cleaning

this morning I've been cleaning things. rag, warm water, soap, elbow grease.
and since I was on a roll, cleaning things, I decided to throw my bike into the melee, and get it cleaned up as well.
I have been terribly neglectful of my bike. I rode it on december 19th, and then again on january 30, and those were probably the only 2 times I touched it after november. both those rides were on roads thick with grit, cinders, and rivulets of melting snow, so it probably won't take much use of your imagination to picture what the underside of my bike looked (and felt) like. not to mention the chain, thick with dirty black grease.

the impetus to throw my bike in with the other to-be-cleaned items: an upcoming visit to the bike shop. because it's time to finally install two of my fabulous Christmas presents that have been leaning against my office wall for the last 7 weeks: new wheels.
which adds pressure to my biking, as they are supposed to make me faster. cool.
but what if they don't?
what if power camp doesn't make me one bit stronger/better/faster?
what if I'm still old clump along me?

at least I'll have a clean bike?

I was cleaning things to give them away. some of jake's things, some things that will be able to help someone else. his car seat, his wheelchair, a few other things. things that I didn't worry so much about cleaning until it was time to give them to someone else.
what does this say about me?
that I don't clean things until I know that other people will see them?

what it really says, I suppose, is that I'm doing my best. and that life is so very full of Things That Need To Be Done.
that even though I want to live in a spotless house and drive a shiny clean car and have a bike in tip-top-tuned-and-cleaned shape, it just is not going to be that way. I will at times, feel caught up and ahead of the game, and at times operate in a Tackle What Needs To Be Done Now manner of triage.
and more often than not, this latter kind of system works.
because as much as I like to be prepared, some things in life you can never prepare for.
and as much as I wish I could, I can't make my kids' school lunches two days ahead of time.
some things just have to be done at the time they need to be done.

thus jake's cleaned car seat and other things were ready to go when they were picked up.
and my bike is clean and ready to go to the shop.
dinner plans are made, I have gas in the car to get my girls to their piano lessons,
and tomorrow morning, I will make lunches for my kids to take with them to school.

then during the day tomorrow, I will tackle whatever needs to be tackled.

cipher

today I have nothing to say and I'm not going to make anything up, as I usually do when I have nothing to say.
today I'm stopping here.

credit and a half

I am worthless in here today.
that's what I said to bob and andy in the weight room this morning at 6:35.
bob's response was,
if we compared your worthless and my worthless, I'm sure you'd come out ahead.
that made me feel better, to know that it wasn't just me.

I want to feel energetic and powerful and capable all of the time, and my reality is this: I don't.
and since I can only live inside my own head, and not those that belong to other people, I struggle when doing self assessments.
this is what I wonder: do other people in power camp climb on those bikes in the morning and think, oh God, another day of spinning my legs around and wishing it were over and feeling like I just can't keep going?
do other people in the weight room think to themselves, gosh, why is it that this doesn't seem to get any easier, and how do weights get heavier from one week to the next, and, gosh, why does everyone else make it look easy?

nick was in the weight room this morning, nick my swiss friend who in 2009 lost his wife of half a century or so and also broke his back in a water skiing accident.
prior to this morning, I last saw nick right before Christmas, when he was still having difficulty navigating stairs. he wasn't quite ready to return to working out at the JCC, and he didn't look as though he was quite ready to return fully and vibrantly to the community.
this morning he looked good.
this is what he had to say about it:
I see myself every day, and I can't see any change from day to day. but this week I'm better than I was three weeks ago, so something must be happening.

this is when faith keeps us going. a belief in something that isn't readily visible or measurable each day. a belief in the process, a belief that we are growing, changing, healing, progressing.

this is when I need to go do a headstand. because my headstands are markedly better than they were a year ago. they are not perfect. they are still slightly wobbly and I'm not yet ready to do one away from the wall. but the day will come when they will be even more stable than today's, and I will be able to do one in the middle of the room.

and perhaps the reason that I don't feel stronger and more capable in power camp is that I keep raising the bar. I take for granted the progress I've made and how very, very far I've come. it's no longer enough to survive the experience: I want to excel, to thrive, to conquer. so each day that I perform adequately I give myself credit for surviving, when in reality I should give myself credit and a half because I did it better than I allow myself to acknowledge. I am better than I was two weeks ago, a month ago.
I need to give myself a pat on the back for my iotas of forward movement, whether they appear to be measurable or not.
because they are there.
scooting along, moving me toward . . . the next best version of myself.

on being preprogrammed

this is my first thought upon waking each morning: maybe I can get a nap today.

I am weary, and tomorrow morning's class is a very challenging one. The workout scheduled is one of the toughest I've ever done, which has caused me to question why I am doing this.
who am I trying to be? why do I feel I must do this?
and the answer that comes to me is that I am internally programmed to continually seek improvement. it is my job to keep moving toward becoming the best version of myself possible.

that doesn't allow for much slacking.
at least not in significant areas. if improvement is possible, I will feel a tug. yes, I experience numerous tugs each day of my life. I feel them during conversations with my kids, during interactions with colleagues, while doing chores around the house, and when deciding what to next put into my stomach.

I'm apprehensive about tomorrow's class. but to skip it would be to chicken out, to avoid an opportunity for mental and physical stretching. stretching which will hopefully lead to new levels of strength in both those areas.
and then, maybe, after class, I can have a nap.

the day job

this is the best part of my job: I'm able to be a silent observer of human kind at its best. I am a voyeur, let in on people's secrets, their compassion and gratitude and love, without their real awareness. they don't know who I am, or where I am, or anything about me. and still they trust me with missives that travel across the country, reach out their slender fingers and touch the very core of the human beings to whom they're sent.
I, the silent witness, am gifted in an extraordinary way by this process.

I've written love letters, notes of gratitude, brief messages of condolences and of congratulations. I've transcribed wishes for a return to health, wishes for peace and healing. I've passed along beautiful quotations and simple, heartfelt declarations of love.
this business of mine is all about gratitude, love, healing, manifestation: these are deep and powerful aspects of our humanity.

I've often thought that if I'd been wise, I would have gone into business selling some commodity, something that is purchased and then used up, so that the consumer must buy my product again. candy, maybe. or lip gloss. cookies, hair products, gourmet pretzels, something.
instead, I created this item that sits, patiently, durably, and is basically indestructible, forever holding a message of depth and truth.

every time I receive a new order with a message to relay to the recipient, I see and touch divinity. which is really not a bad thing in a day job.

cold

the snow is a pepper white, its surface firm and crusted, lifting and dropping in subtle shapes atop the frozen water beneath. white mountains ring the vista, set off by the blue backdrop of the cloudless section of southern sky. trees poke through the snow, and a ribbon of asphalt freeway snakes far below on the canyon's belly, but here it is calm and quiet, and cold, just as a winter day in late january should be.
I don't know what's happening beneath the frozen surface of the reservoir.
I can assume the water is thick with cold, sluggish, a world in slow motion. water molecules move more slowly, fish live in a state of semi-hibernation. life continues, but in a different way than it does during the warmer months of the year.
the surface belies what lies beneath, and could convince us, if we didn't know better, that the entire world beneath lies dormant and deathlike.

I rode outside yesterday, shocking myself with my desire and vigor.
piling all my cold-weather gear on, from full booties to skull cap, I set off up the road. up the side of the hill, up through the golf course, past the zoo, past the dog park to the mouth of emigration.
keeping expectations low, I promised myself I could turn back at any time. that I needn't push, that just to be out was a big enough move for the day.
I needed this. I needed to be out, needed to suck in fresh air and shiver with cold. I needed to be in the natural world, needed to see my breath and connect with the reality of it all: the earth, the snowbanks, the denuded trees, the salt stains on the road and the tracks of skinny tires that have persisted regardless of the season.

little dell and I have a lot in common. biking buddy bob the other day said that I wasn't looking quite as numb as I'd looked there for a while, and while this is likely true, there is still much of me that is cold, cold and slow. and like a frozen reservoir, there is still activity within, it's just of a different state than usual. and just as I said about little dell, I don't know exactly what's going on underneath the frozen surface.
things are moving, separating and rejoining and forming different connections. regrouping, reassembling, possibly finding newness, commitment, focus.
but it's slow, moving in that semi-hibernation speed, which can't be hurried.
cycles revolve, motion pushes us forward, the world keeps slowly spinning and we cannot truly stop until we breathe our last breath. whatever is happening within will take place on its own schedule.
I am the shell that holds this process from spilling over, I am the thick, frozen surface that protects the depths below.

one day, not so far away, the gradual rotation of our earth will bring us to warmer days and thawing ice, more quickly moving molecules and an awakening of a more vigorous life.
this I know.

small gifts

this morning's class was one of those that belongs in the I Will Survive This But I Sure Don't Like It category.
there are many things in life that belong there, actually. in fact, here's a list I'll whip out without much contemplation at all:

visits to the dentist
waiting at the DMV
visits to the doctor
filling out forms for the government
drying and straightening my hair
visits to the woman who works with wax
refraining from eating cookies and cake

today, after our warm-up of 20 minutes at 100 rpms, our Work Effort was this:
15 minutes spinning at 110-115 rpms
15 minutes spinning at 115-120 rpms
5 minutes spinning at 120+ rpms

you might say, that doesn't sound so awful. and for some of you it may not be. you sprinters out there, and you who just spin fast anyway, well, bully for you. I am neither a sprinter nor a fast spinner. and I'm working very hard not to say I hate these workouts. I'm trying to have a better attitude, and to cull the word hate from my vocabulary.
because I don't like these workouts at all.
and part of that is due to my legs, who much prefer to push bigger gears at a slower pace, but the more significant portion of dislike comes from the nerves in my saddle area. to spin that fast I have to engage my core and dig down into the saddle, to prevent bouncing. pressing down into the saddle results in . . . you guessed it, pressure on some pretty sensitive areas.
enough.
I start these Work Efforts with supportive self-talk that says, you can back off anytime you need, susan, it's okay. and then when I'm 3 minutes in, realizing there are still 12 to go, with a harder segment coming up, I think I might take myself up on that offer. but 2 minutes later, a third of the segment is over, and I convince myself I can keep going.
at the beginning of the next segment I do the same thing: you can slow down anytime you need, susan, it's really okay. and I keep going.
but at the end of it all, I am so full of relief it's palpable. I'm sure everyone on the opposite side of the room can feel it.

I know this is making me a better cyclist. a Universal Truth is that when you are working on a skill of some kind, if you continue to work to improve the parts at which you are weakest, you will become better at that overall skill.
but the culmination of all my work and efforts over the past years have also helped me with something else, and I received some powerfully redeeming gratification this morning:
after all that ridiculously fast spinning, then a stint in the weight room, I headed to the yoga room with the mirrored walls and spread a mat on the floor. I put my forearms down in a vee, placed the crown of my head where my hands met, and gracefully---yes, gracefully---kicked my legs up and into a headstand pose.
I held the best handstand of my life today.
legs together, legs apart in a vee, then back together, barely ever needing the wall.
I was solid, steady, smooth, safe.
and this made up for every bit of that pain-in-the-butt, I Can Barely Tolerate This, can't-wait-until-it's-over, ridiculously fast spinning.
these little rewards are what keep us going, aren't they?