So, I can run pretty far now without crying... actually I can run quite a lot, long enough to make me wake up even earlier now. What is it that makes you get up and do it? I mean, I know why I run and I can tell you exactly why I have to get up that early ( I run an hour and I need to get back by six to get Dondi ready), but what is it that makes me get up? I won't lose anything if I don't. Not like money or my job.What I would lose is knowing that I'm pushing my body, making it work. I love exercising. Or, I don't know, tiring myself out. I don't know what it is. Doesn't matter, it's breathing in that oxygen, not because I'm sitting here and it's just what my body does for me, but because Caty, if you don't start getting it together and doing what you need to do to keep going you are going to crumble to the ground and no one is here to pick you up, this is you. And then, I go through that threshold and I'm on top of the world. I'd stop and dance if I could. That is my definition of success. Not the corner office, or the fancy car, the huge house... My success.
And now that I've been running for as much as I have ( 6 months ), I know that I was able to rescue a part of what I used to be by running. My life has changed since I stopped river guiding, completely. I live a life now that I wouldn't have believed I would be living four years ago. No one would have believed it. Now it seems that working on the river made me sacrifice many things, time with my family, with my friends, stability of a various types. Nothing compares being in nature and the excitement of it all, but even exciting gets old after a while. Hee-hee... I know some people that wouldn't agree, the same people that scoffed when I said I was quitting my job, never to guide again. You'll be back, they said. But I knew I wouldn't be. I wanted to look for normalcy elsewhere, because I never found it on the river. I found a lot of good things, just not a normal existence.
Now, of course, I'm so normal I bore myself even, but I truly find that to be okay. I did my share of crazy things ( as much as I needed to do anyway ) and I don't need to anymore. Running ( and a few other "normal" things that I do during the day) gets me tired, just like the river did. But I can squeeze that into my daily existence without taking time away from other stuff in my life. Running gives me a high, just like drinking used to. But it doesn't make me feel like crap the next day. So, running has brought me back to me, without sucking me out of where I need to be.
