change

Personification of a Verb

/ Sloan / Leave a comment

Change is sporadic, strange and often times annoying. He takes his own path, pops in when he feels like it and up roots your entire day, week, month, maybe year or even life!

You can’t prepare for Change, you can’t expect him to knock on your door at 4pm because he’ll more likely show up next Tuesday after you’ve gone to bed and have to get up early in the morning. Change doesn’t wait around. All you can do, all we can do, is embrace him. Embrace the fact that we can’t control him, he’s going to do what he wants when he wants. We can stop freaking out, we can stop having meltdowns and acknowledge that Change arrived a few minutes early, or two years later than we thought and we can wrap him in our arms, cuddle him and say okay, let’s do this, I’m not quite ready but I’ll never be, I’m glad you showed up.

 

[Here’s to Change. Here’s to opportunities. Here’s to going with the flow yet making shit happen.]

A Gentle Guide

/ Sloan / Leave a comment

This blog has morphed. I started writing for The Sole Search in the winter of 2011 with the intent to discover new cities, towns and countryside via running. I was going to run and discover cute coffee shops and book stores and then visit them after a shower and tell you all about them. The original plan was to propose a TV show idea to the Travel Channel. Obviously, that idea only lasted for a short time.

            But I continued to run, and write and write about running and my triumphs and struggles not only with running, but with it’s community, and other sports too. As I discovered my love for trails, my passion for finding myself out there, doors opened and ideas flowed. She’s there somewhere, I’m just on the hunt for who she is…who she’s turning into. Because, let’s be honest, the only constant is change so we may as well embrace it.

 

“Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it” –Andre Gide

 

The tag line for The Sole Search has turned into my life’s desire. Searching for my soul via my soles. I’m always looking. Whether or not it’s while I run, (which I honestly haven’t done in a long time, and I am finding peace with that) riding my bike, working at a bar, pumping away at the elliptical, sitting on my deck with a book and a glass of wine or swimming endless laps in a pool as I prepare to do 1/3 of a triathlon this fall—I’m searching, I think we all are.

 

People who love me have accepted my flighty lifestyle. They know that I [runaway] move around a lot. They embrace it and know that I’ll come back around to where they are eventually. They remind me that I have friends all over the world. I’m the one that has not accepted this. I’m working at allowing myself to be okay with this. It’s hard. I have a hard time staying put, relaxing and being somewhere. It’s not that I don’t want to but that I think when I know where/with whom I want that with I’ll know. Or maybe I won’t—

Convo with my Mother

Convo with my Mother

 

So for now I search. For now I travel seeking, learning and embracing life as it comes at me. On this path I’m reading and learning and discovering all the people I can learn from along the way. Instead of discovering a coffee shop while on a run, I will sit in that coffee shop and write and read and ponder.

 

My newest venture to the Yoga Ashram is one way that I am being proactive in finding comfort somewhere. Life is going to happen no matter what. We can sit back and assume it’s going to be awesome, or we can take it by the reins, grip tightly and gently direct it toward something awesome.

 

That’s my plan.

 

Join me if you will, I’d love to have you along for the ride.

A New Kind Of Normal

/ Sloan / 2 Comments

I feel guilty. I’m a huge guilt addict lately. However, what I realized I felt guilty about this morning was the fact that I haven’t ‘gone for a run’ in ages. Just a run to run. Recently, when I’ve laced up my running shoes I’m headed to the gym, I’m running the mile to the gym—only to hop on the elliptical and lift weights. Or I run the 1.6 miles to the pool to swim some laps then run home. The other day I did go for a run, but I found a set of stairs and I ran up and down them for 20 minutes instead of logging miles here at 3,000 feet—I added to my elevation gain and loss via concrete steps. Weird, I know.

 

            But what I realized on my way to the gym this morning was that I don’t have to run. I’m kicking my ass nearly everyday lifting weights, swimming, biking and elliptizing, (I have this weird love for the elliptical…) I’m doing good for my body and yet in the back of my mind I think I should be running. But why?

            I think I feel this way because for so long I was the runner in my circle of friends. (Let’s be honest, I still am in some of those circles,) but that’s who I was. And it’s okay to change. It’s okay to not do what you’ve always done and change up your norm. Right now I enjoy being a gym rat, I enjoy logging laps at the local pool, I enjoy laying on my couch and reading a novel, I enjoy selling drinks and French fries rather than wool socks and running shoes! I’m still in a routine, I’m still exercising (all norms in my life,) but changing it up and creating a new normal is kind of exciting.

 

I have no doubt I’ll get my running legs back eventually, but for right now I’m enjoying a different kind of normal.