slow love

I read a fantastic book today - Slow Love, by Dominique Browning. She came to speak at Trinity a short while ago in the lecture series we've been running. I was trying to explain to my friend Ami what this book is about and I just know I did it a disservice when I said, "it's this really well-written book about how she lost her job, lost her shit, and then found her way back again," but that's basically what it is.

I was in a really bad place after I finished my doctorate. I was confused, flailing, circling the drain and talking to Elvis, ready to fling myself at just about any job that moved in the vain hope that it would give me some kind of security and inner peace. Well first of all, I discovered that security and inner peace don't necessarily go together. I have a few good gigs over the next two years, a part-time day job that lets me arrange books and make window displays, a small studio of students whom I enjoy teaching, and to the average observer, I'm "not pursuing my dream on a full-time basis."

But here's the crazy thing: I am.

I'm getting up every morning, checking my running schedule, and logging my mileage. If I'm too tired to do it one day, I do it the next day. But every week, I meet my schedule so I'm on-track for the Chicago Marathon.

I moved my computer out of the dining room, which moves my work out of the dining room and into the office, where it belongs. As a result, my dining room looks like a dining room and not like a holding ground for procrastination. This means I have to deal with my paperwork as it comes in, deal with my emails in a timely manner, and not put off what really needs to be done. Business is in the office. Life is everywhere else.

I'm taking voice lessons with a new teacher. I'm putting myself out there and seeing where this leads and trying very hard to listen to what my body says in return. Sometimes the signs are clear and my body gets it, sometimes I find myself practically choking on my own tongue (no, that's not a figure of speech) but I'm trying new things instead of clinging to the old ways for comfort's sake.

More than all of these things, I'm living in the present. I'm feeling the whole-body ouch of a six-mile afternoon run the day after a twelve-mile bike ride (keeping in mind that I haven't been on a bicycle since I went over my handlebars at 15). I'm making dates with friends and sending silly phone pictures to my mother and helping my friend finish the plans on her wedding, and I'm LIVING.

Go read Dominque Browning's book. It's really lovely and, in many ways, articulates that journey from the torpor of fear and uncertainty and resistance to change all the way to honest, present-tense living. And with that, I'm going to bed. I have miles to run in the morning.