Done for the Week: Still Training After All These Weeks

Last week was a trying one, mainly because of the time spent on anxiety.  For anyone who hasn't had that particular thrill, it amounts to a lot of time feeling lousy.  In between minor out-of-the-blue terror attacks (terror, not terrorist),  I exercised, ate small frequent meals, failed at sleeping, and worked at not biting the heads off the people I love and live with.  Not my most productive period.  But if I am to believe some of those writing about my time of life, this experience can be seen as an opportunity to "finally, really grow up," to "awaken to my life's purpose," and to "let everything become my teacher."


Despite the lofty promises of its outcome, I can't say I'm really enjoying this course.  However, I did manage to get the following done last week:


Done List--Week of July 26-Aug. 1

1.  Finished Week 11 of revised 14-week Sprint Triathlon training plan--3 weeks to go!
2.  Continued assembling tri gear
3.  Finished The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday, by Alexander McCall Smith; Sabbath:  Finding Rest, Renewal, and Delight in Our Busy   Lives,  by Wayne Muller; When We Were Romans, by Matthew Kneale
4.  Spent time dealing with effects of medication change--extra resting  
5.  Continued my two part-time paying jobs
6.  Published 5 blog posts
7.  Meditated 5 times
8.  Wrote 5 Gratitude Journal entries
9.  Wrote 5 Morning Pages
10.  Continued cleaning campaign
11.  Continued mini yoga practice 
12.  Attended 1 yoga class
13.  Took my husband away for his birthday weekend; read, slept, biked, relaxed, walked; continued    reading aloud Elizabeth George's Deception on His Mind                                   

In red above is last week's most important accomplishment, something I've been putting off for far too long.  Unfortunately, my anxiety came along for the ride, but I did manage to leave my teenagers without the obsessive worrying I have experienced, and all too often for good reason, in the past.  A watershed event of our late parenthood.  And something to be repeated soon.

Last week's focus goal, and my focus goal for the next three weeks, was/is to continue training and preparing mentally for the triathlon, in three weeks.   On Sunday, I arrived home from our weekend away to find that my Size XS wetsuit had arrived--but not at my house.  UPS had delivered it to a neighbor, and I had received his King Size something-or-other.  We made the trade, so now I am ready to join a group of tremulous initiates at my first open water swim clinic on Tuesday evening.  (I don't know where my neighbor will be with his package.)  I am trying out "gels," which are little foil packets of quick energy food--something like an astronaut might relish, I imagine--and have tested my new "hydration system"--a Camelback water bottle held in a mesh sack suspended by a strap across my front, which allows me to drink while biking, without falling off.  

My times are holding fairly steady, around the tortoise mark, but my endurance is still increasing.  On Saturday, I will receive instruction in setting up for transitions (T1 from swim to bike, and T2 from bike to run) at an all-day triathlon prep camp.  I am awaking at night with visions of lining up with my wave at the race start, and refusing to get into the water.  I train, and rest, and talk about the tri.  I am enjoying the process less, and starting to feel the shortening countdown.  

Striving to reach this goal is like nothing I've ever done before.  The biggest thing to work on at this point is my head.  I am trying to come up with visualizations (one I encountered is thinking of fear as a balloon that you've held tied to your wrist since childhood, and of letting it go, blowing it away as you breathe through the events, up and away like those balloons I've seen released at funerals. . . . Oops!  Skip that last part.).  And mantras.  My daughter suggested modeling Stuart Smalley's affirmations (performed by SNL's now U.S. Senator Al Franken)--"I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and, doggonit, people like me."  But that's just silly.  I came up with "I'm strong enough, I've trained enough, and gosh darnit, people like me."


But enough about the tri.  I'm late for a training run.

Getting Into It

I recently came across the expression "If you can't get out of it, get into it," which was identified as a slogan used by Outward Bound to unfreeze climbers in mid-climb paralysis--  that moment when fear takes over and recommends staying right where you are, untenable though that position may be, for the rest of your life.  My attempts to verify the attribution confirmed the Outward Bound connection, but also revealed other "sources," including "my daddy" who "always said," and "the old saying."


In any case, I have found this gritty little phrase running through my head as I run through my days lately.  I seem to have gotten myself into a number of situations where the only way out is through, and "getting into it" the best option.  I am not currently clinging in fright to any cliff faces, but have found a more practical meaning for the adage, whether old or new. I use it to remind myself to adjust my attitude, to shift my outlook, to change the lens through which I view my experience.  And to "watch [my] language."


The New Age, pop psychology view that the way we talk and think about things influences our experience grows out of reputable linguistic theory and research.  It has lead to a proliferation of "affirmations," those pithy little mantras that many of us have been urged to employ.  Words taped to our bathroom mirrors, stuck on our dashboards, and lettered onto cards that spill from pockets and purses.  I confess to having a few such hopeful statements still lying around, left over from previous crises and rehabilitation projects.  I should also come clean about how little faith I was able to put in those words.  "I am a confident and worthwhile person" never really rang true for me, any more than did "I am a beautiful and fearless woman."  Maybe the problem lay in overloading, in pairing some out of reach trait with one I could sort of own up to.


Anyway, "getting into it," as I am thinking about it presently, is something different.  It has in common with affirmations a preference for positive language.  But in this case, I don't try to mesmerize myself with formulaic mottos.  Instead, I refrain from (excessive) grumbling, and from a posture of "slogging through" which focuses on the disagreeable aspects of undertakings.  I try to remember why I agreed to do the thing in the first place, and why it seemed important.  And I pay attention to the pleasurable parts of the task.  I summon energy and enthusiasm to combat the resistance I myself put up in the face of a grueling schedule of meetings, an endless round of web page changes and communication assignments.  I focus on the calm I feel as I restore order to a wrecked domestic scene.  I think about how soon my teenagers will leave home, and appreciate their presence even as I dive into motherhood's less enjoyable challenges.  


Is this just another "rose-colored glasses" advisory?  The sort of "bright siding" Barbara Ehrenreich writes about in her recent book?  Though I see the potential difficulties with this approach, on the personal level, where I live my life, it gets me through the dark times, and improves the quality of my days.  And as this is likely to be my only life, "getting into it" seems like the better choice.  This doesn't mean, of course, that I have sworn off swearing at the mountains in my path.  Just that I am not stuck in grousing mode, and can use other gears.  


And so, I'm off to another (damn) meeting--which I have waited six weeks for, and which will further some work I am trying to do, about which I care deeply.