brrrrr

My first tri of the season is tomorrow and it promises to be brisk in the morning. The race people sent out a notice that the water is supposed to be in the low 60s. They suggest a wetsuit. I say, pish-posh, I'm tough. I can handle some cold water. (Hopefully) If you read about a woman who got hypothermia in the res, that could be me. To test my toughness, I filled the bathtub with 60 degree water and sat in it for 10 minutes. It's cold. But not that cold. I only plan on spending 20 minutes in the water anyway. All of it swimming my little arms off.

I'd much rather be nervous about the swim that worry about changing a tire mid-race. I can change a tire, but you know, I'd really rather not have to change one while on the bike leg. Oh, Dogs of the Universe and Bike Gods, please protect my tires from goat heads and errant glass shards. Amen.

I just need to survive the swim. Then all will be fine. All will be OK. Repeat. All will be OK.

Alright, off to run errands and get my hair done. Nothing like getting highlights the night before a tri to put you at ease.

Time and money

Funny how no matter how much time you have, you always seem to fill it up. Same with money. I always seem to find a way to spend it. No matter how much I have or don't have.

Summer is here (officially on Saturday) and I'm preparing my list of summer projects. These are the things/shit I needed to do all year, but didn't, because of school/work/life/etc. In no particular order:

- bike like a freak
- figure out this running thing
- three tris (or more?)
- job hunt
- clean closets (ooooohh)
- clean monster garage
- throw away crap
- donate more usable crap
- climb a 14er
- campin'
- lounge on the deck
- drink in the lounger on the deck
- bbq and drink on the deck
- write
- connect with my inner artiste
- fix some of the rough parts
- sleep sometime... or not

Here's to summer! Bless it's sweet sweaty hottiness, long days, cool nights and beautiful sunsets.

will work for hooch

Summer is traditionally a slow time at the Creative HQ but this summer promises to be even slower (thank Pete!). I'll only be working 20 hours a week (for money) plus a few freelance projects that are looming. A few weeks ago I made a decision that may shock you: I'm taking down the shingle (temporarily) and looking for a, ahem, real job. It's a matter of my mental health. I don't want to work full time again. But I need to. I've discovered that I really felt good about my self-worth when I could contribute to the household-worth. This became apparent when I started working part-time. It feels good to be paid on a regular basis. Right now it's a relief to go somewhere and do something and leave it all behind when I go home. I know that it will get old and someday I'll be complaining about crappy office politics and commuting woes, but I feel that it's important for me to do this. It's important for me to feel more in control of my life. Oh, I know the poet Gnarls would laugh at me for saying it, as one never really has control over anything. Having a little control, even if it's an illusion, beats feeling powerless any day.

Universe, I'm looking for a marcom manager position with a sustainable company in the Denver metro area that has tuition reimbursement. And I ain't gunna drive to BFE or BFW or BFN. Got it?

It's time for a few small repairs she said*

It's a funny feeling, being a "writer" who can't write. My whole life I've turned to writing as a way to share my thoughts and feelings, especially when I was unable to verbalize those thoughts and feelings. But here I am, desperately needing to write something. Yet the words don't come. I've visited my blog almost daily for the past few weeks. I always have random thoughts screaming in my brain. Usually these thoughts pop in when I'm far from a computer or held hostage at work, where it's easier to not think about anything at all. When I sit down to write, words fail me. Or my brain fails my words. Words are tangled up in the goop and grime that coats my brain.

Perhaps it's because at b-school my left brain is busy taking over. We're talking about ROI, IMC, CSR and the like all the time. Could it be that my poor brain is overloaded with business-speak? How does that account for the lack of sleep? The lowered motivation? The intermittent appetite? We all know the cause. There are too many of us inside this dome. We're all talking at once but the one with the loudest voice is the one who tells me to stop being so... so... perfect. As a result, I've stopped putting forth as much effort with some things and that includes sleep, food, work, friends and family. When I write it all down it sounds like a lot. Truth is, I spend a lot of time thinking, or rather, not thinking, but feeling. I spend a fair amount of time training for my tri on June 21. So much so that my legs really hate me today. (Tomorrow is a swim day so they will be happy. Let the arms do the work.) Most of the time, I just spend the time trying to do the next thing that has to get done instead of thinking about all the things that will eventually need to be done. One day at a time. One foot in front of the other. It's all I've got in me right now.

But this summer I think I will work more on me. Perhaps there's where the exhaustion lies? I've been working on me for the past six months. While going to grad school. While working part time. While working on a complicated relationship. While being everything to everyone. It's exhausting. Exhaustingly so. I'm not taking summer classes. Oh, there's the interterm class that is all online. It started today and I'll write a 15 page paper on crises management/communications by August 8. It's a breeze compared to the three-team-meeting-and-paper-a-week- figure-out-the-strategy-objectives-and-don't-hurt- Wendy's-feelings-while-your-at-it workload that I've been doing since September. Don't get me wrong, I luv grad school. It's sooooo fun. In "I'm a geek" kind of a way. But I'm still taking the summer off to work on my body/soul/mind improvement project. It's time for more than a few small repairs. We're talking a complete overhaul.

* from Sunny Came Home by Shawn Colvin