As many of you have probably heard, many many times, I want desperately to be a runner. And there are a few hurdles in this plan:
I'm not great at running.
I have a chronic illness that flares and sometimes my body isn't up to running.
It's hard to run in the rain, and when it's hot, and when it's cold, and when you're tired, and when you're hyped up.....
etc
And so, for the 1920834208 time, I embarked on the couch to 5 k plan. So reasonable! I have a target 5k date and I'm training and then a few things happened, and I missed a week.
So yesterday, I put it on my calendar and in my A column in my to-do list - the "you gotta do it, or else" column. And I realized that what was holding me back was not that I missed a few runs, or that even that I might not be able to run the whole 5k in September without stopping, but that I wasn't "perfect" with the training, which itself, is flexible.
My brain would rather give up on the whole plan together than do it less than 100% perfectly.
And whoooo, is that a pattern that my brain likes to invite me into. Better not to do it than have to work at it. Better not to do it than to do it 80%, or 60%. Better focus on the things that I'm already crushing than spend "all that energy" on things that are hard.
So I'm trying to focus on being "joyfully intermediate". I want to enjoy the path between the beginning and the end state - I want to think of that space before something is perfect, or done, or good enough as a part of the process, and not just something I have to hold my breath and survive until I can be more comfortably high achieving.
It's hard. It was a hard run. But the next run will be easier because I'm back trying to run again. There might not be meteoric progress between 0% running and 100% running, but there will be movement and change and growth and learning, and that's also good stuff.