It’s been a rough week.
But if you’re a woman, the weeks are hardly ever different, really.
In the last 24 hours, I’ve received many private messages on Facebook encouraging me to join a “female blackout” to “show what the world might be like without women.” As far as I can tell, this “project” consists solely of having women replace their Facebook profile pictures with a black square.
Here's a secret about introverts: we have a lot of conversations in our head before (or sometimes instead of) having them with the people they involve.
Well, first I guess I should back up and tell you another secret. I'm not really an introvert. For a long time I thought I was, but the truth was that I was shy and less confident. If you believe the Myers Briggs Type Indicator, I've meandered over the years just across the E/I boundary and now sit just inside the extroversion space. What does that mean? Well, I'm a little bit of both. I do get energy from being around groups of people, but I also cherish my alone time to process and recharge. The label for me is "ambivert" but because I'm also a P on the MBTI, I bristle at labels sometimes.
Not exactly the juicy secret you were expecting, I know. What I'm trying to say is, despite all my newfangled extroversion, there are still plenty of times that I'm in my own head. This is never more true than when I'm running. That's the reason I started running years ago--I needed a quiet place outside the house and away from everyone to begin the process of figuring out some pretty big things.
When the weather cooperates, I run at a track near my house. It's a lovely, utterly quiet spot set at the bottom of a steep hill overlooked by this tree and solitary bench. If there's something on my mind (and let's face it, there usually is), I usually imagine someone connected to that issue sitting on that bench and the thoughts in my head are about them. Sometimes the invisible bench inhabitant is my mom, and my runs are narrated with all I wish I could tell her, what I imagine she'd say.
More often than not though, the person I'm talking to is me. The inner me, the voice that challenges me, calls me out, and keeps me honest with myself. Keep going. What do you want? What does this mean to you? You can do this. The hard, physical action of controlling my breath, my pace, of pushing ahead literally...somehow that is the perfect counterweight to the mental effort required to be a truly functional, emotionally fluent human being. It takes work, you know? Self exploration isn't for the faint of heart and being your best self doesn't happen by accident. It takes steady intention. It's an exercise in honesty and openness that is much more strenuous that any physical activity.
Tuesday morning was no different. I'd been wrestling with something, unclear, stuck, mostly because I didn't feel brave enough to ask the questions and make the statements necessary to get unstuck. It was hard enough to get myself out for a run that morning, and the last thing I wanted to do was add the work of mentally rehashing this issue on top of the effort of actual exercise. But like the muscle memory of settling into a comfortable stride, my mind has a way of going to that one spot that needs attention. The bench rarely stays empty. You can't stay in this place much longer. Uncomfortable, but undeniably true. So, I gave myself a deadline of 48 hours. No plan, definitely no idea of what would happen, but I knew at the end of those two days, I needed to be in a different place. That makes it sound so simple, doesn't it? Gulp...
Even though I had no idea how it would go, it definitely didn't go the way I thought it would. And that's fine. Really. The action had so little to do with the outcome and everything to do with moving forward. Because that's all I can control, right? Stay in my lane. The road ahead will meet me every single step of the way, but I have to do the hard work of putting one foot in front of the other, figuratively and literally. I can't say this last lap was my favorite, but I can say it's behind me and I'm ready for what's ahead. Keep going. You can do this.
No point in pretending here; I've been sitting on this site for a couple of months now. Why? Well, I'm not really satisfied with the template and need to learn more about modifying it so I can get closer to what I want. But the bigger issue has been where to start. I needed a strong, solid foundation--a launching pad. Something to really set the tone. Any old idea wouldn't do. You can see where this is going, right? This blog is really about as inconsequential as it can be, yet here I was piling on this pressure and these unrealistic expectations, slowing myself down in the process. Your blog can't suck if you never start it, right?
When I was drifting off to sleep in seat 28C somewhere above the mid-Atlantic states, it hit me...the only thing I needed to get this started was to actually get started. Sounds so obvious, right? So, here it is, the inauspicious, highly unofficial launch of my new blog. Hello, friend.
"But what IS Tara Standard Time?"
I'm glad you asked! Last night--or "last night," for you time purists--I was up very late doing things around the house and preparing for my very early departure this morning. (Fine, I was procrastinating packing.) I ended up going to sleep for about 90 minutes before the alarm woke me at 4:00 a.m. That might not sound like a lot of sleep (because it most definitely isn't) but it was necessary to mentally reset for the next day.
I often say when it's after midnight that it isn't tomorrow yet. No matter what the clock says, the calendar doesn't roll ahead until my head hits the pillow. I've come to think of this concept as Tara Standard Time. Definitely not the standard...and uniquely from my perspective, good or bad. And possibly sleep-deprived. That's what you can expect here. Which means that, after all the overthinking and procrastinating, I accidentally hit on the only possible way to get started. Go figure.
