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Going Solo Makes Me Feel So Low

11/3/2012

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          I have come to realize that my journey to flabulous is similar to the process taken in creating a piece of art like a statue.  Sometimes I feel like the piece of stone that is slowly being chiseled away at to reveal the shape beneath.  And sometimes I feel like the sculptor--never happy with the final product and constantly looking at the flaws to improve the piece.  It feels like every time I work on fixing a flaw in the piece, another area of need pops up for me to work on.
          This week a new area of need has revealed itself, and it is not a small thing to change.  It is something that is part of my very nature, but it will make training and doing the Ironman much more difficult for me if I don't address this weakness.  My problem is that I honestly don't enjoy spending time by myself.  I have friends that recharge by spending quality time mediating, taking quiet time for themselves to think about what is going on in their lives.  But I get bored when I am alone.  Sometimes I wonder why people even want to spend time with me, because I don't honestly find myself all that interesting.
          Here is what I know about myself--do you know how people are gifted in the areas of math, language arts, music, sports, etc.?  Well, I feel I am strong in the area of interpersonal skills.  From the time I said my first words, I would talk to any and everyone who would listen to me.  When my mother would take me trick-or-treating, I wanted to walk into each house we visited and spend time with them.  When my family had guests at our house, I would walk out to their cars with them and try and climb in their cars to go home with them. I love people--always have, always will.  So while some of my friends need time to themselves to decompress and recharge, I get that same feeling when I am surrounded by my friends and family.
          I know this is sad, but I honestly cannot go to dinner, to a movie, go shopping, or do anything outside of my house if I must go by myself.  I don't even like when Sean has a business trip that keeps him away overnight.  I make one of the kids sleep with me so I don't have to be by myself.  So why is this a problem?  Training for Ironman is going to take some long hours of running, biking, and swimming, and while I will mostly be able to train with my buddies, things happen.  Last week, my two Ironman buddies got stuck on the East Coast due to hurricane Sandy, which meant that I didn't have Karrie to swim with me on Wednesday.  It was really hard pulling myself out of bed at 4:45am knowing she wouldn't be there with me.  And while I did go alone, I was not happy about it.  Another of my consistent partners is battling a knee injury, so on Tuesday I had to run 4 long miles all by my lonesome. Even that short amount of time had me thinking the whole time about how much more fun it would have been if I had running partners with me.
          Besides my training partners sometimes not being available, there is another issue I am concerned about with my loathing of alone time.  The Ironman will take me somewhere between fifteen and seventeen hours to complete, and I don't anticipate that I will be able to spend that entire time with Leslie and Karrie.  They are better swimmers than me, so I think I might spend most of the biking and running legs by myself.  That means a long stretch of alone time will be ahead of me, so I need to find a way to enjoy this time with myself.  This race really demands that a racer be mentally tough as well as physically strong, so I need to think of this time as a gift instead of a punishment.
          So today, I tried something new--I made myself run alone.  In addition to a 1000m swim, I had nine miles of running I also had to complete.  I could have called my friends to go with me, knowing somebody would have supported me, but I decided I needed to try this one by myself.   I can't say I loved it, but 9.5 miles later I did not die of loneliness, nor did I give up on myself and quit because no one was there to push me.  I am a lot stronger than I give myself credit for, and I need to remind myself of that on a regular basis.  And while I will still choose to run, bike and swim with my friends on a consistent basis, I do need to build in some alone time as well so I can begin to get comfortable being with me. I think my friends feel I am worth spending time with--maybe I will eventually feel that way, too.

“‎In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount”
                                                                --Haruki Murakami, After Dark   

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    After yo-yo dieting for 30 years I finally feel like I am on the right track. 
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