I Am One With the Universe

I'm about to get all Deepak Chopra up in here.  It's October.  Not necessarily time for a year in review, but let's just call it the final quarterly report.  It has been a year of change for me and rising to the challenge seems to have been the modus operandi.  I wish I could say that I was challenged by an IM or that I had lined up a bunch of tough races to see what kind of stuff I was made of.  It seems I am made of Jello-O and it didn't take an IM for me to discover that.

In the biggest piece of news I am out of the NYC Marathon.  I will have to defer to next year.  Injury.  I strained both my Achilles and even now with 4 weeks off from running I am still hobbling out of bed in the morning like an old woman (easy!).  It's a long, sordid story that I won't get into in detail, but it began with ITB issues > BF running > ITB issues gone! > Achilles issues.  Don't tell me about starting slow or stretching or calf tightness, etc. etc.  I was on top all of that while training...religiously....and yet, here I am.

Back to biking and swimming.  Ok.  You know that cheap, useless excuse of padding that they velcro into bike helmets?  Mine disintegrated long ago.  Yes, I know they make replacements that you can buy to make your helmet whole again, but somehow I chose to ignore the existence of such a thing, instead opting for wearing a headband instead (I hesitate to tell you that in the spirit of Halloween I decided to play Dr. Frankenstein and made an attempt to glue my sad, little piece of padding back together in an effort to save it's life and my forehead.  This was a failed attempt and if it isn't obvious by now, I am cheap).  This headband idea has been working for some time...until Monday.  I went out for a 1.5 hour ride, but it wan't until I awoke the next morning that I felt a pain in the center of my forehead.  

Geez, that is some pimple!  

Wait, that's not a pimple, that is a whole bunch of pimples!

Pimples don't cluster like that.

Oh shit!  That's from that damn prickly thing in my bike helmet!  

Flash forward to Friday and holy shit, it hurts.  It is swollen, red and the pain is spreading accross my forehead and my head hurts.  Me thinks infection hath taken hold.  Topical antibiotics didn't help so now I am taking some oral ones....we shall see.

It actually looks worse in real life.

This has kind of been the running theme for me this year.  Just when my training would seem to get on track, something would happen to derail it.  Injury.  Job loss.  The last one didn't interfere with my training so much, but definitely tore down my race list.  

Recently, I started to notice some strange coincidences (stick with me, I'll bring this full circle).  One day I was laying on my couch reading and there was a line about the "church bells ringing" and just at that moment the bells at the church on our corner started to ring. 

I was speaking with a friend of mine about Ticonderoga, a town off of the NYS Thruway.  She reminded me about Ticonderoga #2 pencils.  That night on Jeopardy the answer to one of the clues was Ticonderoga #2 pencils.

On a separate night I was looking at the real estate section in Country Living magazine and just as I was looking at a house for sale in Leadville, Co. the answer to the Jeopardy clue was revealed: Leadville. 

WTF?

There have been several more of these coincidences happening a lot recently.  A friend told me that it means I am clueing into my surroundings and am in tune with the universe.  Someone else told me to play the lottery.  Remember, I am cheap, so I'm going with the universe theory.  What the hell, right?  It did get me to thinking though.  I'm usually not one to go for "all things happen for a reason", but I was willing to get on board with this.  I mean, why the hell not?  Where's the harm?  

So this is how I chalk up my year.  I lost my job, which one could say presents new opportunities for me as a freelancer, but that doesn't come without hard work.  I've been trying to stay positive and be open (to the universe???) to whatever comes my way, good or bad.  The bad:  being injured on what seems like a regular basis and having my training constantly interrupted; frustrating.  The good:  It has forced me to focus on what may be the thing I really need to focus on right now, me and my work. 

A note about my work.  It isn't just work for me.  It is my life.  I am lucky enough to be able to do what I love and get paid for it (although I would argue the pay is not enough...freelance does not mean 'free').  This requires my attention almost constantly; it's not just getting my resume together and hitting the pavement.  My designs/art are my resume. 

So yeah, I am disappointed about my training.  I am disappointed about having to drop out of the marathon and possibly (probably) the Tough Mudder.  I put in three solid months of training and yet, I'm ok with it.  Part of me feels like I should be kicking and screaming like a 2 year old, but I really am at peace with it.  Besides, what good would it do me?  

This is where I'm going to get all hippy dippy on you.  I've been talking to my muse.  I saw a TED talk where idea of talking to your muse came up and I figured what the hell.  Now, I don't go about walking the streets of NYC talking to myself, not that anyone would notice, but at home, alone, I will yell at it, cajole it, beg it, sweet talk it into sending me inspiration.  Yeah, I know, but like I said, what the hell.

What it amounts to is this, me, being open and accepting.  Not in a lame-ass just go with the flow and not fight for anything sort of way, but knowing when to fight and when to accept.  I'm not a religious person, but I guess the Serenty Prayer is really the best way to sum it up:

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can,
and wisdom to know the difference.