Skip to main content

Color Me Rad: Call It Progress

Where to begin?

I am trying to do things that I may (definitely) not be good at instead of waiting until I am magically perfect before attempting any sort of anything where others may see. Example: ultimate frisbee. When I started last summer, I was by far the worst player on the team. Now I'm just mildly the worst player. Improvement! Progress! Growth!

(hurrah for me)

---

One time in Vancouver, I signed up for a 5k run called the "Turkey Trot." I jogged a few times, and planned to do it with my lovely friend Wendy, and then I got a migraine the night before, and had a terrible sleep and felt ill and didn't run. Although this was disappointing, it was also a relief. It is the closest I've come to a "race" of any sort since junior high track and field, where I am fairly certain I never placed better than last.

---

People often think I am athletic, because my limbs are gangly and scrawny. This is not the truth. Mostly, I have avoided sports out of insecurity and junior high emotional scarring. Which brings us back to point #1: doing things that I might not be good at.

I am a grown woman, and I want to make decisions that are intentional and thoughtful and rooted in love, rather than compulsive choices based out of old habits and insecurities. This has apparently started with physical fitness and will hopefully spill over into other areas of my life... (

---

The point: Color Me Rad, a 5k run like no other. Not a race, even. No timers. Just race bibs, white shirts, and a whole lot of colour.

Some photos:
L-r: Leaving the house with Karen, Aisling at the starting line, running through a colour bomb station, post race awesome.

As for the running part...it was hot as hades out on Sunday, and there wasn't a spot of shade on the path, and there were thousands of runners/walkers, and I definitely got a stitch in my side (inhaling coloured cornstarch, perhaps?), so I took a walk break or two. But I ran the vast majority of it, and I think our time was around 35 minutes, so next time (see what I did there), I will choose a race that isn't in the summertime or has lots of shade, and maybe less powder being thrown in my face. Also, thanks Karen for slowing down to stay with me. Youthebest. No, seriously.

Look at that, I'm doing things!
More to come. Like bicycles and maybe karaoke.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Simone Weil: On "Forms of the Implicit Love of God"

Simone Weil time again! One of the essays in Waiting for God  is entitled "Forms of the Implicit Love of God." Her main argument is that before a soul has "direct contact" with God, there are three types of love that are implicitly  the love of God, though they seem to have a different explicit  object. That is, in loving X, you are really loving Y. (in this case, Y = God). As for the X of the equation, she lists: Love of neighbor  Love of the beauty of the world  Love of religious practices  and a special sidebar to Friendship “Each has the virtue of a sacrament,” she writes. Each of these loves is something to be respected, honoured, and understood both symbolically and concretely. On each page of this essay, I found myself underlining profound, challenging, and thought-provoking words. There's so much to consider that I've gone back several times, mulling it over and wondering how my life would look if I truly believed even half of these thi...
1 comment
Read more

I Like to Keep My Issues Drawn

It's Sunday night and I am multi-tasking. Paid some bills, catching up on free musical downloads from the past month, thinking about the mix-tape I need to make and planning my last assignment for writing class. Shortly, I will abandon the laptop to write my first draft by hand. But until then, I am thinking about music. This song played for me earlier this afternoon, as I attempted to nap. I woke up somewhere between 5 and 5:30 this morning, then lay in bed until 8 o'clock flipping sides and thinking about every part of my life that exists. It wasn't stressful, but it wasn't quite restful either...This past month, I have spent a lot of time rebuffing lies and refusing to believe that the inside of my heart and mind can never change. I feel like Florence + The Machine 's song "Shake it Out" captures many of these feelings & thoughts. (addendum: is the line "I like to keep my issues strong or drawn ?" Lyrics sites have it as "stro...
2 comments
Read more

Esse - Czeslaw Milosz

I'm on a bit of a poetry binge this week, and Monday afternoon found me lying on the luxurious shag rug of a friend's tiny apartment, re-reading some of my favourite poets (ee cummings, William Carlos Williams, Czeslaw Milosz). It is an adventure to re-open a collection and wonder what will pop out, knowing something you've read before will strike you afresh, or you will be reminded of a particularly moving line that you had somehow forgotten. Like this piece from Milosz, which floors me. Every. damn.* time. The first time I read it, I lay in a park with a friend (this same friend who offered me her rug as my reading burrow) and demanded that I share it with her. I spoke it carefully, and then, into the post-reading silence, I slammed the book shut, and dropped it as loudly as I could onto the grass. "I'm never reading anything again," I declared, "What else is there to say?" Esse I looked at that face, dumbfounded. The lights of métro st...
Post a Comment
Read more