Lenten Loathing

The ironic nature of starting a blog to track your own efforts in mindful living and then avoiding said blog because you're on a mental hiatus from moving forward is obvious in the time between posts here.

Lent as a marker in time during spring often serves as an apt reboot for new years resolutions. In the past few years I've pep talked myself not into giving up things such as caffeine or chocolate, but rather adding something new to my routine like more gym time, yoga, swimming, etc. As a result, I hit my training goals in 2009 and then promptly road my healthy achievements right off a cliff.

The odd nature of falling off a life precipice is that you are often in total free fall for an extended period of time before you really sit up and say "wow, when did that happen?" And by that, you of course are asking why you suddenly find yourself nearly 15+ lbs. heavier than when you started training, completely divorced from your gym routine, without any yoga centering left, and the closet you've come to runner's high in months was breathing deeply while driving past someone else running on a gorgeous day.

As I rounded the corner into 2011, I knew I was in trouble. The fumes of training that had propelled me across the 2010 Broad Street 10 miler were long gone and I was committed to kicking the 2011 race with some serious training. Then I canceled my trainer because I wanted to save the money. I haven't seen the gym since.

My friends and I sporadically tried to get reinvigorated by going to yoga, fail. We signed up for an 8k in March to give us a midway training goal. A  friend ran the race wearing my bib because the number of times I've put on my running shoes in recent months? Zero. Nada. Not even close.

Number of excuses? Infinite. Number of legitimate life altering excuses? Zero.

So Lent was to mark a new beginning for me, a chance to refocus. With less than three days to go, I am no further ahead than I was at the beginning. I actually can't run the race next weekend because I literally couldn't finish in the allotted time and taking your body from zero to ten miles on a single morning is unwise and potentially damaging. So that free fall? I think I'm starting to see the bottom of the canyon.

I know all of the one day at time adages, one foot in front of the other, try not to focus on the big picture, just start with something small. So my something small is acknowledging that I've lost all accountability.

I'm going to start climbing out now, I need go dust off my running shoes.

Well Appointed

There's a quiet beauty in a well composed still life.Through 3191 Miles Apart, I peer each week into a seemingly effortless moment of two talented, creative individuals. For a moment I escape and think about a serene well-paced morning. The kind where the crisp air inspires warm, soft pajamas to be worn a little longer. Coffee scented steam seeps from the kitchen and fluffy pancakes beg to be made. Sweet syrup swirling with melted butter creating breakfast perfection on a plate. The sky is wide and bright, the view expansive and whole.

So I'm seeking to capture more of those moments. On film and in life. Well edited groupings of personal belongings does not need to be an endeavor left to professionals. Items with stories, tables carefully laid, cheerful yellow shoes. These are all edited pieces of expression. I haven't decided if or how to catalog the images I snap, but I am starting with a fresh look at my walls. Specifically what's hanging on them.

I love a good Target  wall piece as much as the next person. But, I'm starting to edit commercial art out of my life.  It's not a finite, never ever will I own something that's mass produced. Rather, I want to try to know the artists that created the pieces on my walls or even better create some of it myself. Purchased and hung because it was the right piece for the space and because I like the color, the image.

Local art. Student art. Etsy. All great places to find artists just waiting to share their talent. My one exception? Is do still love The Mysteries of Harris Burdick.

Made Up Like A Grown Up

After a month or so of the new makeup routine, I've concluded there are a few things I really love. Megan from Princess Street totally had it right on a quick out-the-door face.

Where has tinted moisturizer been for the last 15 years of my life? I've been using the porcelain Laura Mercier tinted moisturizer as my only foundation most days and it's fantastic. When I feel I need to be a bit more polished, I break out the MAC, but most days it's not needed.

The Makeup Forever 5 Camouflage Cream Palette No. 1 is magical. I was a little intimidated by this and the idea that this is my concealer. Yet, after a little trial and error, it's better than any stick concealer I've ever used.

The four-color MAC eye shadow palette is amazing and the MAC Viva Glam lipstick #6 is fab. I am totally in love. Finally, the creamy eye liner from MAC also outstanding.

Now I just need to be better about really washing my face before bed. No reason to age this face any faster.

Cold Meds Are Cramping My Style

A dense cold infused fog has settled into my head and is refusing to depart. It's untimely arrival during our weekend trip was not ideal, but lucky me, it waited to go all out until I was back at work. It's gotten so bad I've had people spontaneously offer me cold medicine. I think death warmed over is probably a generous description of my current look. Sorry co-workers.

Yet, I am encouraged to persevere as the signs of spring are multiplying daily and I work to shake off this cold like the February blahs. So I am endeavoring to reengage with writing, running, and yoga this month so that the Broad Street 10 miler doesn't run me over.

Anyone else dusting off their mindful endeavors as March begins? I know I'll be adding new running shoes to my mix this month (the Brooks I've been running in are not comfortable) and hoping they magically make me wicked fast. Hmm, that might be the speed button on the treadmill.

I've signed up with my trusty race buddies for the St. Patrick's Day 8k-- that's going to be painful. I'm also loving a new Yoga Basics class at DownDog on Wednesday nights at 7:45pm.

The biggest shift, and I know this will sound easy for some, I'm going to try and make the flip from evening gym person to morning gym person. This may be harder than the actual hour I need to spend running at said gym. Mornings and I do not talk. Suggestions for updates to my run mix are welcome.

Sometimes You Need a Vacation

For now that means squeezing three tiny get-away weekends into February. Silence on this blog brought to you by Philadelphia, Glastonbury, and Charlottesville.Writing will resume in March.

Status Update

After reading this article in the Washington Post I started to pay more attention to the life events and proclamations made back and forth between friends on Facebook. Individuals merely commenting on their daily state of being becomes in aggregate an accounting of a friend's pregnancy or continued search for employment.

Valentine's Day of course brought a spike in the professions of love and affection and I began to wonder about how a perceived instant audience of FB is altering our behavior to share personal details. Do we more readily share or express our ups and downs because the personal, yet impersonal nature of Facebook? Does the cattle call news need just make it easier to share big life news? Allowing us to include more people in our joy and sorrows, and therefore by extension actually bringing us closer together?

I'm thrilled when I see a friend announce they are expecting that I might otherwise never have heard about. And there's always a few go to friends for pithy comments and clever commentary on their life experiences. I've carved out time in my schedule to regularly check FB. Does this enhance my overall well being? Make me more connected to my fellow man? To a certain degree, yes. I am not one to advocate for the extraction of technology from our lives as a means of communication.

However, I certainly believe the line between public and private lives is more readily blurring. One of the more honest comments I've read in recent months about work life balance is that you can't separate the two. The balance is in the blending of them. By creating strict hierarchies of separation and punishing yourself when you fail to adhere, no one wins and more unnecessary is created. Balance yes, but full separation is highly unlikely. So how does this same logic potentially apply to blurring our public and private personas?
 
For my own consideration because I work in communications, interacting with new media channels in a closed a protected manner is largely against the very idea of exploring a mediums potential. If I tweeted and blogged to myself, I wouldn't gain greater understanding of information flow and user behavior. Yet, the risk is higher. I'm creating a permanent digital paper trail of my writing, my ideas, myself as an individual.

But fundamentally I return to the larger question of relationships and personal information sharing. Are we extracting a greater benefit out of now sharing more information about our feelings, our life changes? Are we creating a new set of expectations about relationship success and failure? Do you show your relationship status or not? Do you post personal pictures or not?

Inevitably age introduces a level of comfort or seamless integration of technology into how one expresses their thoughts and feelings about big events and relationships. So, isolating emerging users and fluent users (basically everyone under 27 or so) and focusing on the late 20s to 40s crowd, have we enhanced our lives or the quality of our relationships by documenting it on FB?

I would put forth a qualified yes. And yet, I find myself limiting my information on the site more and more. Deleting and removing images that seem extraneously archived there. And I wonder how the next ruminations of the machine will alter our behavior in 24, 36 months and beyond.

A Valentine from ee cummings

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i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)