40 degrees is warm now

 Tasks for the Day

-run 12 miles. 

    Did this. Felt good. I was excited to wear a t-shirt to run and initially started with gloves but immediately realized I'd be too warm with them. Still wore some thin tights. It was a mostly easy run with two segments where I ran hard to try to get the course record on Strava. I got them! That was fun. I haven't been doing formal workouts for a few weeks but I think focusing on doing more miles has been helpful. Also, the weather has just been too bad lately to really attempt a workout. It was an effort to just get out the door some days. But I feel stronger for it.

-do some whittling

    When I was in charlottesville I picked up a few scrap pieces of wood and used my knife to shape them a little today. All that's really left is to sand them which is not my favorite part but I'll feel good to have made these little doo-dads. I'm not really sure what they are. Doo-dads is a good word. Trinkets. Googaws. Figurines? Just some little wooden pieces that I might give away or give as gifts or give as awards to the counselors this summer.

I didn't do much else for the rest of the day. I was really tired after running and eating and laid down for a bit. It feels good to be able to recover and rest a lot. I'm a lot more motivated to run when I'm able to rest so well between. I'd like to spend more time in Harrisonburg. It feels like I'm only able to come a handful of times throughout the year. I'm pretty busy on weekends these days and the summer doesn't let up much. 

fun thought of the day:

I'm going to be a billion seconds old on January 2nd, 2023 at approximately 5:14 pm

went to charlottesville to climb

today was a good day that went by really fast. woke up and drove to charlottesville. climbed for about 4 hours and felt surprisingly strong. ran 12 miles on the north spur of the Rivanna Trail. drove back and ate and watched the wire.

brought back some whittling supplies and will do some of that this week 

ran 16 miles for Christmas

got some great gifts, ate some great food, spent the day with my family :)

it's easy to run in terrible weather

it feels like an event. something special. something brave and new.

and so the conditions were never really the obstacle to begin with. it's the attitude we bring that counts. 

how do you be like someone else

 You can't think your way into feeling different. You can only change how you feel by actions.

I think that's true. And I think if you want to be different or be like someone else I think you have to do the things they do, the way they do them. For the most part I think what anyone tells you or whatever you end up hearing is mostly useless if you don't end up changing your routine and what your body is physically doing. 

By the same token, if you're in a system that tells you where to be and when, like a job or a school, that's going to have a direct effect on who you are. It's going to mold you. And none of that is accidental. What you're supposed to be when you are in those spaces and doing your tasks is all serving a well-defined end.

It's why I don't put much stock in the idea that you can place yourself within a system and subvert it. You can't rely too much on this idea that there's an inner you that exists independent of everything you're doing and everything going on around you. Actions have outcomes, no matter how mundane, and you are what you do. 

I just don't want to end up living a lie, y'know

I don't want to reach some point where I realize that everything I thought was important doesn't matter at all. 

Well, I mean, I guess it could also be liberating too. Like if you end up realizing something that feels more important. You can never know for sure that you're not living a lie. But maybe you can have some sense of whether you enjoyed it or not. I do think you can know how you felt about it. And right now I feel good about it.