Day 172: A Sense of Place

I really lost my cool today. It started the minute I woke up. What was I supposed to be eating to be ready for the big race? Was it more carbs or more protein? How much and when? Then I checked the weather and saw it's supposed to be cold and raining on Sunday. Why am I doing this, again? I felt a kind of desperation wash over me...

I fired off an aggressive email to my poor nutritionist Jaime asking her to be specific about my diet. Help me! This was before work, and by the time I was en route to the office, I was already manically checking my Gmail for her reply. Nothing. Refresh. Nothing! Refresh!! Refresh!! I noticed myself panicking and that made me lose even more confidence. How lame am I? I know I can do this and yet, here I am falling apart!

After work, I had my intenSati creativity workshop for two hours. I walked through the workout portion of the class because I can't risk exerting myself right now. I actually bounced around more than I wanted to; but it's pretty hard to resist joining in when the class gets going. It just feels SO good.

Today's creativity lesson was on the importance of understanding that a person can only be in one place at a time. This got me thinking about ambivalence. In the context of place, ambivalence equals the space between the things you are dispassionate about. You avoid choosing any of your obvious options by choosing something there in the nebulous abyss, between options. Being wishy washy on two things makes you specifically dead nowhere.

So tonight, post class, I'm opting to drop my lingering ambivalence about the race. If before I was afraid I'd be lost out there in a sea of strangers, now I see things in the context of place. I will be visiting familiar points in the Park - places I know and love - for three lovely hours on a Sunday.

I can picture myself by the Magic Tree, and the Stretching Bridge, and passing Kadija at the Boat House, and that crazy scary cat on the rock. Then by the most fragrant flowers just before the Met. Then that quiet corner where I once waited for my first race in the Park to start on my birthday... Then past the 102nd Street transverse, and the big hill down past the hockey rink, and then along Adam C. Powell Boulevard, where water freezes on the rocks in the winter and looks so stunning. Then the bitchin' up-hill. I'll be walking then... And next that place where the man who looked like Julia's dad told me to giddy-up and go, and then the blessed downhill where I always think, "I can't wait to go to Shakespeare in the Park this summer!" Then, past the 72nd Street transverse... I'll visit all those places. And then I will do it again because the race loops the Park two times.

I think when I was so nervous before, part of it was not knowing where I would be and how I would fit in with all those people running around me. What would they be thinking about? Why would they be running? But all I need to know is exactly where I will be; and I do know - every step of the way. I'm going to be in my Park, visiting all of my favorite places - one mile at a time.