life

Connecting Some Dots (and dealing with pain)

/ Sloan / Leave a comment

Sooooooooooooooo remember when I broke my butt last year? Yeah, I try to forget those 14 weeks of my life too. Well, from the way it feels these past few days I think my butt is broken again. I had, at one point, gotten x-rays and an MRI to see what was wrong and the doctor told me I had a stress fracture in my sacrum—right? I know! Crazy sauce. All I could do was not run, not sit for hours on end and the exercise I was allowed was “whatever didn’t make it hurt” (aka: the recumbent bike and eventually the elliptical)

In an effort to not recreate those awful 14 weeks I’m taking this week off of running. I’m going to concentrate on lifting, maybe pop back in the pool a few times, I’m also trying out some new cardio machines at the gym. Having an injury SUCKS. We’re not going to down play that, that’s why I’m trying to catch it before it becomes full blown, but I’m going to take this annoying pain in my ass (literally and figuratively,) and turn it into a new focus. That’s all I can do, right? We can’t control everything, so don’t even bother trying.

A child hood friend passed away two weeks ago (Brenner) and that SUCKS, (no other way to say it, it sucks). Nothing I can do can change that. Instead of crying all time I’m remembering the awesome times we had. I’m reminiscing with his sister and my big brother. I’m flying to NYC in a month and a half to celebrate the life of such and amazing person. Yes I’m sad, really really sad. But it’s also opening my eyes to what’s really really important. My family, my friends, my health. I’m taking control of the things I have control over, like who I send letters and emails to, who I call, who I get in touch with, what I spend my time doing.

How am I looping this story back to my butt you ask? By taking on a challenge we can’t control we end up learning something. My butt hurts, so today I’m going to do the stair stepper. I’m sad about Brenner, I’m going to call his sister that I LOVE and remember the time that her brother helped her, her friend and I record a Beatles song in their basement when we were teenyboppers.

Don’t-not-be-sad, remember to cry, but also remember that your butt still needs exercise and memories are supposed to be remembered and both of those things are what keep us alive!

Crisis Averted? Crisis Continues? Crisis Not a Crisis…

/ Sloan / Leave a comment

If you are my Facebook friend and/or follow me on Twitter or have the pleasure of having hung out with me recently, you’d know that I’m in the middle of some sort of crisis. Not actually sure if you could dub it a true existential crisis, a freak out, quarter life craziness or what, but something is going on within me. I’ve since reached out to friends that I find to be wiser, more creative, have it more figured out than me, for advice. And what they’re telling me is and isn’t what I want to hear.

From what I’ve gathered this feeling never goes away. We never know what we’re put on earth to do, so we should just enjoy it, damnit. My friend/professor/fellow Bianchi lover said to me:

“The journey IS the destination. There is no “there” out there.”

SO true. In a figurative sense such as life and in a literal sense, like when you’re actually in the woods on a journey.

My run/hike today was a 9ish mile loop to a place we call 4-corners, (yep you guessed it, four roads meet up at the top of this ‘hill’) I went with one girl who is in great shape and another girl that hadn’t really every been on the trail in years, (I hope we didn’t scare her away.) Today was sunny, warm and the woods were clear and crisp. We took three hours to do our loop—it really shouldn’t take that long but we took our time, ran, walked, hiked, talked about why each of us live in Southern Oregon. We’re all in different points in our lives, moved for different reasons.

We got to the top, our destination, and really, 4-corners is rather anti-climatic. The view isn’t that great, there’s a big hole in the middle where water pools and it’s all muddy and gross, or frozen if it’s cold. We stretched, hydrated, chatted a bit more and then ventured back on the trail. The run down was FUN—kinda like a roller coaster for our feet only without the nausea and long lines of some lame theme park in Florida.

At one point we stopped and just looked at the setting sun beaming through trees. Winking a quick goodbye before lowering behind the mountain. We all took a mental snap shot and someone said “This is why we moved here girls, this.” This journey is just some thing we have to ride, enjoy and absorb I guess.

It’s hard not to get caught up in the race of moving to the top, being ‘successful’. But then that makes me question the definition of success—and that will be a whole other blog post. For now, I’m going to revel in my tiredness of a longer run, a good day with friends and feeling a bit calmer about my life because I have great people all over helping me from all corners.

 

 

VD, Scrapes, Run and Confusion

/ Sloan / 4 Comments

Sorry I keep talking about how beautiful the views are here. I know many of my friends/famiy that read this are stuck in the mid west with zero elevation gain and flat lands for miles (but you DO have the lakes! Oh I miss the lakes!) I just wanted to report on another ahhh haaa moment I had on my Valentines Day run.

My friend and I drove up this super steep long road that started as dirt and slowly became snow. I’m not used to this. I’m used to snow all the time, all over, knee deep annoying and cold… but here I have to seek snow out and I don’t have a car to scrape off in the morning—I kinda like it. Any way, we hit the trail and ran a few miles out and back and enjoyed the chill of February 14th. I was cold and hot at the same time, sweating profusely for some reason, but then really cold from the chill of my own sweat, (does this happen to anyone else?) It was invigorating and the air was fresh and clean at 6,000 feet.

On our way back down we drove slowly, we wanted to take notice of the houses, (my friend is looking for a house for when her significant other moves out here,) the houses are beautifully nestled in the mountainside but pretty far removed from town. My house is small, quiet, cold, (mostly because we don’t want to pay for heat) but really close to town, really close to trails, stores, bars and two great grocery stores. Location! Location! Location!

I love my roomies, I love this town, my jobs are pretty awesome, yet why do I keep reading travel blogs, reading poems about Wanderlust and yearn for life on the road again? My Valentines Day consisted of loving where I am but dreaming of something else? Weird, right? Oh, AND I fell off my bike. It was a well-rounded day of scraping my knee, re-spraining my ankle and confusing my head, heart and body. Oh well. I’m here right now, so I’m enjoying the views while I can.

 

Breathe, Sloan, BREATHE.

 

Ps: I’m fine, just whiney about my knee and ankle. I ran this morning. J