The Triing Lizard

Thursday, February 22, 2007

My horoscope for today:
You may appear uncertain about your long-term plans now, but that's because your words are not telling the entire story. You probably know exactly how you feel, yet cannot easily express it to others. Don't waste too much energy trying to convince anyone else that you aren't floundering. If they don't understand, just come back to the discussion later.

This is certainly the case. A stream of consciousness about my current long-term conundrum:
I am having somewhat of a one-third life crisis, 30 years old, never been married, never been in a relationship that has lasted more than a year and a half. I don't think my life is going to take the traditional route. I don't even know if marriage and kids and all that acceptable stuff is what I really want. What do I want? Last night I went out with Len and Mike and drank a lot (3 drinks which is a lot for me) and even had a couple drags from one of Len's cigarettes! We talked about starting a Zen Monastery in Alaska. And traveling and living life to its fullest. Living like a homeless person, selling all earthly possessions for money. Going to school. Changing careers. Drinking a lot of wine. Playing volleyball. Swimming. I miss being spontaneous like I was in college, I wanted to stay up all night and do crazy things like swimming in the fountain at Rice, doing tai chi in the park, and falling backwards into the bushes to see how strong they were (who put me and Daniel up to that anyway, must have been Anandi). The past always looks so good in retrospect. I know it's not as good as I built it up in my mind. Len says I just need a boyfriend and that will all go away. Maybe it's true. I feel like there is some big change that's about to happen in my life but I don't know what it's going to be. Something like I might just up and move to Costa Rica. Or join the Peace Corps. I just want to feel alive. Why do I want to leave my current life? I really am happy where I am. How do I find the root cause of my restlessness and discontent? I'm not really all that discontent. I have a great life, I have a ton of fun and I have a lot of friends who I like to hang out with. But something is not quite right. I don't feel alive inside sometimes, like I'm a robot, especially at work. My days just go by one by one, week by week. I need to play more. How come only kids get play time? I want to just play. This adult life stuff is too serious. So if my horoscope is correct none of this will make sense to anyone else. It all makes sense in my head though. But I have no idea what direction I'm going to take. Until then I'll keep devising future plans in my head that may or may not actually happen.

Friday, February 02, 2007

Masters Swimming saga
This is pretty much what everyone else at my Masters Swimming class looks like. The muscles and bodies of these people are amazing, the women included. I am in awe. Definitely gives me more motivation to lose that 9 pounds!

So here's the story of my masters swimming experiences this week. What is difficult will only make me stronger, this is my mantra as of late. It all started when I woke up Monday morning and realized that my cat Dorrie decided to eat my swim goggles on Sunday night (she retrieved them from INSIDE of my workout bag and proceeded to chew through the strap - BAD KITTY!!!) so Masters Swimming was out for Monday morning. I decided to go on Tuesday instead which is a swim workout geared specifically to triathletes. I figured, oh good, there might be some other beginner triathletes that will be there tht I can swim with. UM NOPE! I was the only one in the beginner lane that morning. Ugh. And that happened to be the morning that the coach wrote up the workout and it was completely undecipherable. All the other masters classes I had been to had been understandable b/c I had people in my lane to ask (what the heck is an IM? What does it mean 400 IM swim, drill, kick, swim, how do I kick from the other side of the pool when I don't have a kickboard, etc. etc.) So given all I had learned in my other non-triathlete based masters sessions I thought I'd be okay at the triathlete one (that just means all freestyle, no IMs and fly and all thadt craziness). Everyone else had their paddles and pull buoys going and they were swimming away, no one else was hanging onto the wall (for dear life in my case) just staring at the board trying to make sense of all the numbers and the labels. The coach was nowhere to be found. And he is intimidating as hell anyway so I didn't really want to ask all that much. He only talks to the fast swimmers, correcting their strokes and telling them to rest or not to rest and what to try. So I do a lot of laps of freestyle and then he comes back and erases one of the boards (the one that I thought we were supposed to use). I looked at the other board and start to understand it and then finally I get into the workout. I seriously thought about just getting out of the pool and leaving, I was so discouraged, everyone else had a bunch of people in their lanes so I guess I just felt lonely and neglected. Though wasn't that the whole reason I left the Y? I wanted to be with more serious swimmers and not have to deal with kids standing in my lane, the lane randomly closing, etc. etc. So I decided to suck it up and finish the workout. I'm glad I did. All this stuff just makes me stronger, RIGHT??

I went again this morning to a normal masters and my usual lane buddies were back which I was very thankful for. They lap me once every 5 laps which also gets VERY discouraging (as I'm completely gasping for breath and holding onto the wall and they finish the set just sort of out of breath) but at least they were there. And they were nice to me. But then I looked over to the next lane over and realized that is the next step after the beginner lane and I noticed that every single swimmer in that lane was doing the fly. Which means if I EVER want to move up I am going to have to learn how to do the fly! And do it FAST!!!