The Twenty-Ninth Post of Sisu

Daily Acts of Sisu: Ran 6 miles before work even after waking up terrified from nightmares, lesson prepped during my lunch break, doubled down on calm during stressful moments, wrote two blog posts 

Today was a pretty great day. 

I had been dreading summer camp as I didn’t want to spend my summer off lesson planning, but knew I had to, and didn’t want to come back after some time off.

I’m still not sure how much longer I want to teach and going into three straight weeks of summer camp after a hard year of school followed by the most stressful vacation of my life didn’t sound too appealing.

Especially knowing I won’t have another vacation until Christmas.

And it’s only August.

I was angry and deeply sad that I had yet again over committed and over scheduled myself when I could have just not worked and enjoyed my time off.

I railed against my choices until I had no choice but to accept them or bail out hard.

I didn’t want to sit with the consequences of that decision so I grimly went forward, feeling like a criminal who’d been on the run. Having just been captured, I was still looking for my escape. 

But anxiety is as anxiety does and it has turned out to be pretty fun so far. 

I may be writing from the pit of mental despair by week three, but we’ll let that happen if and when it happens. 

Hell, it may not.

While I’ve been trying to live my life more authentically as well as build my resilience, I often find myself caught in the crosshairs of not knowing if I am being true to myself or just gaslighting myself to get by.

Have I just gotten used to complaining and things really aren’t that bad or do I need to really examine and change my life?

Are there people who don’t think this way at all?

It seems like my whole generation, at least the Americans, are struggling with their mental health and happiness. 

How do we sustain it?

How much is mindset and how much is the actual life that you are living?

Is the grass just always going to look greener on the other side? 

These are the questions I wrestle with on a daily basis and it is quite exhausting, but so is staying in the wrong life. 

I used to imagine when I was a child that someone out there, some omnipotent force, existed that could tell me how to live the perfect life.

That they could come down and tell me what choices to make and what steps to take to live well and be happy. 

Deeply and permanently happy. 

It’s still hard to know sometimes if more happiness does exist elsewhere or if I just opened my eyes a little more if I would see it in my own life?

I think it can be, and probably is, a bit of both.

We all have unrealized dreams. 

We all have things we talk about that we would love to do or be or have, but aren’t taking any action towards.

Sometimes there are very real reasons for this. 

As much as the personal development hates to hear it, I think time and money can both be prohibitive. 

And I know I write from privilege because I do have enough to make ends meet and then some. 

I am not rich by any definition of the word (I’m still a teacher after all), but I’m doing okay.

And there were times when I wasn’t, so I think I can confidently say I know the difference. 

I am grateful to not still be in the days when the only food I could afford came from vending machines and I never paid a bill on time, choosing each month which one to pay that I was least behind on.

Those were hard and scary times and I worked hard to break my way out of them.

But I still feel like something is missing from my life. 

There’s a hole somewhere, a dissatisfaction, and I don’t want it to take me so far deep into the Dark Woods of Error that I lose myself completely, chasing after things that will never make me happy.

But at the same time I think that the saying is true: If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there.

That is part of my panic about the end of my summer vacation. 

I tend to make very different choices when I am stressed out, burnt out, or exhausted than I do when I am happy, content, or hopeful.

I am scared of taking myself down the wrong path.

Afraid of losing or wasting more time. 

I feel older and older and like the lack of time I have left is reflecting back to me in a way I don’t like.

I can tell myself it is partly societal expectations, that I “should be” somewhere different, somewhere further with my life by now, but I know that isn’t entirely it.

My soul is calling out for something different and I hope that I can find it. 

The Twenty-Seventh Post of Sisu

Daily Acts of Sisu: Letting myself sleep in and wake up without an alarm, running 15 miles instead of the planned 18 because my phone was about to die and trusting that I will still be properly trained on the day of my ultra, finding time for both chores and friends

Time is an interesting thing. 

It’s elastic.

Feels different in so many different circumstances.

I noticed again on today’s run what I wrote about before.

When I get out of the house and do something that takes a long time, especially if it takes me out of myself, then time and how I spend it doesn’t matter so much.

I struggle with sleeping in on weekends because of this conditioned desire to maximize my time. 

It is hard because I have a positive feedback loop around this.

Especially at this point in a training cycle, where I do need 3-5 hours per weekend day for running, it makes sense to wake up earlier so I have more time to do things.

But it is a fine balance.

At some point when you’re trying to escape one possibility (not doing fun things on your weekend) you become caged by its opposite (needing to constantly do things all weekend long so that I can prove I have made the most of my time).

I need to slow down more, I know this. 

But it is hard when there is so much I want to do, 

My health and wellbeing are calling for a bit of both.

Both the feelings of freedom and adventure and some extra sleep and rest. 

It may take more experimenting to get closer to sustainability, but I know I need to try. 

It is not worth the aura symptoms to be operating at a thousand all the time.

Especially when they have a nasty habit of falling on a day when I have something fun planned. 

I need to find a way to enjoy my life and have time to rest and soak it all in as well. 

The Twenty-Sixth Post of Sisu

Daily Acts of Sisu: Running 13.2 miles before breakfast, going to the store to get laundry detergent after running 13.2 miles, grappling with feelings of panic that the day is getting away from me, fighting the battle between spending money or staying home

I don’t know exactly when my problem with time began, but I remember it becoming acute in California. 

I can share it easily now, at a distance, but to be inside of the feeling at the time was crippling. 

I had followed a long-held dream of moving to California.

It had never felt more like a dream come true than when I drove down to San Diego from Los Angeles. 

The move there felt like coming home, like setting myself free.

The miles of beachfront felt like possibility yet I would quickly learn that sitting along its shores felt like panic. 

I could go there to think, to solve problems that seemed insurmountable, yet going there to “relax” or “enjoy myself” almost never worked. 

I could barely make it fifteen minutes before feeling like I would have a panic attack.

My heart and thoughts would start racing in tandem.

I was wasting my time, I should be out there, being productive.

I had to be doing something.

I don’t honestly remember if it was my family’s concern or a specific set of habits that weened me off of my fears, but I was eventually able to relax and let go a but more.

To try to sit and be and just appreciate my life more. 

To feel like I actually deserved to relax.

It is much better than is used ot be, but I can still feel it sometimes.

The panic that sets in when I feel like I am wasting my days.

It looks a little differently now.

Today I felt it when at 4pm I realized I hadn’t “done anything fun” yet today.

Yes, I had run a half marathon distance, and yes, I love running, especially on Saturday mornings before the world wakes up.

But still. 

I regularly feel trapped by my life and I have not yet fully found a way to fix it.

It is a feeling I imagine most people can relate to. 

Feeling like you are on an infinity loop between work and home and always busy, always doing something, yet never really free. 

Never really having fun.

So my goal for my time may have changed, my tolerance may have increased, but the feeling of panic remains.

The feeling that I have this one wild and precious life and that I am spending my time in the wrong way.

That I will never have enough time and that I will never be able to do all that I want and feel like I need to do on this Earth.

That time is falling fast through my fingers like so much sand and that I will never be able to get it back.

So maybe it is not time but my own finitude that I find myself panicking in the face of. 

A predefined limit I don’t know how to live with. 

So I try to find ways to stretch my time. 

To be more present.

To stop thinking in hours, minutes, seconds, days.

It is hard, but it cannot be impossible. 

I have cured myself of many things and I have to believe I am not so stuck in my ways that I am beyond rescue.

It feels, in a way, like I am cheating myself of my own happiness.

My own enjoyment of life.

It is a large part of what I love about running.

At some point during my run, especially during long runs, the time stops mattering.

I stop thinking about it entirely and I don’t miss the time when it’s gone.

It feels meaningful.

It feels well-spent. 

But how to sustainably create that feeling in all areas of my life is something I am still working on.

I hope someday I am able to find the answer.

A Day of Sisu Past: The Twenty-Fifth Post of Sisu

Daily Acts of Sisu: ran 8 miles before 8am, bought new clothes to replace what the airlines lost, taught 4 online lessons, took a very cold shower, prepped lessons for next week, made myself delicious lunch and dinner from things I had around the house

Today has been a nice chill day, although you wouldn’t have thought it would be starting out.

I’ve been having problems sleeping this summer and this morning I woke up even earlier than my already early alarm. 

I like to run before the city wakes up, but when I go to bed late or don’t get proper sleep it can be hard to get out of bed.

As it is for everyone, I know. 

But smothering my resentment of past commitments made and switching over to an encouraging dose of motivational energy can be a Herculean effort when I’m tired.

As I knew the reason for this particular morning’s lack of sleep, I decided to lean into my anxiety by facing it head on, rather than by hiding from it as is my tried and true method of handling scary problems.

Yet even with the worst problems, it is incredible how much more equipped I feel to face them when I trust that I can handle the outcome. 

When I trust myself to gather the information, to lean towards, rather than look away. 

What was even more interesting this morning was watching how, upon solving this problem that’s plagued me, I watched my mind grasp outwards, desperately seeking the next thing to obsess out. 

I am being forced to become more and more aware of how the habitual following of my train of anxious thought causes me unrest and unhappiness.

Useful information, although not necessarily pleasant to be on the receiving end of.

But even if it drags me along kicking and screaming sometimes, I do believe that knowledge is power. 

One problem for the day down, I decided to fall out of habit and not dance with my desire to lean into anxiety. 

I knew it wouldn’t help and I am getting rather bored and tired of this hobby.

I started to look forward to my run as I know that often when my mood starts to sour it’s because I haven’t run for a while. 

And yes, a while can be one day. 😂

I have found of late that keeping my mind and body busy helps to keep my spirits up and my strength apparent to me. 

I can solve problems. I can stay positive. I can do hard things. 

Knowing from experience that I do better with some food and coffee in me, I set about having a look at other small problems and downloading some podcasts for my run.

I started out slowly, but as I used to berate myself during the first mile or three that it took me to warm up, now I know what’s coming.

I’m practicing being kind and understanding of myself which may sound weird, but has been really helpful.

Imagine the difference in energy in any activity when you tell yourself you’re a failure versus chuckling and saying, “Just give it time.”

It was an amazing run and I got the pleasure of seeing an improvement in my hill work, something I hadn’t expected after a tired start to the day. 

I got to challenge myself again when I came home to our boiler not working. 

A cold shower challenge I had not been expecting. 

But the day goes on and it turns out we can not only ask for help, but work together towards finding a solution. 

Who knew?

I am still replacing all the things the airlines lost on my vacation, but today I was able to go about it with positive energy rather than bemoaning my victimhood. 

It’s almost like I am growing as a person. 

Thanks, sisu. 

Hope to see you around more. 

Real Acts of Self-Love

I could say that many things went wrong today. I could more accurately say that things did not go according to plan. Or, even more accurately, that things did not go according to expectation.

And I, like many people, struggle with things, people, and situations not meeting my expectations.

As a recovering perfectionist, I want to do many things and I want to do them well.

Or, more honestly, I want to do more things than I am humanly capable of and I want to do them all perfectly.

The awareness that this is impossible has only barely dimmed the desire.

I still have work to do.

And I, like many people, used to think that self-love and self-care existed exclusively inside the world of bubble baths and good books, massages and ordering in. Cafes and restaurants and new clothes and traveling and treating myself.

I am not here to say those things are not nice or cannot be forms of self-love and self-care.

More that what I keep noticing are the gaps.

The times when I need to show myself love the most and don’t feel like I deserve it.

The times when I feel like I’ve let myself down and don’t want to talk to me right now.

The times I want validation or attention and look for it outside of myself. In the words, embrace or attention of a man I think I can, and should, export my needs to.

Here you go. Please fulfill these forever.

But I know in my heart of hearts that that job is my own.

And it is the only thing I need to prove to myself that I am good at.

I would have liked to run a marathon today. To prove to myself that I can do this hard thing so that I can have the confidence I feel I need to do the next, harder thing.

But I do not need to prove to myself that I can run.

The hard thing I need to prove to myself is that I can sit on the sidelines when my knees are collapsing beneath me and the sunlight through the trees sends signals to my brain that it needs to prepare for a seizure.

The hard thing I need to prove to myself that I can do is to let go of my expectations and accept and love myself through the reality of chronic illness.

That I CAN do really hard physical and mental things and that it’s also OKAY when I can’t.

Because sometimes, I won’t be able to.

I do believe, that, at least for me, there are right and wrong hard things and that pushing myself to the edge of my normal limits while shoulder-deep in the quagmire of aura feelings that makes walking downhill, through a crowd, or hearing loud noises and seeing bright lights hard is not the right hard thing.

It is the impossible thing.

It is the thing that if and when I do it, and I have, does not leave me feeling more capable and proud of myself. It leaves me feeling abandoned.

It leaves me wondering when I’ll abandon myself next.

It leaves me scared.

Lonely.

Concerned.

But I am not here to beat myself up.

I am here to finally come back to myself.

To build myself up.

To practice walking myself home.

With my head held high for once, rather than hanging low, ashamed of the eye contact I try so hard to avoid.

To admit that I care more than anyone when I “fail” and that what my mind is quick to call a failure is the deepest act of love and safety I can imagine.

As one of my best friends said to me today, “It is better to go home on a train than in an ambulance.”

She is right, of course, as she so often is.

But it can be hard for us perfectionists to see the beauty in what we would call giving up.

To see the glory in living to fight another day and being okay with that result.

To trusting that we will, in fact, come back stronger.

Not just physically, but with a greater level of trust in ourselves.

We talk so much about being ghosted in today’s dating world, but as I heard another wise woman say recently, “You’re talking about ghosting, but you ghosted yourself a long time ago.”

Which one is more painful?

We owe it to ourselves to stand by our minds, bodies, souls, and spirits when they need us.

To pour even more love and kindness into our own hearts as we pour into those of others.

So, yes, I sat on the sidelines today. I watched. I climbed just one hill of many I was meant to. And it took everything I had just to come back down.

To walk away from my expectations and love and accept what is.

To live the day that was given to me rather than mourn and rage against the day I felt had been stolen.

Because all we really have are the moments we are in.

And I am done being the thief of my own happiness.