I'm super productive. My point is that there's nothing strongly driving me to be productive. It's a choice and it's one that I don't have to make because there's rarely anyone else depending on me to make it. As long as the dogs are fed and they make it outside at least twice, maybe I eat something at some point, the rest of the day is open to whatever. Sometimes having too many options and too much freedom is stressful in a way that's hard for me to articulate, but I'll do my best. As a childless person, I still search for meaning in my life, and there are times when I don't really know what that's supposed to look like, because from the moment I was old enough to understand a concept, it was that you grow up, you get a job, you get married, you have kids, you might take a road trip or two in the summer, and that's your life. I wasn't prepared for life without children because that wasn't something that anyone did; it was the option that wasn't presented as an option. In fact, people who didn't have children were often pitied, looked down upon, or completely misunderstood. Everyone I grew up near had children, and the vast majority of my friends and family have children or are actively trying. The desire to have children isn't something I don't necessarily understand; I get why people want those little buggers in their lives, but it wasn't something I desired to have in my own life, and while I don't regret my decision to not have children, and I immensely enjoy other people's children, I'm still working through what life is supposed to look like without them.

Is it doing all the things? Is it having an amazing wardrobe? Is it traveling constantly? Is it having a beautiful home full of breakable trinkets? Is it becoming the crazy dog lady? Is it being the fun auntie to my family and friends? Is it amassing a huge collection of magnets on the fridge to document where I've been and what I've done? Does every choice I make and everything I do truly need to be meaningful? Sometimes I feel bad when I get back from a trip and my friends with kids who don't get to travel as much want to know all about it, and given my lack of story-telling abilities, I give a somewhat disappointing recap of what I did, what I ate, where I went. Traveling is interesting and all, but unless something truly interesting happens, it's hard to know what to tell about it. I can't make someone taste the amazing risotto that I ate, I can't describe the terraced vineyards along the Douro River in a way that does them any sort of justice, I can't fully describe the feeling of stumbling over cobblestones in the late hours of the night in Lisbon, hearing Fado music drifting out from the local bars, I can't fully explain the fluttering in my heart at drinking tea in the wee hours of the morning as elephants walk by on their way to the river. Well, maybe I can. It's just hard to do on the spot. Most of the time my stories go something like this: "We went to this place and we ate this stuff and we saw these things and then we did this outing and it was really cool and now we're home." My storytelling needs work, for sure. So here goes: I'll never forget the time that we were in Florida with our friends Ellen and Fred on their boat, and we stayed out too long and got nearly beached as the tide was going out. Three of us had to get out of the boat to make it more buoyant and to push it off the sandbar. We pushed it for quite a while, because once we were off the sandbar we were in the weeds and couldn't start the engine in all that muck. For a brief moment, I thought for sure we'd be stuck out there for the night until the tide came back in. It was dark, I was cold, I was tired, I was hungry, I was thirsty, and I just wanted to get back home. You can about imagine my attitude throughout all of this (she who hates to struggle...hahaha). After getting back on the boat and well on our way back to our house, we were grumbling a bit about it, and Fred said, "Well, at least we have a story to tell about it. If that hadn't happened, we probably wouldn't still be talking about it at all." And it's so true. I feel like my friends with kids have the best stories because kids are always getting into stuff, causing trouble, pooping their pants at inopportune moments, and saying the most ridiculous things. Kids can be pretty unpredictable and unpredictability in life makes for good stories. So the takeaway from all of this is that the next time I'm at a National Park, I should poop my pants.

Over the course of all this traveling and soul-searching, I've come to realize a few things about myself. I am most definitely, 100%, a people person. I love people. But most of all, I love my people. I love going to exotic places with my friends just as much as I enjoy having a cup of coffee with them at a local cafe. Some of my fondest memories of the places I've been are not necessarily the places, but the experience of being somewhere different with the people who came along. I love having shared experiences with those who I treasure the most. I love seeing the wonder on my friends' faces when they see the Grand Canyon for the very first time. I remember the reverent silence in the car when Simon, my friend Dave, and I emerged from the tunnel overlooking the entire Yosemite Valley. I remember those long, miserable bus trips in Costa Rica over those slow, rumbly roads, sitting next to my friend Ellen the whole time, watching the jungle roll on by, counting down the minutes until we got to get out and hike to a volcano, or see a monkey, or feed a giant iguana an entire head of lettuce. Overlooking the entirety of the city of Lisbon at night wouldn't have been as magical without Simon by my side to share it with me. I went to the north rim of the Grand Canyon three years in a row with the same people, staying at the same campsite, drinking prickly pear margaritas at the same saloon, and had a blast each and every time. A lot of times, the things I remember most about a trip aren't necessarily the places we went, but the way I felt in the company of those there beside me, experiencing all those things together. Friendship is magical.

I've also come to realize that nature is kind of my jam when it comes to traveling. I love being outside, seeing the animals, the trees, the horizon dotted with palm trees or mountains. Sometimes it feels like once you've seen one big city, you've seen them all. I know that's not true and that a lot of cities have a lot to offer a traveler, but the older I get and the more I like experiencing nature, that's how it's starting to feel for me. I enjoy a good meal, a good cup of coffee, and people watching in a new place as much as the next person, but what I really enjoy is crawling out of a warm bed into a cool morning, unzipping the tent and taking in the low morning light, firing up the campstove for that first cup of coffee, and contemplating the day's hike, the next experience, what we're going to see and do, hearing nothing but the wind through the trees and the birds starting their day. I like having beers around the campfire in the evening, hearing the coyotes sing their night songs, and seeing the stars put on a show. I'm not so good at planning trips around experiences in nature. Booking a hotel, a flight, and a rental car is easy, but planning a trip where you have to worry about resources, water, where you're going to camp, what you're going to carry on your back, how the weather might affect your experience, whether or not your vehicle can get you there...that's all very foreign to me. I used to plan camping trips with my friends every summer, but we went to state parks which were full of other people; it was fun at the time but I don't know that I would enjoy it as much not. I've noticed that state and national parks these days seem to be full of people who are not very respectful of the natural space they were treading upon. A lot of them can't even be bothered to get out of their cars, or find themselves injured trying to capture that perfect selfie because no one told them nature can be dangerous. I don't know how many people getting trampled by bison or falling over the edge of the Grand Canyon it's going to take before people start respecting nature. The trash and destruction to our national parks during the government shutdown was infuriating and heartbreaking. People who truly want to be out in nature don't do things like that, and I feel like our parks are becoming less about nature and more about providing a theme park experience in a natural environment...but how else do you get this current population of social media and smartphone obsessed individuals to care about nature? While the parks offer all the amenities and ease of getting the average person into nature, there's a lot of other unpleasantness that can come along with it. Which leaves off-the-grid camping, something that this girl from the Midwest who grew up surrounded by privately-owned land is still trying to figure out. I must have seemed completely daft when I first moved here, when I just couldn't understand the idea that you can go out into the woods and pitch a tent pretty much wherever you like. You'd get arrested for doing something like that in Minnesota, but here in Arizona, there's so much public land that you can camp just about wherever the vehicle you're in can drive, or wherever your two feet can carry you. It's a whole new learning experience and it's intimidating for me. I much prefer to have my friends who do a lot of back country camping just invite me along on their trips (hint hint).

I guess I'll just keep on keeping on, figuring things out one day at a time. :)