It’s summer 2014. We’re living in Fort Collins, Colorado and time is passing at lightning speed. My team and I are writing a huge grant, a long-shot proposal that would buy our coalition some time in the face of a dramatically-changed local healthcare landscape. Personally, I’m training for a few fall races, each week guiding me towards the fitness I’ll need to accomplish my goals several months from now. Both of these spaces are really comfortable for me…focusing on big work projects that will bear fruit months or even a year down the road and chipping away at personal goals that will be accomplished a training cycle or two into the future. Essentially my entire life is built around doing work that will pay off in what is oftentimes some vague, future timeline.
And for the most part, I love it. I possess the patience and perseverance required to embrace big, complicated projects. I’m comfortable with uncertain returns, putting in the work with no guarantee of an outcome. I love that my sport requires dedication beyond a month or two, that there is no shortcut when training to race a marathon. At work, I embrace complex projects with lots of moving parts. The messier, the better. If the problem has a simple solution, it’s likely not a problem I want to solve.
The downside to this type of work, to this particular sport is that it can be easy to get caught up in the moving target that is the “future”. The work of today is entirely focused on tomorrow. Without conscious effort, it is easy to come unmoored from the present. Today is simply a vehicle taking one to tomorrow.
Flash-forward to fall of 2015. We’ve moved back to Normal, IL and I’m in a different job. A job that turns out to be even more stressful than the last and I’m sick. My autoimmune condition, usually not something that’s even on my radar, has turned into a full-blown forest fire. It’s out of control, consuming everything in it’s path. And my dad is not well. Diagnosed in late summer with a terrible cancer that comes with even worse statistics. I’m panicked about all of it, terrified of where it is going. My dad being sick is obviously the worst, but I’m also scared about what will happen to my career if I can’t wait out the flare. And what will happen to me if I have to take a break from training and running marathons? Who am I if I’m not the title on my business cards? Who am I if I’m not “the runner”?
By early summer 2017, the forest fire of autoimmunity has burned everything to the ground. I’m barely running, definitely not racing, and I’m leaving my job, one that I really enjoy. The break from my career will be however long it takes to get my health back on track, an undetermined amount of time that stretches in front of me like a dark, desolate road. And my dad is still here. He’s been one of the “lucky ones” whose tumors respond to treatment. He’ll never be cured, but his docs have bought him more time than any of us thought possible. A few months has become a few years. We’ve taken a few more of our annual beach vacations, had a few more Christmases, a few more Father’s Days, and eaten a ton of cheeseburgers. The very things that used to drive my push towards the future – work and running – are on the back burner. All I have is today. The future becomes some blurry picture that I can’t quite make out. I decide that’s ok.
It ends up taking until early spring 2018 for my health to begin to recover. For the first time 20+ years, my days aren’t structured around work. I’m without grants to submit, reports to write, budgets to craft, annual reviews to execute. It’s been three years and counting since I last ran a marathon. I’m running a bit more, but still a long way from developing training plans or picking goal races. The weeks I feel good, I run more. The weeks I don’t, I run less. But suddenly, I realize I am more present in my life than I have been for most of my adult life. While the volunteer work I’m doing for my girlfriend’s political campaign does come with dates and deadlines, the work is at a different pace than my career of the last 15 years. If my brain isn’t working on a given day, I can usually wait until I’m feeling better to do my tasks. And I’m not working on big projects with a lot of moving parts, as is the norm for me. The running I’m doing is intuitive, not driven by a training plan or pointed towards a goal race. I decide my workout upon waking each morning, taking rest days when my body tells me it needs them. My dad is still sick, but he’s holding his own. Worrying about what the future holds for him only distracts from today and takes away from savoring this time that we do have. What I’ve really come to understand through his illness is the reality that we’re all on borrowed time. Every single one of us. His diagnosis might bring his life into sharper focus, but car accidents happen, heart attacks happen. It can be hard not to take the days for granted, but the colors are richer with a deeper appreciation for the fleeting nature of literally everything.
This present-focus, this grounding in today, is completely foreign to me, but exactly what I need. And I’m enjoying how much more rooted I feel because of it. I’m not chasing some future outcome. I know this will shift as my health continues to recover and I reenter the “real world”. I plan to start a second Masters in the fall, and taking classes will automatically shift my attention as I focus on due dates, exams, holiday breaks, and graduation. And I go back-and-forth on my desire to return to racing. I’m a little gun shy after two horrendous attempts this spring, and have come to realize it might not matter as much as I thought. It is possible that I might like the idea of racing again way more than actually racing again…time will tell. But I will continue putting in the miles in the meantime, as that in-and-of-itself makes me happy. I don’t need a race for motivation or to give structure to my training. I’m really comfortable just doing the work because I enjoy it.
As the months pass and my recovery continues, I hope I can straddle some artificial line, allowing myself to stay grounded in today even as I begin looking more towards the future. I don’t want to go back to a place where everything is pointed towards some unknown point-in-time. I want to set goals, work on big projects again, but while staying gently tethered to today. The future is uncertain. Out of all of the lessons wrapped up in my dad’s illness, that has been the biggest – even when we think we know what will happen, we really don’t. And by not being present today, we miss everything it has to offer. Whether that’s a sweaty morning run with friends, taking photos of a spectacular storm, dinner with the hubs, watching the fireflies at sunset, or watching my dog nap for the thousandth time, it’s all perfect. And while the last few years have been particularly horrible, they’ve been really amazing too. I’ll never again take for granted the simple activities that when strung together create the semblance of a life. Every bit of it is magic.
