Saturday, October 17, 2009

Rain, Running, and Stories

It rained all night last night, and I mean RAINED, so that I woke up several times to hear water pelting down onto the skylight in my room (I love my skylight, by the way). I didn't mind it because today is Saturday, and I have no plans until tonight--except to write.

It's been ever so long since I last wrote, and many things have happened. Among these things is a sort of re-working of my insides (the invisible emotional ones, not my actual bodily insides) which is the closest I will come to making an excuse for the recent dearth in blogwork. It's taking up a big chunk of space on my hard drive and making all my other programs sluggish and unresponsive. I like to think that the other side of this process will bring you a stronger Sarah, or at least one who knows who she is and where she's going. We shall see.

In lighter news, you are now reading the blog of a runner. That's right, I, who have historically been the athletic antithesis of fast, run. And I actually like it (!). I never really ran before (not on a regular basis) because it was hard to ignore the fact that it looked and felt ridiculous to expend that much energy and still be traveling that slowly. But now I have friends who run with me, and where two or more are gathered, "ridiculous" turns into "social." My friends and I run three or four miles at least once a week. We keep trying for twice or thrice a week, but it doesn't always happen. Of course, our pace is alot closer to that of the tortoise than the hare, but it's the thought that counts, right? My favorite part is when we've just finished running, and one feels a delightful combination of accopmlishment and well-deserved exhaustion. Ultimately, I think the habit gives more energy than it takes. The work week hasn't been kicking my butt the way it used to... So my P.E. teachers were right after all. Fancy that.

On to the next subject: stories. One of my church friends has a little boy, a very cute little boy, who asks me to tell him a story every time he sees me. It's very flattering, especially when he actually listens to whatever I tell him. Sometimes the stories are the kind you usually get when you're making things up as you go along (like the surprisingly creepy one with the giant worm eating his way out of a giant apple in the mysterious old ladies' basement), but some of them were not half bad. So, at the behest of another friend who often overhears these stories, I have begun to write one of them down. I thought maybe I'd give it to her as a Christmas present, since, at the rate I write, it will probably be December by the time I get to the end. But the experience of actually writing a story with a beginning and an end is new and, mostly, pleasant. I've journalled and written poetry, but I've never been able to finish a story. However, if I can successfully resist my heavily ingrained perfectionistic tendencies, perhaps I will have a modest fairy-tale to share with you all in the (relatively) near future. Again, we shall see.

Well, I have to go buy toilet paper and shaving cream. But I promise to write again soon.
Bye, friends!

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