Distant Third

I’m going to start calling people more. I can’t keep up with the whole e-mail thing and it distracts me from work, anyway. I’ve decided I can be 30% (at least) more productive at work if every time I sit down to write a lengthy e-mail, I just step out of the room and give the person a call, instead. E-mail will be my last resort.

I have some catching up to do, as always. I have also decided to be better about the blog. I need to get out of my head that I have to sit down and constantly update on my entire life. It’s not needed. I will start writing at a minimum of twice a week to keep using the blog for what I originally set it up for to begin with!

BUT, to start fresh, let me do a little backtracking of recent very cool life events:

HOOD TO COAST

The crazy road race was a fiasco: a wonderful, painful, bonding, sweaty, sleep deprived fiasco. I completed my three legs (one at 7 PM, one at 3AM and one at 9:30 AM), but only barely. I tore my calf on during my first leg, and the rest was relatively downhill… which is a funny play on words because my first leg was a 2000ft decent over 6 miles. I beat the hell out of my legs. The following week, I had to hobble around Nashville, during my work conference. I barely had the leg strength to lower myself down to the toilet seat… and you should have SEEN me trying to walk down stairs!

The team, energy and scenery made it all worthwhile, though. Everyone I was with was suffering through the same pain, and adventure. Knowing this, and hearing them cheer, makes you keep pushing though… through any pain or mental roadblocks. I want to do it again. I want to do it again and be in shape, when I do it. I want to be better rested and better focused so I can pay better attention to the spectacular individuals riding along with me. That is my one regret: that I didn’t have the chance to pay enough attention to my teammates who come from all kinds of interesting backgrounds. I was also distracted by a bit of emotional interference that came along with riding in the same van with a certain individual with whom emotional involvement runs a little deeper. But I think I’ve come to a place where he and I can put all static behind us and move forward in our relationship… to hopefully become great friends one day.

A few memories I want to remember from the race: my INSANE decent down Mt. Hood, decorating the vans, sleeping in the middle of the field with my eye mask on, convincing the hotel to let A and I in the pool at 1 AM to try and keep our legs moving, ultrasound at 2 AM, eating a hot dog and muffin on the beach at the end of it all, the amazing drivers and support team making ice packs for me after each leg and our WONDERFUL last dinner out after the race was all done… great company and sleepy conversations.

CONFERENCE
What can I say? Every time I go to conference I think to myself, this is the conference that I’m going to take it a little easier and actually be completely awake for the lectures. This is the conference I’m going to get up enough nerve to head up to a microphone and ask a question. I failed, again. BUT, I do have some spectacular memories to show for it. I mean, there was lots of drinking and late night playing around but there was also great memories obtained.

A few good times (in no particular order):
- Dancing to the Low Cash Cowboys and playing pool that first evening.
- Getting even closer with a certain group of my favorite Staff folk over a T Titan game (my first pro-football game!)… then heading out to the Nashville strip to dance and listen to live music until the wee hours of the morning. (OH! And buying the cowboy hats in route!… I didn’t take mine off until I got to LA over 24 hours later).
- Hooking up with the cute little very southern and UBER CONSERVATIVE first review. Oh what fun mind games we play on Staff.
- Having the best public speaking training class. Sitting, exhausted, with others in my class practicing speaking in front of a camera.
- Oh, and I did, actually, really enjoy the speakers too… even the I-man himself was impressive.

Bad memories
- Bad encounters with the ex who wants to be close but is quite obviously not ready to be close yet… as a friend. And I have no interest in being close the other way.
- Hooking up with the cute little first review. Still not sure that was the best move I made at conference, albeit fun.
- Not knowing what to say to my SAM as we wondered through the hotel on the scavenger hunt. Didn’t start up small talk and feel it may be detrimental to me in the future.
- Not getting the chance to see a favorite ex-manager that was in town
- Being exhausted during the public speaking class and may not have gotten everything out of it that I could have

Ah well. The good FAR outweighed the bad.

HOME IN LA (for my in-between review break)
This went too quickly. I got to baby sit Kicker! That was a very positive part. He’s teething, so he was fussy. But he’s so cheerful otherwise, and fun, and when he laughs he gives me a positive feeling in my gut that I haven’t felt in ages. It’s a warm and full feeling. I want to spend more time with him. As much time as possible. Love came over and helped me baby sit too. He was really really good with Kicker. So patient and caring, just like how he is with everything else in life. Seeing him hold kicker also gave me a very warm feeling inside… but as Love very smartly put, it also reminded me of how far off I feel from having a child of my own. There is so much responsibility that comes along with it I know I’m not ready for. My only fear: the longer I put off marriage and a family, am I just going to become a more and more selfish person? Will I get to a point that I am so selfish and live my life so very much for myself that I can not be a good wife and mother? Or will it make me a better wife and mother. Does anyone have an opinion on this?

There was a heat wave in LA this weekend. It made for a HOT trip home. And kind of a disorienting trip home. I was tired… very spent from the hood to coast adventure. Our kitchen is still being remodeled at the house and my parents weren’t home. The bonus was that I was able to spend a little more uninterrupted time with Love. But the downside was that I wasn’t all there. I was in recovery mode… so I wasn’t able to be as socially apt. Love, and all my other friends & family for that matter, didn’t get the best of me. I will be heading home again in 10 days and I’m determined to get good sleep before that trip home so I’m able to be better… for everyone.

I’m now flying to Minneapolis, Minnesota to start my next review. I’m not in the right frame of mind yet, but I think the review may have a slow upstart so I should be able to have time to get in the groove. I hope. I don’t know where I’ll actually be spending the review, but I’ll spend the next ten days in Minnesota. Mall of America, here I come! Ugh.

I’ll write again sooner rather than later.