Choosing Sides

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The weekly Saturday meet-up notice said we’d start our hike through Los Penasquitos Canyon Preserve at Parkside. I figured they really meant Canyonside Park because the place they call Parkside I call Creekside. That’s how I managed to hold up a surprisingly large group yesterday in a parking lot a stone’s throw from my old home.
We walked to the “waterfalls” – a rock formation with water running through it – and then I ran back, mainly to stay warm and also to help build confidence for an LA trail race (run, in my case) in a few weeks that I am woefully unprepared to complete. A big buck galloped across Park Village Drive at the start and a blue heron took flight just as I did on the return.

I’ve been in a period of restoration. For six weeks I did nothing but work at an intensity and productivity level that now even amazes me. I woke around 4 (sometimes 3) to take care of all the little things before embarking on my “real work” around 5 in the morning. I took breaks to bathe, eat and watch “Project Runway.” Even while driving, I multitasked to stay on top of my full-time job and my freelance practice. I did this until I collapsed each night around 9 or 10 p.m.
Some things fell by the wayside, including this blog. I didn’t have time to do a lot of online reading that wasn’t work-related. And I didn’t have the creative energy to write because all of my efforts were going toward other, paying projects. I also didn’t have the discipline to run regularly or eat right.

How crazy did it get? I went to buy a dress one Sunday and instead we bought a car (a 2012 Chevy Cruze Eco). We didn’t even bring our checkbook or the trade-in with us but made the purchase anyway. Then a week after finally buying the requisite dress, it failed to fit at the big event. I’d dropped a dress size in a little more than a week.
But now that’s behind me and I can relearn self-care and rejoin my networks of friends for movies, dinners, football and phone calls. (Yes, I’m of the generation that still talks more than texts.)

I always dislike San Diego in the fall, so my friends and I met up in New England the other week. I’ll next be logging a travel post about that trip – though the video I linked to earlier in the week gives you a good idea of what we did.

It took more than a week for me to start feeling like my old self and to start realizing I could still enjoy life. That sometimes you just have to choose more wisely how you spend your life. Yesterday’s reunion with my Saturday walk/run group solidified it. So did that afternoon spent watching college football at Todd and Christine's house. It finally felt good – genuinely good – to be back.

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