I Run These Towns

Forty years ago today, at 8:17 a.m. on August 29, 1978, I ended the hostile takeover of my mom's womb towards the end of what has been described as a very hot summer. Please note, however, that Google tells me it was only 81 degrees on the day of my birthday. Maybe that feels hotter where you're carrying around a nearly nine pound baby? What I believe to be my earliest photo with my parents and sister.  I can't recall a lot about those early years, but rumor has it I haven't stopped moving since I was born. It's unfathomable to me that I am 40 years old. I was thinking earlier this week that it's been 22 years since I graduated from high school and 18 years since I graduated from college. I still don't feel like I'm a grown up despite four decades on this earth. I have moments when I'm in an important meeting at work, and I look around and think wow, I'm actually in a position to make decisions. I have a child. I'm old enough to have re...

I've never made any plans about my career. Everything has happened quite by accident. I went to law school because I needed health insurance. Seriously. I was accepted to both law school and grad school, and I was very sick with what we now know is Crohn's. I had to stay in school to stay on my parents' health insurance, so law school it was.  I responded to a classified ad in the newspaper, and the Mayor of Norfolk, Virginia hired me as his Executive Assistant for my first grown up job after law school. I randomly moved to Michigan 13 years ago because my then-boyfriend was from there. I ditched the guy, stayed in Michigan, met my husband, built a life, and have had a pretty great career ever since. I didn't grow up thinking I'd work in local government. Answering that classified ad solidified my fate, and I've worked in or with communities ever since.  Two years ago I had a professional turning point, and I wasn't sure what my next steps would be. Whil...

Let's be real - I'm not good at vacationing or relaxing. One of the reasons my husband and I have always traveled so often is that if I'm away from home there's at least a chance that I will take a little break. There are no errands to run, chores to do, or events to attend. This year has challenged everything I thought I knew about life balance, and I thought I was sort of getting the hang of it. Let me rephrase: I have been getting better. In January I was in the office for several hours on each weekend day. I had my phone attached to my hand like an additional appendage during non-office hours. I sometimes wondered what I'd gotten myself into. Would the pace ever become less insane?  My husband predicted it would take six months to settle into a rhythm. He was right. By the time summer arrived I began to relax a little. While I still work a lot of hours and it varies depending on what's happening, I can sit my phone down for a while on the weekend without f...

It's been over a month since I've blogged y'all, and I'm feeling the itch to write. Life has been a little crazy, but I firmly believe one makes time for what's important. I haven't made time to write, and it makes my heart sad. So I'm back! Crazy month has been punctuated by a few things. One is a cough I've had for 12 weeks. Yes twelve freaking weeks. I had a terrible cold at the end of April when I met my BFF in Denver. A few weeks after I got back I went to urgent care where it was pronounced a post-viral cough. I was given five days of steroids and cough suppressant. Two weeks later it wasn't gone, so I went back to the same urgent care. This time they did a chest x-ray and diagnosed me with bronchitis. Prescription: more steroids, antibiotics, inhaler. A week later my husband and I went to a conference. We got back late on Friday and I was coughing incessantly. I went to a different, 24-hour urgent care around 10 pm on Friday and was told it ...

I am a perfectionist. I do not know my limits. I push and push until there's nothing left to push, and then I push a little more. And want a little confession? I worry that I have no idea what I'm doing about 95 percent of the time. And another confession? I'm fucking exhausted. A few months ago I wrote about the myth of work/life balance , and I've had so many people ask me about it. I've been asked repeatedly how or if I've achieved that balance. I've said some stuff that sounds good like I have to find time to myself and time to exercise and time to unwind...blah, blah, blah. Do you want to know what's actually happened? I've decided that I have to give up something, and the thing that I've chosen is running. And exercise. And it's not sustainable. A decade ago I would've been motivated to exercise at 8:30 p.m. to help rectify this problem. My motivation was off the charts back then. Tonight I'm typing a blog and drinking a glass...

I do not have a race on the calendar. It's weird. My knee has healed, my Crohn's is in remission, and yet my race calendar remains empty. I need to change that, but I haven't been ready. I haven't been ready to commit at a time when my calendar looks like a game of Tetris. I went for a run on Mackinac Island this morning. It's 8.2 miles to run the entire Island, and even though I'm not in 8.2 shape, I thought I'd give it a shot. Even if I walked a good bit of it that would be fine. I had a conference call about a mile and a half into the route. It lasted almost 25 minutes. Then as I ran on this beautiful morning heading toward the back of the Island I realized at a run/walk pace I was going to really cut it close to meet my husband for lunch. I turned around and ended up running around five miles which, while not my goal isn't nothing. But even at five miles my body was not amused. I realized it's time - time to get back into running. It's time...

I had a fantastic weekend in Denver a few weeks ago with my BFF. At one point as we were chatting I was telling her in grotesque detail (that I will spare the blogosphere) about my health challenges throughout the last year and a half. She got to hear the gory details of the abscess that took ten months to heal and then the meniscus surgery that followed shortly thereafter. I had a moment during this discussion where I realized how much my body has been through in the last eighteen months.  Resetting with my bestie in Denver If you know me you know I don't know my limits. I also tend to greatly underplay my health issues. But if I'm being honest I must admit that this is the longest it's taken me to bounce back from a Crohn's incident, both physically and mentally. The unrelated meniscus tear challenged me even more.  During the first week of November, the week I had knee surgery and was still drugged up on narcotics, I decided to sign up for a race a few months...