Whoa. Two blog posts in one day

This might be a record.

Tonight would have been the perfect night to open the sunroof, crank open the windows, turn on the heated seat and cruise down an empty highway singing your heart out to the lyrics of your chosen band-preferably emo/cathartic in nature. (For me it would have been the Promise by When in Rome) But with gas prices the way that they are I had to forego that pleasure this evening. Plus I had places to be and things to do. 

One thing I have been spending a lot of money lately on is registering and preparing for various races. The shirt I ordered to wear this Saturday for the Blue Moon Wicked 10K just came in today. It's nothing exciting-just a black Nike dri-fit short sleeved running shirt, but I couldn't find the one I wanted in the store and I am dressing up like a bee. I have antenna and wings from last year and my mom is making me a black and yellow tutu to wear over my outfit. I don't want to wear anything too cumbersome as I will be running the furthest I have ever run before and frankly (and here we are at the point of this post tonight)-I am terrified.

I am afraid that I will stop running and not be able to start again. 

I am afraid that I will fall. 

I am afraid that people will laugh at me. 

I am afraid that I will let everybody down.

I am afraid that I will let myself down.

I am afraid that no one will turn up to cheer me on.

I am afraid that people WILL turn up to cheer me on.

I am afraid. 

I have been working so hard and for so long. Not just in preparing for this race, but for everything. For sticking with Weight Watchers even though I have wanted to quit and am in a horrible plateau. I've never been in better shape, but I stil have so far to go! It's overwhelming. 

I was looking for quotes from one of my favorites-Eleanor Roosevelt-and this one I think will help get me through this next hurdle:

"You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself. 'I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do."

If you know me at all or follow me on Facebook you'll know that I have been working with a personal trainer and it has been cathartic. He's pushed me to places I never thought I would be able to go and made me run yet another mile after it because he could see in me that I could do it. And I did. I hope to live up to the confidence that he has in me. He told me-see--after all of that-you could do another mile. Remember that when you think you can't go any farther-that day in that session that one time-you did another mile after all the stuff I put you through. So, come cheer me on this Saturday. It is a really fun race to watch (my God the COSTUMES! Hilarious!)..but besides that-you can watch me conquer fear head on.

Here is a link to the course map.

The Danger of Self Pity

I don't have any words of wisdom, personally, on this--only that I saw this posted somewhere else today and it really helped me put things in perspective. They are from Stephen Fry, actor, writer, amazing person...and the website I'm copying/pasting them from is: pootability and here are his words (taken from a television interview):

Certainly the most destructive vice, if you like, that a person can have – more than pride, which is supposedly the number one of the cardinal sins – is self-pity. I think self-pity is the worst possible emotion anyone can have. And the most destructive.

It is, to slightly paraphrase what Wilde said about hatred (and I think that hatred is a subset of self-pity, not the other way around) it destroys everything around it except itself.

Self-pity will destroy relationships; it will destroy anything that’s good, it will fulfill all the prophecies it makes and leave only itself. It is so simple to imagine that one is hard done by and that things are unfair and that one is under-appreciated and that if only one had a chance at this or if only one had a chance at that things would have gone better: you would be happier if only this.. that one is unlucky. All those things. And some of them may well even be true.

But to pity oneself as a result of them, is to do oneself an enormous disservice. [..] I almost wanted once to publish a self-help book saying “How to be happy” by Stephen Fry.

“Guaranteed success” And then people would buy this huge book and it’s all blank pages. And the first page would just say:

“Stop feeling sorry for yourself and you will be happy. Use the rest of the book to write down your interesting thoughts and drawings.” And that’s what the book would be and it would be true. It sounds like “oh, that’s so simple.” But, of course, it’s not simple to stop feeling sorry for yourself. Bloody hard. Because we do feel sorry for ourselves.