Being Grateful and What's Next

I can be a pretty pessimistic person. I have been for most of my life. My husband says I’m just a melancholy girl and keeps threatening to write a song about it. Running and exercise has changed that a good bit, but I still have many moments of melancholy in any given week. Perhaps it’s an artistic temperament; perhaps it’s the history of depression and anxiety in my family. At any rate, it gets old fast.

Oddly enough, I can be quite the positive person for others. I am a constant cheerleader for my students. I’ve been teaching private voice lessons for 10 years now. I encourage them to charge forward, to take risks, to be bold. I’m starting to heed my own advice, but I’ve a long way to go.

Lately though I’ve been trying even harder to keep those dark thoughts at bay. Family and friend health issues have sort of shaken me a bit.
Life is truly too short and often terribly unfair. So, instead of
dwelling on the stupid, petty crap that infiltrates our daily lives, I’m working on gratitude. I’m here; I’m healthy (knock on wood). When I’m bothered by something or I have a hard workout ahead I just try to remember I GET to be here, I GET to run. So many aren’t so lucky.

From my last full marathon in 2014

In other words, I need to suck it up sometimes. Life is good.

In other news (or related to all of this, I guess) I’m trying to figure out race plans for the year. I usually do 3 big races a year. Last year,
I did 3 half marathons. I skipped the full marathon. Just needed a break. But I think I’m ready to tackle that distance again. I miss
getting those crazy long runs in. I’ll probably do Canton Half in April and definitely Akron in the fall. But, I’m not sure if I’ll do the full or the half. I am leaning towards doing either the Towpath Marathon or the Columbus Marathon.  We shall see.

Part of me wants to try a race in another state, but it’s hard to get the time off work to do that. Any
way, random thoughts on a random day.

I'm not sure who's reading this right now. Haven't been brave enough to share it on social media. Just trying to write more and get some thoughts out. If anyone is out there, hope you are all well. Cheers.