balance.

Balance. 

It seems like such a simple word and I don't think there is a single one of us that doesn't understand how to achieve balance. We know in theory that we should be spending equal amounts of energy on the things that mean the most to us--usually that means ourselves, those we love, work and adventure. What happens in reality? Despite the ease of the equation, we so easily concentrate unevenly on one area of our life and we get caught in a cycle of just merely surviving. 

I thought for the longest time that my running was the excuse. I couldn't find the right combination of balance in my life because I was training or working 90% of the time. But as that usual mask and excuse has faded away, I'm left realizing that I'm just not good at balancing or prioritizing. Most of the time when I could be doing something productive, I find myself giving it up to go to sleep hours early. I've now started using exhaustion as my excuse but that's just what it is, an excuse. The lack of balance that I create is what makes me so exhausted. There are a lot of instances in life that I would never dream of making an excuse. I'm the girl, when pulled over, who says to the cop "I know, I know, I was speeding. I think it was 10 over" and gladly accepts responsiblity. But in this area, all I find is excuses.

This single area though may be my greatest struggle. I find it difficult to prioritize within the things that are important to me because I find myself with so little time to try to create a life outside of work that I end up flustered and frustrated. Is there some sort of key to this work/life balance that I am missing? I can't remember the last time I cooked a meal or didn't rely on one of the men I live with to switch over my laundry because I can never find enough time to be at home through a whole wash/dry cycle. Or maybe I have been but my day faded into some kind of Scandal watching marathon. 

I have always been the girl who flakes on plans. It's never out of malice or not thinking that someone or something is important. It's always been rooted in being overbooked, overstressed and if I admit it, a little lazy. There are people out there with much more important and hectic lives than me so please don't register this as a complaint. It's just the opposite. It's the tale of someone who has been overly blessed with a hectic but rewarding job, beautiful friends and family, healthy habits that keep me at the gym and a church that I look forward to attending. It's me saying, I've been blessed beyond what I deserve and can sometimes seem to handle. 

For the last few weeks, the healthy habits have seemed to have gone by the waist-side. I knew without the goal of a marathon it would be difficult to keep my ambition up. I have now gone two days in a row without going to the gym, which is unheard of for me. I ate a handful of Hersey kisses yesterday at a wedding shower. All this could lead me to be angry and feel like a failure, as only someone who has worked for over a year to just look normal, not even fi,t could understand but the one thing I know for sure about my experience with cultivating healthy practices in my life, is that no amount of shame would have brought me here. In fact; shame, guilt, feeling bullied by myself, hating my body, comparing myself to others... all of those were things I had to work through to even begin thinking about my health. The best way to be a health advocate is to live it. A positive example does more good than a judgmental voice.

Part of my positive example is always being honest. And honestly, I don't think that my equation will ever be balanced. I think I will always find it difficult to not be overwhelmed by the process of prioritizing. What I do know is that I need to find a healthy way to juggle it all because the relationships and obligations in my life can only be as healthy as my mind and body. Identifying any problem in your life is always the first step to solve it, so for now, starting this dialogue with myself puts me on the right track.

marathon: a dream put on hold.

As most of you know, for the last six months I have been training for my first marathon. I started by running a half in October and decided that I would just follow right through to the Myrtle Beach Marathon coming up in February. I think when people hear that you are training for a marathon they think that you're crazy for wanting to run 26 miles or have respect for you being able to run that far. The thing that has been most difficult for me has not been running that far or long but the time commitment. Already working a hectic job that can keep me anywhere from 40-60 hours a week, with sometimes 13 hours of my day (minus travel) taken by work. To know that on a Sunday, my one day to relax, I would then have to run for 3 hours after church is at times overwhelming. I had made a goal though and I wasn't going to let myself down. I have cried through runs, I have swore through runs and I have gotten lost in the beauty of observing things around me on runs. My sole dream for now has been to run an ultramarathon.

A few weeks ago, I was in the shampoo isle of Wegmans with Siena when I got a phone call from my doctor. At the end of a length explination the blow came that I can no longer run my marathon or for that matter any other type of "competetive race" as she calls it. For the few minutes that the phone call lasted, I felt like it was all okay. But somewhere during my search for Aussie shampoo, it took everything I had to hold my composure in front of a 3-year-old. I am not the type of person who usually gets my hopes up about many things in life. My goals are simple. This marathon is one of the few that I am working on now.  I had come to look at running as a sort of job, or so I thought. My reaction quickly told me that running was more than a job or a hobby. It was something that had been engrained on my heart and turned into a passion. As my mine flashed over the past few months of work, I felt like a part of me had died. It wasn't that I needed to get some medal at the end of a race but I did need the fulfillment of keeping my word to myself.

I don't know if you've ever spent months and months working towards a goal just to be turned away. It made me feel like I had wasted so much time and effort. I could've been spending time with friends or with Jim but instead I was at the gym hitting the treadmill. I believe heavily in faith and I really believe that the goals you have are formed because they are part of your destiny. Was I wrong in thinking running was something made for me? Did I form a goal and spend my time selfishly? Or was this just a case of bad timing and overworking? 

I know that I can always run another marathon... I know that I can find new goals that are more at a level that my body can handle... I know that as much as running has become my passion, it's not my only identity... Most days I wonder if my doctor even knows what she is talking about. I can't seem to let go and admit to myself that I'm not running the race. We are still planning on going down for vacation and I keep telling myself what the doctor doesn't know doesn't count.  I have broken up with boys, I have lost friends, I have been told off on more than one occasion but I will say, this is the biggest heartbreak I have ever suffered. The only way through this is being realistic and just figuring out how to handle a dream that has been put on hold.

starting the new year with a blog about depression...

In the last few months people have been using the word "inspiring" to describe me. I don't feel very inspiring. I don't point this out because of a non-belief that I have made worthy strides that are noticeable to people. I can't accept the word inspiring because it is based on people's perceptions of me based on what they see on social media or in short conversations that we have while catching up. I think there is a big part of me that people are missing and it is not something that I am ashamed of but a big part of my genetic make-up. I battle depression. I have since I was 13-years-old. Some days, some years, are better than others.

If you've never dealt with depression yourself than you might not understand how life altering it is. I can say that the last year has been one of the happiest seasons of my life but it is also the year that I have most heavily felt the effects of depression. If you don't deal with depression, I think some of the misunderstandings about it are that people with depression are lost and without directions, that it's an inability to let go of sadness, or that it's just one more excuse to complain and ask people to take care of you. I am not sad. I am not lost. I am planted in life, faith, health and happiness and still I have never escaped my mental health issues.

Have you ever found yourself thrown overboard and trapped under a canoe, struggling to come up for air and not knowing if this breath might be your very last? Literally, I have. Figuratively, this is sometimes how I feel for weeks on end. Some days I would love to get out of bed but I feel like I dropped the weight on myself while bench pressing. There is nothing glamorous or beneficial about having such a constant ailment that can come out of nowhere. Some moments I find myself out of breath and slurring my words because even the simple task of speaking and saying good morning feels like it's too much.

I don't think that depression and happiness are mutually exclusive. There are whole days, like the day I got engaged, where the world is absolutely perfect but some glitch in my mental make-up tells me that the world is falling down around me. I can find myself breaking up with my fiance (or trying to), throwing things across the room or on the floor crying hysterically with absolutely no excuse or explanation why. I find myself overwhelmed often and in an entirely different universe. I shut down in order to not hurt anyone else in the fall from high to low.

I am so glad that over the last few years celebrities and magazines have made it okay to admit that we are less than perfect humans. That people have mental health issues and that talking about it is one of the best things we can do. I found myself several months ago in a meeting with a friend and as we discussed my mental health issues, she suggested that if I was working with a child who suffered with these types of issues that I step up and help them channel those funks and emotions to something else. I know she meant it as advice to help others but really it helped me. Since that meeting I have been channeling any negative energy that I can in another direction. I'll say that running saved me but the truth is lots of things save me. Cooking, running, blogging, drawing, writing, pilates... Anything that I can channel the negative in my life out into changes my whole mental landscape. By planning my workouts by the week and doing them in the morning, I never get the chance to wallow in whatever negative emotion I might wake up to.

Not a lot of great stuff came out of my first marriage but one of the things that did was that my ex-husband did not think it was appropriate for me to go on medication for my depression. There were times that I hated him for that. As I have become more blessed and overwhelmed with happiness on a daily basis, I couldn't imagine being on anti-depressants (and this is just for me. I'm not speaking to anyone else here). I get to have these amazing highs in life and it's true, they are spiked with extreme lows. I want to experience all of who I am and my range of emotions. I wouldn't have the strength that I do if I did not have to find a way to make it through the most difficult numbness and pain several times a month. I probably wouldn't have the strength to pour out real emotions on this blog as often as I do.

I think that calling someone inspiring is one of the biggest compliments that you can pay someone. I  know if people are going to use the word inspiring to describe me, I don't want them to have the romantic, goal setting, running maniac version of me in their head but the whole me. And if in the process of introducing the full me, I make someone feel like they're not alone in their struggle, it's worth completely worth opening up.