Frenetic

Work has been kind of taking over my day to day life and I really don’t even mind that. People complain constantly about wanting to go home and what day of the week it is or isn’t. It’s not that I’m in love with my jobs, but maybe they’re a convenient distraction from me being alone with nothing on my mind but my own thoughts, which are getting harder and harder to control.

The mind is a funny thing. I thought as I got older, I would get better at managing my thought processes. But instead, I constantly struggle with rejection, self-pity, and fear of losing everything that I’ve worked for. And then when I struggle to regulate my mind, I only get more upset. It’s a constant cycle of inner frustration.

Keeping myself busy isn’t going to remedy the problem and I know that. Willpower doesn’t work. To address the issue at hand, it requires something deeper than that, more core-focused than that.

Strange thing is I am feeling more and more confident at my day job. Ever since I moved away from the boss and down the hall into the office where my colleagues work, I’ve learned a lot more. The reason for that is because I’m doing the tasks that they were already doing. That’s nothing against the boss at all, it’s just that I’m now surrounded by people who are doing work that I’m doing, so it’s more relatable.

I shouldn’t be too shocked that Stratford reached out to me last month. When an employee is reliable and does their job well, the good people remember. And so, I believe it was on Halloween afternoon when the assistant athletic director called me, asking if I’d come back and do live basketball statistics. Truth be told, I’d rather do the basketball games. It’s $50 guaranteed for two hours of work. And certainly on some nights, I would make more waiting tables. But that’s for five hours of work while walking constantly without a break. And there have been many Friday nights when I’ve walked out of the building with closer to $40 or $45 in my pocket. From what I can tell, there are only four games that conflict with my restaurant shifts on Friday and Saturday nights. So to me, the choice isn’t very complicated.

Also, I applied for a freelance gig editing English papers. I’ve already turned in my paperwork and completed my sample. Although I’m a little bit alarmed that on my background check, it showed both my driving citations from the last year. Now personally I don’t think that missing a stop sign and one speeding ticket should disqualify me from earning $12 an hour by checking a student’s ability to develop a thesis statement. But we’ll see if anything comes of it.

So add it all up and I’m facing the possibility of working four jobs every week. And it doesn’t even scare or overwhelm me.

I'm getting bitter at the thought of romantic love. Almost every time there’s a new engagement or a new relationship being posted on social media, I feel ill inside. It doesn’t matter who the girl is. I don't see it changing. And I don’t want to feel that way. There is a part of me that wants to not care anymore. I have lived in the crush zone most of my life. Looking for the girl who I could have hope that something could work out. It would frequently lead to disappointment though. And almost all of the girls who I have dated, I settled for them. I thought to myself recently that life would be pretty good if I my biggest hurt in life was related to those kinds of relationships not working out. I still want and need friends. That will never change, I’m not trying to be a hermit here. Maybe all of this is why I'm pouring myself into working.

I can’t believe it took me two weeks to finally write about the Wicked 10k in Virginia Beach. Rain had been forecasted all week. I had never run a race in the rain and I certainly didn’t want to start while running the farthest I’d ever attempted in my life outdoors. On the 45-minute drive to Virginia Beach in the dark, there was some steady sprinkling, but once I crossed over the tunnel and into Norfolk, there weren’t any real problems. I had woke up at 5:00 a.m. and ate an almond butter sandwich and a banana.

I picked up my packet inside the Virginia Beach Convention Center, dropped my dry bag off at the booth, and was given a women’s shirt instead of a men’s. Of course, I didn’t think enough to check the gender. Let’s just say the neck line was down way too low for me.

I tried to run at a steady 7.5 mph, or 8 minutes a mile. The only checkpoint I had was at the halfway mark of 3.12 miles. I crossed that line at 24:37, for a 7:26 pace. By this point, I was running south on the boardwalk, past the Neptune statue, and I knew it would be a challenge to maintain that pace for 25 more minutes. But one thing I know about by Billy to run is that I'm a good finisher. I didn't feel myself speeding up, but clearly I did. Because by mile 5 I barely had anything left in the tank. I was so fatigued, that I began skipping as I worked my way on to Pacific Avenue for the last mile.

 The tricky part with the course was due to the change because of the expected weather, we weren't finishing with a straight away run down the boardwalk, we were finishing by running around the convention center of period so when I thought I was right at the end, I would have to make another turn and then another. I probably had 2 or 3 quick stops in the last half mile and I probably power walked for about 5 seconds. Eventually I got a steady jog going again and I was able to maintain that jog for the last quarter mile across the finish line. I don't even know if I saw my time, probably because I was so exhausted. But I took my banana, water, and finishing medal, of course I passed on the chocolate chip granola bar and headed inside for the party and vainly tried to catch my breath. 

Panting, I reclaimed my bag with my cell phone inside and checked for my alerts. I had two text messages, one with my midway time and then the second with my finishing time. I opened the text and I could hardly believe it. 

48:52

I thought I was going to finish around 55 minutes as I was hitting the wall. But I beat my goal over a minute. And I don't think it'll be my last 10k race. I don't know how much farther I could push my body. A 10 miler maybe, if I could learn to go slow. A half marathon, I don't know. My whole thing is they only had soup for food there. There should have been a couple of food trucks too. I gladly would have paid for a couple of sliders at that moment.

Song pick: "Quits" Gary Stewart