Things Get in the Way

Lately I’ve been a busy girl. Sometimes I think I’ve bitten off a bit more than I care to chew. I mean I can chew it, but do I want to? That is the question. However, if I’ve started chewing I mean to finish, so for now I am busy and chewing big mouthfuls.

When August showed up I was working as usual, coaching No Boundaries, taking two classes for my Master’s in Public Affairs, and attempting to train for various races. No Boundaries (which is a program in which I was helping coach new runners to run their first 5k) ended in October and that opened up an evening for…usually more running and cooking.

So that leaves me with working and going to class two nights a week. This is no big deal, really, except that classes are 3 hours long and work is 8 hours long and for some reason, my professors want me to do a bunch of reading and paper writing and studying. Which takes up more time.

You want to know what I really want to be doing? I want to be running, reading good books, running some more, and hanging around with Jason, with maybe some day-dreaming, writing, and wandering in the mix as well. And while I’m wishing for all of that, I’m going to add that every day in which I’d be free to do these things would be the perfect fall day like what I’m seeing through my window right now.

I read the blogs of others who write on a regular basis and I remember a time when I did that. It was the one month of my unemployment. I wrote, I thought, I ran and went to the gym. I cleaned our house within an inch of its life. It was fun. I had a lot of extra words that weren’t used in meaningless office chatter but were used, instead, for what felt like more meaningful words put on paper (or the computer screen).

While I like my classes (mostly) and I like learning (some things), I don’t like sitting for long periods of time and listening. Some call this ADD. I’m not sure what I think it is. I can listen for about an hour, but I don’t want to listen much longer than that, and I don’t want there to be too many hours (consecutive or otherwise) when listening is required. This does not include listening to a friend. Or to a song. But I get to be involved in those listening activities.

With the gorgeous fall mornings greeting me every day, I don’t want to come into the office. With so many good books hitting the shelves, I don’t want to read the Federalist Papers or Polling for the Public. With races to run and so many miles to traverse, I don’t want to sit at a desk. And with a husband at home, I want to be where he is.

I don’t really mean to complain. Work is good and a Master’s Degree certainly can’t hurt. But, alas, sometimes these things get in the way of what a girl really wants to be doing. I guess that is just life.