Every Step, a Decision

Baby…

I was a little disappointed in myself when I had to report to you yesterday that I hadn't done my jog that day. Oh, I had plenty of excuses… work was busy, it was a bit rainy. But it was the first time I'd missed in a few weeks, and a tiny little setback in getting back into it and back to the place I want to be.

Well, this morning I decided to make up for it. I headed out, taking the old route, aiming for my usual 3 miles. NGL, it's gotten bad enough that I was almost ready to call it quits before I was out of the neighborhood… but I pressed on.

Then I got to this one intersection, on the far side of town, and a car was coming towards me with its indicator on. One or the other of us was gonna have to wait if I was going to continue on my way. But I made a decision — I turned down the road, heading along a whole different path. I'd gone that way before, long, looong ago… back before “our thing.” But we can't do our thing anymore — not that we need to now — so I thought… Sure. Let's do this. It'll add about a quarter of a mile, but by then I was feeling pretty good.

(sorry, this is getting long-winded — I swear I have a point, babe!)

So then I got down to the bottom of the hill, where normally I'd turn and start heading homeward. But then I thought, you know what? It's a nice morning, I've got a little free time, my body is going to hate me but that pond is awfully pretty, maybe I'll do a loop around it, then head home.

And then I got to the next decision point, and chose the longer route. And the next, and the next. And, yes, my body was hating me. Yes, it was getting harder, and harder, and harder to make that call. There were definitely parts of me that were screaming “Ok! You've made your point! Turn back!” but I didn't. I kept going.

In the end, I hurt, I was sore, and I was exhausted. But I had jogged 5.5 miles, 2.5 more than my target. So I'm pretty proud of myself, ngl.

But I was thinking about it. At each intersection, each of those decision points, I could have taken a path that would have been easier in the short term, but less helpful to my long-term goals, or the path that was harder, more punishing, but with more impact overall.

Today, I chose the hard paths. I pushed myself, and it was good.

But not every day is like that, babe. Some days it doesn't work out that way. I'm too tired, have too much going on at work, too much going on in my heart. So, some days, I make a different call. Heck, sometimes I'll decide to take the easier path, but then opt for the harder one at the next juncture. But, one way or the other, it's OK. One way or the other, I'm still working towards my goal.

In the end, when I get home and look at the map in my tracking app, all I see is the final path, nice and neat and clean. But the reality is always so much messier than that, and I can never quite know what it's going to look like while I'm in the midst of it.

But as long as I make it home, then it's alright. I'll still know that I went out there and tried. That I pushed myself towards a goal. Some days, that's all we can do, and that's fine.

But then some days… some days we push ourselves beyond what we even planned for. Some days, we log 5.5 miles when just a few days ago we could barely manage 3. And we can celebrate and pat ourselves on the back and feel great about it. But that doesn't lessen those other days at all. Because without them, today's success wouldn't even have been possible.

Anyways, babe. I guess I'm just proud of myself. And I'm proud of you, with everything you've got going on. And I hope you're having a 5.5 mile day, too… But you know that I've got you, even if you aren't.

Love you, sweet thing.

Yours.