Yet another 5k!

My cheerleading section snapped this picture of me at the starting line.






This is me mere feet from the finish. I was running as hard as I could which actually felt like I was going backwards at the time. I did manage to knock two minutes off my time without barfing at the finish line. Woo hoo!


The race was 3.2 miles that wound through a neighborhood. Along the route, there were people sitting on lawn chairs in their front yard, drinking beer and cheering us on. It was a warm-not-hot day but when you are running faster than you usually do because you don't want to be in last place it does feel like your head might pop. Some of the spectators in the neighborhood put their sprinklers on in the street so us running masochists could find some reprieve from the blood pounding in our heads. That should be a requirement for all races, sprinklers for the runners to run through.

To Put You In The Right Mood…

Over the last year or so, I’ve been suffering a left brain dominant life. I’m really good at my job, which includes gobs of information management. I am a bookkeeper, sales/advertising support staff and online ad campaign manager all within 40 hours each week for a website. My second job is a similar gig where I keep track of who needs to be invoiced when and for what as well as managing all the contact information for all of the advertisers and subscribers to the particular website that I work for. On the side, I am the keeper of the volunteer contact information for a new local non profit organization. I keep lists of our volunteers, who’s involved in which project or event and I send email blasts to each group depending on the current tide of information. All of this equals, what “they” call “marketable skills”. Currently, this equals the death of my creativity.

Not too long ago, I was living exclusively in my right brain. Also known as all art and no bill paying. I was happy there, maybe a little moody, but content. Unfortunately, none of the art was paying any of my bills and I sought some form of employment that moved beyond barely sustaining me. I wanted a “big girl job” with a steady paycheck and some benefits. I love the steady paycheck; it makes it so much easier to bail myself out of the debt I got into when I was acting and waitressing when I know how much money I’m getting every two weeks.

Now I seek balance. Yin and Yang. Left brain and right brain. I’m coming to terms with the fact that despite my fiercest childhood dreams, I’ll never be a movie star. For now, I have to have two and three jobs to work my way out of debt. For some reason, I have used this bit of reality to beat my creative self into unconsciousness, have thrown her down the stairs and locked her in the basement. Like she, not the lack of ever learning about finances and budgeting, has put me into a situation that requires me to work very hard to keep from drowning. Last Saturday, I realized that the debt was not her fault and it’s time to get busy and creative again because I miss the right side of my brain. It’s just so damn fun in there and while I need to work to pay back what I owe, I’m not going to spend time on my deathbed wishing I had spent more time at the office.

In order to resuscitate my creative beast, I have to start in places where I remember that creativity was a happy, impromptu dance and not a matter of conquering or bargaining. All my old mixed tapes are a reminder of those days where the brain halves skipped hand in had, working as a whole unit. It takes more than left brain skills to figure out which song will perfectly fill the last minute and a half on the side of a tape. It takes the right side figuring out which really short song will carry the mood over from the song before it without too bizarre of a twist or creating a new jumping off point that you can’t follow up on. It takes the cooperation of the two brain halves to be able to seamlessly jump from Janis Joplin to Soundgarden to Madonna w/ Prince to Puccini without anyone noticing.

From the almost forgotten top shelf of my office closet have come my cassettes. Inspiring me renew the vows of partnership between the sides of my grey matter and to forge ahead on foreign, yet mutually advantageous ground. This is a new place where “marketable skills” will work in conjunction with creative beasts. Come together…right now…over me. You and me, we’re in this together now. So happy together.

A Good Mixed Tape...

Earlier this year, Goat got a sweet Subaru Outback. It was a few years old and had cool accoutrements such as seat heaters, heated windshield wipers and a tape deck. En route to hiking or Mom’s house, we had a blast reliving our high school days and our rebellious twenties listening to our old mixed tapes while ripping down the highway with warm butts. Some of our tapes were gifts from good friends, a few we had made for someone else but they turned out so good that we kept them for ourselves, but most of all they were a way for us to talk using someone else’s words. There was something about expressing my thoughts using someone else’s prose that made me much more daring in making my intentions clear while creating a mix for a boy I had a crush on. In my twenties, I was fond using the creation of mixed tapes to express my innermost feelings; usually turmoil and usually about a guy.

Sadly, after a mere two months with his new-to-him Subie, Goat and the Outback were involved in a high speed, multi car pile up on the highway that closed the whole damn freeway for an hour (save for the drunk driver that crashed through the police barricade, miraculously not adding to the carnage despite the number of victims, cops and first responders that were milling around the closed lanes. He was pulled over immediately and was so drunk and freaked out that he pissed his pants while being cuffed. I’m sure that’s the least of his problems right now, but it still seems so horribly humiliating). Goat is fine; he walked away with one small scratch even though at the time of the crash he had 8 foot pieces of wood he was toting home from a dumpster diving score in the car with him. Goat was so fine, in fact, that he woke up at 5:45 the next morning and ran a 5k trail race, knocking over 2 minutes off his road running time. Impressive. If you are a runner that runs dirt and pavement, that will be even more impressive to you.

Unfortunately, the Subie is a goner. She did her job and absorbed the brunt of the crash into her metal makeup so Goat’s spongy viscera, organic bone structure and spaghetti thin spinal cord were spared. We humans are sheets of wet paper in comparison to the brutish technology we create. He did manage to get a great deal on another used Outback, a few years newer, same color, but no tape deck. No Minor Threat and Misfits mixes on the way to the Art Hop in Kalamazoo; no more explaining how I got from Skin Yard to Bob Dylan to a song from The Little Mermaid soundtrack in three steps, no more favorite songs that I never knew the title to or performer of. Now, we just listen to boring old mixed CDs made in this decade, which isn’t far away enough for me to look back on it fondly.