Slowing down and deriving growth from solitude

Yesterday at work, my colleague Gina remarked, "You don't update your blog much, do you?"

Oh no. Have I become one of those bloggers? But it's true; the frequency of my postings have been on a steady decline since I started 'Proximity to Water' in 2009 - an average of 8 or 9 postings a month that year, down to 5 or 6 in 2010, on down to 3 a month in 2011, 2 a month in 2012 and ...

Well, I'm not doing so well in 2013.

In some ways, it's counter-intuitive. I've been enjoying unprecedented swaths of free time this year, and could easily churn out a blog entry a day if I really wanted to--but I haven't been.

It begs the question, why not? Here are several theories:
1. After many years of juggling part-time gigs, freelance work and temp jobs, this month marks my first full year of steadily working behind a computer for 40-hour, Monday-Friday work weeks. Sometimes the last thing I want to do at the end of my work day is stare at another screen.
2. Perhaps I'm just following up on the goals I set for myself this year, hazily defined as they were. One of my 2013 New Year's "Projects" was to spend less time online. I also wrote in February about unplugging from daily internet usage (outside of work), and no longer wanting to contribute to this phenomenon of everyone else's lives appearing, from the outside, so much better than our own. Sometimes I worry that, in the past, my blog has painted too idyllic a picture of my daily life--and it's this kind of internet-ing, in particular, that I want to shy away from. I want people to come away from my blog feeling inspired and connected, not jealous and alienated. Above all, I want to be authentic, open, honest--and yet, not at the expense of the privacy of people I'm close with. It's a fine line, and perhaps the more nervous I am of overstepping it, the less I share on my blog.
3. Or ... could it be that living in a city simply provides more fodder for blog-oriented content?

Okay, I say this a little tongue-in-cheek. I don't intend this to devolve into a debate over whether urban living or small-town living is better; honestly, I'm grateful to to have experienced both environments at this point in my life. I do find the differences compelling to explore, though.

Yesterday evening, I called my good friend Cam(bajamba) in Seattle, who picked up his phone and happened to be out to dinner at my all-time favorite restaurant in Seattle, Annapurna, with a boisterous group of mutual friends of ours. After their feast of authentic Himalayan food, they planned to hit up a new bar on Capitol Hill, my old neighborhood and stomping grounds. The good old pass-the-phone game was played. Birthday girl Angelina screamed my name into the phone in excitement over and over again, then yelled to the group: "Hey everyone, Yitka's coming back for July 4th this year!"

Hut Trip with Seattle friends, 2012

In that moment, I missed Seattle and my friends there more than I can possibly put into words. The ambient noise in the background of the restaurant, the voices, the clinking of glasses and dinner plates, the laughter ... all of it was in such stark contrast to my quiet living room here--made quieter by the fact that Steve's out in the mountains for several days this week--nothing but a gentle wind in the aspens and the sounds of the river in the distance.

My life here is about as far away as can be from my life in Seattle.

For the most part, I think I've adjusted well. I enjoy my job greatly, and I feel extraordinarily content with the life Steve and I have built together out here. I love our home, our routines, the food we make together, the trails out of our backyard, our fledgling garden ... Several nights ago, we grilled out on our back deck as the sun went down, watched as the deer came out in the twilight and the first stars appeared in the darkening sky. Yesterday evening, I baked muffins and brought them to a town potluck/picnic down the street, on the banks of the Crystal River, and got to know some more of our neighbors. Moments like these make me wonder how I ever lived in a city, no yard to speak of, bedroom windows pressed up to those of neighbors I'd never spoken to.

Baby bok choy just beginning to sprout on our sunny back deck

Here, I can do long runs in the mountains from my doorstep, or from any of a series of trailheads within ten minutes by car. In Seattle, I drove half an hour to get to the mountains, and had to time it so as not to hit rush hour on my way in or out and tack on an extra 30 minutes to my trail-commute. I don't worry out here about my car getting broken into at trailheads here, nor about not finding a spot in Wal-Mart-sized parking lots at popular trailheads, because most days out here I don't encounter a single other soul on the trails.

Backyard playground. No other humans anywhere.

Solitude can be beautiful--and often, immensely productive--but I think the experiences that arise in its midst can be more difficult to put into words than the external experiences I had in Seattle and found so easy to churn out blog entries about--the restaurants I ate at, coffeeshops frequented, events attended, urban routes explored, people met.

My evenings and weekends here are pretty consistent and predictable--make food, eat food, do NY Times crossword, go for a run or hike, watch Chloe hunt moths in our apartment, sleep. At the risk of this devolving into a cooking blog, a crossword blog or simply a gratuitous photo blog (not that there's anything wrong with those, but just seems like those niches have already been covered ... ), sometimes I wonder what is left to blog about from among my day-to-day experiences.

Food: Always an adventure here!

More food! Typical weekend brunch at our house.

And yet, perhaps this is just what the doctor ordered. After a few exciting years of hustle and bustle in the big city and a lot of focus on, indeed, my external experiences, I feel like small-town Colorado is helping me turn inward and work on myself in really meaningful ways. Though it's still early June, an almost-mid-year reflection on my progress toward my New Year's projects shows that this place is helping me grow in all the ways I hoped to this year:

• The Simplicity Project: I ditched a lot of possessions when I moved out here, I sleep in on weekends now, I've succeeded in no longer "glorifying busy-ness", and I don't feel perpetually "behind" on keeping in touch with far-away friends
• The Wellness Project: I'm sleeping more, spending more time outside, and eating 10 times better than ever before--mostly plant-based, unprocessed foods, nearly everything from scratch (well, + a healthy dose of coffee and beer)
• The Courage Project: Boom. I've been confronted with more criticism (mostly constructive) in the past few months than ever before, and feel like I'm learning to handle it better each time

Sometimes a little solitude is what we need most to flourish. For what it's worth, here is the best essay I've ever read on the subject: http://theamericanscholar.org/solitude-and-leadership. If you do nothing else with your day today, read this essay. It changed my life when I first encountered it several years ago, and in some ways, can be attributed for the place in my life at which I now find myself--slowed down, more relaxed, and content with being a little less surrounded by people.

The Trouble with New Years Resolutions

Thanks, Parents!

At this time last year, I sat down and blogged about three projects I'd decided to focus my energy on in 2012:

• The Gratitude Project: Committing to starting my Thanks, Parents! blog, and spending more energy in general being grateful, rather than irritated, frustrated or impatient.
• The Gazelle Project: Wanting to be a bigger part of the running community, prioritizing injury prevention, running higher mileage, and becoming a stronger uphill runner
• The Energy Project: Getting organized, procrastinating less, prioritizing sleep, and being more conscientious in general about how I nourish my body - including forgoing alcohol for a year

On the whole, I was successful with all of these: I blogged about gratitude all year long, my running life flourished, and I made it the whole year without booze. There was something very valuable to me in the exercise of setting just three major intentions for the whole year. It allowed me to really, truly focus on those "projects" as I called them - and for the first time in the decade+ that I've been making resolutions, actually feel I accomplished everything I wanted to in that year.

Speaking purely from my own experience, I think there are two major problems with New Year's Resolutions, which explain why most of us fail to keep ours.

The Too Specific Problem
I know, SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals, blah blah blah...and I'm all for specific goal-setting! But I think you can set yourself up for failure when you frame resolutions as specific goals, rather than as general intentions. If you look at the specific, measurable aspects of my projects, I failed on most counts.

Let's take my Gazelle Project. I wrote in last year's blog that some of my specific running goals for 2012 included: a sub-20:00 5K, a sub-6:00 mile, and qualifying for Boston. Of these, I accomplished zero. I didn't even wind up running a single 5K or road marathon.

Instead, however, I ran not only my first 50-miler, but my first 100-miler. I went from having gone on exactly one group run with the Seattle Mountain Running crew to going on dozens of training runs, road trips, and race adventures with new friends. When I sent the word out to my newfound trail running buddies of 2012 (well, except Glenn, who's known me since the very beginning of my trail running life, back when it was still a solo sport for me, not a community-driven one) that I was leaving Seattle, nearly a dozen of them showed up for my farewell snowshoeing adventure on New Years Day.

Snowshoeing at Commonwealth Basin with my SMRG buddies

At the beginning of 2012, I'd never even been to a 100-miler. By the end of 2012, I'd volunteered at several, paced at four, and even run my own. I went from running one ultra in 2010, and one in 2011, to running over a dozen (Fatasses/unsanctioned ultras included) in 2012. I volunteered at more races than ever before, and also ran more total miles than ever before (1800+ for the whole year, up from 1300ish in 2011). So...did I keep my resolution to develop myself as a runner, or not?

Calling it a project, and giving myself un-specific, un-measurable goals like "being a bigger part of the running community", "preventing injury", and "running higher mileage" were actually far more attainable and valuable in the long run than any of the specific, measurable running goals I tried to tack on, too.

The Too Many Problem

"Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years." - Attributed to both Bill Gates and Anthony Robbins...not sure who said it first

I think we often expect too much of ourselves. In addition to the three major projects, I had many supplementary goals and ambitions for 2012. Some of these happened: I read at least a book a week all year, I landed a full-time writing job by the end of the year, I did more yoga. On the other hand, plenty of them didn't happen at all: I didn't take banjo lessons, I didn't eat less refined sugar, I wasn't diligent in budgeting and tracking spending, and I still can't do a pull-up.

But...I think that's okay! It's perfectly fine to aim big, but I think it's also important to be patient with ourselves. None of us pull it all off. So...I think that three, from now on, is my magic number for New Year projects: three big, ambitious ones to which I really, truly commit myself and my energy. Of course, there will always be other ideas, other goals percolating in my mind - but above all, let me not lose sight of the big three.
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With that, I present my 2013 Projects.

The Simplicity Project

I've moved a lot in the last few years. There was a little window of time where I managed to stay in the same apartment for over a year. Aside from that, in my adult life, I haven't lived in the same space for more than 3-8 months. In fact, I've had a dozen different residential addresses in the past five years alone. The good news is that, every time I move, I get rid of more stuff. More things feel superfluous. This all feels immensely rejuvenating; instead of stressing about the fact that I'm once again renting a truck and moving my life halfway across the country, I'm embracing the opportunity to lighten up.

In 2013, I'd like to keep things simple. I want to be more relaxed in my day-to-day life; I've left a cushy corporate job in the big city for the passion gig in a tiny mountain town, and I'm hoping the shift in scenery can help me simplify the expectations I have for myself. Life is about being, not doing.

Sunrise in Glenwood Canyon

I want to be more spontaneous in daily life, rather than setting a tight agenda and always feeling rushed. I want, as I blogged about several months ago, to stop glorifying busyness. I want to have the patience to meditate, to not set an alarm on weekends, to give myself permission to spend hours reading a novel or doing a jigsaw puzzle, to keep my mind present during more of my daily life. I want to live amid less clutter, and be less attached to material things. 

Well, except running shoes: a vice that, on a sidenote, my new job will be no good at discouraging. Below, on the left, is my new boss's entrance hallway at home. On the right is my own. Oi vey. At least I know I've come to the right place. Speaking of which, trail running friends and blog readers alike, drop me a line if you're interested in wear-testing shoes for Trail Runner. I need folks from all over the country, so speak up!

But, really. I'm serious about simplifying.

The Wellness Project

This will follow some similar themes as last year's "Energy Project". Of last year's three, it's the one I feel I did most poorly on. I made some strides - forgoing alcohol and juicing daily for most of the year, establishing "Health Home" with James, picking up yoga again, trying to bike commute more, etc - but I still feel I have a long way to go in this realm. So I'm repackaging it for 2013 as a Wellness Project :)

In this, I would like my life to include more: sleep, juicing, cooking with whole foods, salads and veggies,  green smoothies, tea, running, yoga, reading, journaling, meditation, being outdoors, love
...and less: Facebook, internet, iPhone use, refined sugar, dining out, spending money, caffeine, processed foods, meat and dairy, stress and anxiety, hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock

The Courage Project

Here's something that may come as a surprise to those who've met me in my adult life: I was a pretty shy kid with a lot of insecurities and a big inferiority complex. I had a rough time for many years, making new friends, "fitting in" socially, feeling I had much to offer to others. I can say with confidence that I've overcome most of that - but as with anything in our childhoods, the shadows of those memories still trickle into the cracks of my adult life. To this day, I have a strong need to be well liked, to seek the approval of others. Am I perfectionist? Often, yes, more than I like to admit.

Without getting too psychoanalytic here, I know that there are many things about this coming year that will prove challenging in this realm. Having my writing and editorial skills spotlighted in front of a national (and opinionated!) audience is scary. Learning to not take criticism personally will be a tough, but necessary, lesson.

I'm also struggling with all the fears that come with moving somewhere new, and having changed virtually all aspects of my life over the course of a few short months. People here don't really know me yet, and it will be a while before I can feel myself around them. I miss my friends, the familiarity and comfort of my old life in Seattle. It will all come with time, I know - but for now, it's hard to feel like a blank slate again.

Rather than letting myself be swallowed by these fears, I hope to see them as the opportunities they are, and grow from them.

During my few months with Solavei, I was fortunate to have a great boss who nudged me out of my comfort zone daily, who always challenged me to take on new responsibilities I didn't initially think myself capable of. This was a hugely valuable learning experience for me (thank you, Rudy!), and one I want to continue building on on my own in the coming year. 

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So there you have it. I think that because I was able to accomplish so many of my concrete, external goals in 2012, I'm necessarily deciding to focus on more abstract, internal goals in 2013. That feels good. 

We're not in Washington anymore: Luna Moonshine, my ever-capricious VW who almost broke down the day before leaving for Colorado...didn't know if she'd make it all the way, but here we are!

There's a great deal more to say about adjusting to new life in Colorado, but this blog entry has gone on long enough already. Suffice to say, for now, that I have gone from a world where the essentials are waterproof jackets, poncho pants, and GORE-TEX boots, to one of chapstick, sunglasses, and insulated gloves.

Most other things, I'm pleased to report, have stayed consistent: the abundance of fleece, Patagonia puffy jackets, tea, coffee, dogs, Subarus, dirty hippies, wool socks, and microbrews.

More soon. Happy belated new year, all!

Reclaiming sea changes, endorphins, and my lunch breaks

Autumn has been my favorite season everywhere I've ever lived - the changing colors, the crisp air, the hearty seasonal foods, the excuses to wear hoodies and drink tea and curl up inside with a book. Perhaps above all, what I think makes me love it is its fleeting nature. The leaves are such fiery colors for such a short period of time, you can't help but be dazzled by their ephemera.

Glorious autumn hike in Salt Lake City last month

I haven't always been so fond of fleeting things like fall. (Metaphor alert!) I'm pretty sure I can pinpoint gaining my appreciation for transitional times to my blissful, liberating summer at Stanford. Following that, at 16 years old on the plane back to Kansas, just a few days shy of my reluctant return to high school, I wrote this in my journal:

I need to not be afraid of letting myself LIVE and fully experience the things and situations and people that bring me joy, no matter what the rest of the world has to say about it. If this summer has taught me anything, it is probably just more selfishness - life is way too short to let fear of risk bar you from truly living. It's too short for wallowing or complaining or ruminating or reliving the past. I am not going to waste another moment of my life complaining about "life in Kansas" - what a waste! 

Rachel wrote me a letter where she talked about wanting to put our angst aside and jointly make senior year our best ever - and reading that made me think, 'Hey yeah! That's within our power!' I want to have outrageously high expectations for this year, just like I did for this summer, because I do believe that many times in life, you get as much out of something as you put into it.

I am on my way home, leaving something behind perhaps, but I have too much to look forward to in the future to dwell on this particular ending. Life is full of endings, of final chapters, of goodbyes, and we cannot let ourselves dwell in them, or we will never appreciate the innate beauty of new beginnings. Even in giving up certain aspects of our pasts, we take with us (consciously or not) the things we have learned, the memories we have made, the experiences we have had, the emotions we have allowed to shape us. The doorways are open everywhere, just waiting.

A photo I took from the plane window as I was writing that journal entry

I think one of the great things about transitions, whether you're initiating them yourself or struggling to adjust as they're thrown your way, is that they offer the opportunity for radical transformations. What's more invigorating than giving yourself permission to be seven again, dream big, and believe anything is possible?

It's why I'm a sucker for New Years.

Those who know me know I'm also a sucker for the Space Needle :)

It's also why I often observe the new moon by burning a candle and writing in my journal about areas in my life I'd like to focus my energy on in the coming month. (Many thanks to my lovely friend and mentor in Ohio, Monique, for introducing me to this tradition.) And it's why, even when the world feels like it's spinning wildly out of my control, I think back to a fable my mom always told me when she'd remind me, "You never know if something is good news or bad news."

(Turns out, it's almost always good news.) On January 1, 2012, I wrote in my journal, May this year be filled with positive and necessary change! I guess I asked for it this year. As 2012 draws to a close, I've been reflecting a lot on the changes that have happened - and also on the ones I'm still working to initiate, on the coattails of larger transitions in my working life and personal life alike.

Life, as always, is a work in progress!

One of those changes is finding innovative ways to temper a busy, full-time work schedule with enough adventure to keep me sane. The last few weeks of October this year saw at my indolent worst. After IMTUF, I went for a grand total of three runs the entire rest of the month. Yikes! And I'm ashamed to report I've eaten lunch at my desk most days, rather than taking a moment for myself to go for a run or read a book or just sit still and breathe.

Jason, a friend of mine who came to work in marketing for REI after many years in a high-pressure, high-stress corporate environment, gave me this (paraphrased) advice before I started my new job: "Take your lunch breaks. Go for a run, or ride a bike, or work out. If you set that expectation on day one, people will just accept that you're the kind of person who goes running on her lunch break. If you wait too long before setting that routine, you're more likely to get stigmatized for trying to take a moment for yourself in the middle of the work day."

At the time he gave it to me, I felt convinced I'd follow his advice to a tee - but once I got started in my new role, I absolutely got wrapped up in the work-around-the-clock mindset. It's tough, when you're settling in to a new place; you don't want to be perceived as the slacker among a crop of hard-working folks. And I'm not! I'm a hard-working Midwestern girl; slacking is not in my nature. But here's the catch:

I am so much happier, calmer, and more productive when I get outside and get my endorphins regularly. So these past couple of weeks, I'm happy to report that I've made big efforts to re-prioritize that in my day-to-day life.

• I signed up for a gym membership (with a lap pool!) in my office's building, so I can work out on my lunch breaks - and I found a lunchtime workout buddy in my coworker Rachel.
• When the weather is decent, I'm biking the 26 miles roundtrip to work, instead of driving. (If I did this every day for a year, I would save over $4000 on tolls, gas, and wear/tear on my car!)

The scenery's not too shabby either

• I'm reclaiming weekday sunrise summits on Mt. Si, before hitting the office. Always worth it.

7:30 a.m. this morning

• Steve and I are doing a power vinyasa yoga class once a week (and biking to and from it!).

Life is good. I feel fortunate to be alive and healthy. I don't know what yet lies ahead, but I am optimistic. I've felt an awakening in my soul, and will conclude this rambling entry with my favorite quote, from Howard Thurman:

Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.

On the glorification of busyness

This morning, I met up with a good friend and went for an early (but not crazy early), long (but not crazy long) run in the mountains outside of Seattle. As many of my one-on-one runs with ladies go, we wound up talking a lot about our lives.

At some point, she shared a mantra she's focusing on in her life: Stop glorifying busyness.

This, coming from a woman who works full-time at a fairly stressful job, but in a compressed schedule that gives her four days off each week to devote to things like raising chickens, growing vegetables in her garden, making jams and canning pickles, traveling, neighborhood bartering, and having some awesome running adventures here and there. To someone like me who hardly finds time to cook dinner once in a blue moon, she absolutely gives the appearance of someone who's figured out the balance thing in her life.

But, in our different ways, we confessed to struggling with this same issue of glorifying busyness.

What an apt phrase, I thought. I'm sure my mother would agree...I have an insidious habit of overcommitting my time and energy. Facebook friends and readers of my blog sometimes ask me, "Are you even employed? Where do you find the time for everything?"

I find it, of course, the way most everyone else in our fast-paced society finds it - by cramming it in. I multitask. I sleep less. I sacrifice time with friends. I'm a zealot for to-do lists. As I've blogged about here, I do things like read books while I'm on the treadmill, listen to podcasts while I cook, run up and down mountains between work and evening classes, or watch TED talks while doing crunches on my bedroom floor at 11:30 PM. I've gone from being an avid journaler who filled entire notebooks in a couple months to someone who hardly manages a few pages of written introspection each month.

Generally, I take pride in my productivity. I work hard; I play hard. "How have you been?" people ask me. "Pretty good," I say, "but busy!"

But does busy always equal awesome? Many times, yes; I wouldn't trade my adventures for the world.


Pacing at Cascade Crest 100: Photo by Glenn Tachiyama
But sometimes, awesome is also just a weekend at home, with no alarm clocks and absolutely nothing on the docket. For the past 12 consecutive weekends, I have had big (awesome!) things going on: being out of town for a race or all-day hike, having out-of-town guests stay with me, or staying awake for 40 hours straight to volunteer and run in the mountains. Of those 12 weekends, eight involved ultramarathon-distance runs. The last truly "unscheduled" weekend I had was June 2, and even then, it was two days before moving to a new apartment...hardly relaxing.

Part of it, I'll write off as an affliction of living in the Pacific Northwest. When so many nearby beautiful places are covered in snow for 80% of the year, I think it's natural to want to go soak up every hour of sunny summer daylight playing outside. But part of it, too, is indeed my tendency to glorify busyness. As if being constantly doing stuff somehow gives my life value. As if a to-do list can be an identity.

Where did that come from?

When I was growing up, I begged my parents not to schedule up my summers. Aside from our annual June trip to Colorado, where I happily attended a week of day camp to play in the mountains, I wanted my summers clear. I had novels to write, magazines to design, books to pore through, art projects to do, bike routes to explore, treasure hunts to design, and yes, I'll admit it, one summer, a virtual kingdom on Neopets to develop. (That was the year I had to explain to my parents and pediatrician that yes, I still had friends in the real world, too.)

Don't get me wrong: to-do lists have their place in my life. As I learned this morning, I'm not the only one who makes them on my fancy phone in bed at night. Oi vey. But how productive am I, really, when I put relentless, often exhausting, pressure on myself to do, do, and do more? Isn't it okay to sometimes just be?

This weekend I gave myself permission to just be. What a gift. Did I do nothing? Of course not; I read books and took naps and went for walks around the neighborhood and met up with good friends for tea, sushi, and backyard salmon grilling. I watched some Seinfeld over a pint of Haagen Dazs. I spent an entire morning in my PJ's honing my elementary programming skills. But none of it came from a list; it was all what I felt like doing spontaneously, in that moment. I feel calmer tonight than I have in ages, and am no longer panicking that I burnt myself out on running this summer. It's not the running per se that did me in; it's busyness in general that's left me metaphorically gasping for breath.

So. To my blog readers, to the bottom of this evening's mug of tea, to the almost full moon out my window: I am pledging tonight to stop glorifying busyness...at least for entire summers at a time.

Mid-Year Sobriety Report

Running on Bandera Mountain
It's July! This means that I am officially halfway through my self-imposed Year of Sobriety. Pretty hard to believe that it's been six months already. While the first couple months dragged a bit, and I wondered how I'd stay motivated to stay the course for a full beer-free year, the last few months have flown by.

I can't claim that I've been all health, all the time. I had a crackers-and-fancy-cheese phase that went on a couple months longer than it should have. I get crabby and irritable if I stay away from sugar for very long. I have a weak spot for dark chocolate, and I still eat ice cream pretty much all the time.

What I can say is that six months of self-discipline in one realm trickles over into self-discipline in other realms, too. Declaring such a clear priority for myself has invited the respect and support of my friends (thank you all!) - which has, in turn, encouraged me to be diligent about other goals, too. My running/training has been great; I've been working on some really exciting writing projects; I'm ahead of schedule on my goal to read a book a week in 2012 (I'm at 31 for the year so far!); I've been juicing regularly and eating more plant-based foods than ever.


Gluten-free Thai peanut pasta with rice noodles, fresh asparagus, and pinenuts
Also, knowing that I can still have a social life outside of "getting a drink" with friends has meant - on the whole - more quality time with the people I care about, not less (as I was worried it might). Instead of yelling to hear each other in crowded bars, I have spent time with friends doing other things: hiking, running, cooking wholesome foods, taking walks, snowboarding, biking, going to book signings, doing yoga, reading, just sitting around and catching up over a cup of tea. I spent a day building homes with Ruth at Habitat for Humanity. I went to Folklife for Zoë's birthday and her now-annual tradition of gluten-free tupperware cake. My lady friends hosted Lady Brunchluck.

Brunchluck lap.
I also have learned that trotting alongside someone in the mountains for hours on end, with headlamps into the late hours of the night, invites just about as much silliness, laughter, and intimate conversation as you might expect after a few pints of ale.

Have I saved money? Can't say that I have; I've just chosen to spend the money I would have spent on booze on beverages that are far more nourishing to my body - fresh, organic fruit and veggies for the juicer!

Liquid sunshine: Apple, carrot, celery, kale, parsley, and spirulina
Have I lost weight? Can't say that I have. (I blame the ice cream!) Nevertheless, I have definitely gotten leaner overall. More muscle, less fat. Bring it on, mountains; my legs are ready for conquering.

Have my evenings felt significantly more productive and satisfying? Yup. Do I feel like I'm making good progress on the things that are important to me at this point in my life? Yup. Have I suffered significantly less from the heartburn/acid reflux that's plagued me in the past? Yup.

So, do I feel good about my Year of Sobriety thus far? Heck yes. It's been a great experience - a genuine challenge that I look forward to seeing all the way through. I realize a year without any alcohol is considered borderline extreme in our society. Indeed, I look forward to that first glass of champagne at midnight six months down the road. On the other hand, sometimes doing borderline extreme things is a good reminder that society's expectations need not define our path - and sometimes there are very real rewards to forging your own.

P.S. Vashon Ultra 50K Race Report coming soon.

Yoga and black bean fudge brownies? Yes please.

Favorite salad of late: chopped Swiss chard, topped with quinoa, orange slices, mushrooms, and homemade dressing
Ironically, I am writing this blog entry on wellness while battling a bit of a cold. Nevertheless, health and wellness are on my mind, and I've done some fun projects lately I feel like writing about here.

First of all: A little over a week ago, I hosted a "Wellness Wednesday" for a few friends. I invited them over early-ish in the day, and made green smoothies - pineapple, kiwi, mango, spinach, etc. - for all. Then we cleared the furniture out of my living room and rolled out yoga mats for a solid 45 minutes or so of gentle vinyasa yoga.

Back in Kansas City, I had a wonderful yoga teacher named Martha, who led yoga classes several mornings a week, for free (with a recommended $5 donation, but truly a no-obligation, contribute-when-you-can set up, most of which was donated to local charities anyway) in a neighborhood church. I think it was Lu who invited me the first time, and soon after, I brought my mom along, and Martha Yoga became tradition - 90 minutes, three times a week, of blissful stretching, muscle awakening, meditation, and fun, too.

Getting licensed to lead yoga classes costs upwards of $3500. Not in my budget for now, but I do feel pretty knowledgeable about yoga, pose modifications, proper form, and breathing techniques in general - enough to at least reasonably lead sessions for friends. I have always admired and envied what Martha was able to do for a community of people back in Kansas: grant us a space to come together with others, relax, reflect, and rejuvenate. She was able to give so much, and at so little cost. I aspire to do the same in my life...what more can we ask of ourselves but to share with others everything we have to offer?

Martha would always finish our sessions by having us gather in a circle, and by reading to us a passage from a book that had spoken to her that week - often some sort of meditation or anecdote intended to inspire self-reflection. Again, I always admired the effort that I knew she must put in every week to selecting meaningful passages to share with us. I knew I wanted to do the same for my trio of wellness-seekers last week, and I felt surprised the night before at what an incredible pleasure it was to comb through dusty books from my shelves...books on spirituality and wellness that I hadn't really looked at in a long time, but books, nevertheless, with the capacity to inspire truly transformative thoughts. Books are powerful.

I settled on a passage from Seyeon's favorite book, The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear - an excerpt from Mary Catherine Bateson's "Composing a Life Story." However, there was another passage that I came across in John Heider's "The Tao of Leadership" that I want especially to share here now on my blog. My mom gave me this book of 81 Taoist principles for my 18th birthday. #54 is The Ripple Effect.

Do you want to be a positive influence in the world? First, get your own life in order. Ground yourself in the single principle so that your behavior is wholesome and effective.
If your life works, you influence your family.
If your family works, your family influences the community.
If your community works, your community influences the nation.
If your nation works, your nation influences the world.
If your world works, the ripple effect spreads throughout the cosmos.
Remember that your influence begins with you and ripples outward. All growth spreads outward from a fertile and potent nucleus. You are a nucleus.

Amen. After yoga, we had tea, and I made a giant pot of quinoa porridge (recipe courtesy of Trail Runner magazine!) with diced apple, dried fruits, flax seed, almond milk, walnuts, and more yummy things. All vegan and gluten-free mouthwatering deliciousness.


I also made my favorite raw/vegan/gluten-free energy bar recipe ever, for my guests to take as to-go goodies:


So how, after all my greens and focus on wellness, did I wind up with this minor cold? A few things happened, I guess:
1. The virtual knock on wood must not have been good enough, when I wrote that blog entry on never calling in sick to work. The good thing about being friends with my coworkers, is that word gets out fast when you're sick, and friends come bring you pho at home. Friends are splendid.
2. I was on this pretty clean diet for awhile, but last weekend derailed me: the extravagant sushi and ice cream on Friday night, eating glutenous pasta Saturday night, rewarding myself post-half-marathon with a DQ Blizzard and more dairy over the course of a couple hours than I'd put in my body in the last month altogether, more ice cream (Molly Moon's salted caramel, yum!) after dinner with Ruth on Monday, and finally...late at night on Tuesday, baked deliciously scrumptious browned butter toasted coconut chocolate chip cookies, ala Joy the Baker, to bring to work the next day...


I halved Joy's recipe, and remembered to half everything except the butter. Whoops. Mine look nothing like hers, but an extra stick of butter, shockingly, didn't hurt the taste too much.
...but I popped a couple the night before and felt dizzingly drunk off the butter/sugar rush. Whew.
3. So when Seyeon came over Wednesday night with a bit of a cold, I think it just did me in. My poor immune system was down, from lack of the usual antioxidant-packed goods, and I woke up feeling not so hot.

Today, as I've been snacking away at home while trying to let my health make a recovery, I've been utilizing awesome recipes in my latest issue of Women's Running to pack in as many nutrients as possible. Below: homemade kale chips, a blueberry/chard/almond milk/flaxseed/pinapple smoothie, and an amaaazing fudge brownie made with black beans (!), Dutch cocoa powder, and sweetened purely with agave nectar. No refined sugar whatsoever. Incredible stuff.


Come on, body, work with me. I'd like to be able to run tomorrow.

The evolution of a health nut

Like my book blog entry, my food blog entry may need to be split into two (or three, or four, or five...) to keep it manageable.


Spaghetti with tomato/cashew sauce and fresh basil
Let's start with a little background, some of which you might be familiar with already: I did not grow up cooking. My dad didn't really cook. My mom did, and while she did involve me in some of the process when I was younger - helping her snap green beans in half to cook, or arranging potatoes in the bottom of a pan of water to boil - I have little memories of such involvement in cooking after such a point. As I grew up and got both pickier and nastier in my adolescence, I imagine some of the joy of cooking was lost in my mother. Our kitchen, to be honest, never really inspired happiness or excitement surrounding the preparation of food. I don't blame anyone; I wouldn't have enjoyed cooking for the 14-year-old me either. My preferred daily lunch at school that year was a slice of pepperoni pizza, a can of Welch's grape soda, and a greasy chocolate chip cookie the size of my face. I didn't appreciate my mom's lentil soup back then.

Joining Harkness co-op in college was my first real experience with cooking sans recipes, utilizing bulk foods and fresh produce and spices to prepare meals for others. I only stayed in the co-op for a semester, but it was enough to dissolve at least some of the fears I had surrounding the kitchen.


Massaged salad with Swiss chard, beets, sunflower seeds, and homemade dressing with fresh ginger
Nevertheless, the reality of my lack of even the most basic fundamentals of cooking was stark - and remained to be so up until about the last year. (Some of y'all remember the EasyMac incident(s). Oi vey.) Through a long series of experiments, recipe trials, triumphs and travesties, I finally am beginning to feel as though I've transcended omelettes and stir-fries, and can now claim some competence in the kitchen - and perhaps even a little bit of pride.

Kitchen appliances have, no doubt, played a big role in this newfound confidence. My Vitamix continues to be a dream - a gentle humming machine of beauty that seems capable of doing no wrong. I have made everything in it from blended kale smoothies to vegan tomato cashew pasta sauce to fresh hummus to butternut squash soup - and seemingly, no matter what ingredients I drop in, something magical comes out. There's no undercooking, no overcooking, no scorching, no drying out, no failure to rise, or any of the other host of maladies that can foil even the most valiant baking or cooking efforts. If your ingredient ratios are a little off, you just add a little more in and blend again. Magic.

But I've been cheating on my blender a little, I must admit. See, I also hauled an old food processor out to Seattle from my childhood home in Kansas. At the time, I couldn't imagine what I'd ever use such a thing for, but I thought, what the heck, why not, and threw it into the moving truck along with a handful of other found objects salvaged from the house in Kansas. Only last month did I finally locate all the component parts of the food processor, reassemble it, and delight in the fact that it's still operational. *Drool.* What a dreamy appliance it is when it goes to work.

My favorite processor creations so far have been (1) homemade pesto, and (2) raw energy bars. Which to begin with? The pesto was unbelievably easy: fresh basil, toasted almonds (pine nuts, I learned, do NOT toast well in the oven), garlic, and olive oil. Pulse. Heaven!


Rotini pasta with pesto


Brown rice pasta with pesto, baked tilapia and mixed veggies
For the raw energy bars...I have to remember where I even got this recipe. If anyone wants the specifics, I'll happily share, because these were hands down the most delicious energy bars, store-bought or homemade included, I've ever tasted. I take no credit for these, as it was pure recipe-heeding that introduced these to my tastebuds, but wow...Food Processor, let me count the ways I adore thee.


Adding honey to the nuts and dried fruits.


Added cranberries, shredded coconut, raisins, and Green Magma (powdered barley greens)


Tell me that doesn't look amazing
My small army of kitchen appliances has boosted my confidence enough that I've branched out in many ways in my life so far in Seattle that never even seemed within the realm of possibility before. I've made my own granola, baked bread, created my own salad dressings, learned how to cook steel cut oats, rolled my own quiche crust from teff flour, made soup from scratch, cooked steaks with a homemade marinade, tried tons of different dark leafy greens in dozens of homespun salad combinations, learned how to make perogies from scratch (a shared learning experience with Alan around Christmas last year), baked fish, made my own guacamole, baked homemade pita chips, and tried more new foods and ingredients than I previously knew existed. What a wonderful world food is!


Grass-fed steak with wild rice and green beans


Homemade toasted pita chips and curried lentil dip


Our perogies masterpiece

I've read a lot of books lately about diet, mostly in relation to holistic health, disease prevention, athletic endurance, and general longevity. Several of them include: Michael Pollan's "In Defense of Food", Victoria Boutenko's "Green for Life" and "Raw Family: A True Story of Awakening", Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal Vegetable Miracle", Loren Cordain's "The Paleo Diet", and Erik Marcus' "Vegan: The New Ethics of Eating". All have been great, enlightening reads, and if you'll pardon the embarrassing pun, good food for thought. While there are a lot of different ideas out there - some of which are downright radical by our society's standards - the truth is that there are general overlaps amongst all of them. While the jury might still out on whether eating cows is a good idea, or if a food's glycemic index matters, or whether microwaving food introduces carcinogens, or if a cup of coffee a day is good or bad or you, etc etc...
Pretty much everyone across the board agrees:

1. Processed food bad.
2. Refined sugar bad.
3. Too much food bad.
4. Nuts and seeds good.
5. Fruits, vegetables, dark leafy greens really good.

That's not so hard, is it? Am I absolutely 100% avoiding any foods right now? Nope. I am generally trying to consume minimal: caffeine, processed foods, refined sugar, refined grains, gluten, cheese and alcohol, while trying to emphasize: greens, vegetables, fruits, healthy fats, lean protein, seafood, herbal teas, and nutritional superfoods in general. I'm going on several months now without coffee, even more months with a daily fresh green juice or smoothie, and a year and a half now without missing a single day of work due to being sick. *Knock on wood.* I like this being-healthy business. Food is medicine.

Anyone want to have a dinner party soon?