I’m usually not one to use sports metaphors, especially baseball ones. It is not my favorite sport – but never say never.
Life, it seems, has thrown me more than one curve ball lately. And I have discovered that I ain’t much of a catcher. On the upside (just your standard fast ball), I was able to run 12 miles yesterday morning despite a nagging achilles/tibialis posterior/lower leg dysfunction. If this was the only funky pitch I had to handle, I would be coping okay – this ‘lil old pain issue is being addressed (thanks to help from Lee Carman at Pain Solutions, Dawn Powell at Bridges Integrative Health and Dr. Tim Schardein at Vital Chiropractic), and although I am scaling back my goals for the Boston marathon, I will run it.
However, outta left field, life decided I should attempt to handle not only a curve ball, but a series of knuckle balls, or better yet, screw balls. Without getting into the long and gore of it, this has made me quite uncharacteristically pessimisstic, listless, depressed and well, angry. And anger ain’t pretty, and it makes your personal relationships strained, to say the least. And that creates even more challenges. Which just feeds the cycle of pessimism/listlessness/depression/anger.
But that’s life, I know. You don’t always get to, if you will, bat a thousand.
And I need to step up to the plate. (I know, I know, this baseball jargon is getting a bit much.) My optimistic side is thinking that I can indeed get through this rough patch, and that maybe there are some parallels here to the kind of physical and emotional challenges I will face in my 100 mile trail race. If I can get there, physically. If I can get there, emotionally.
My pessimisstic side, which seems to be in control at the moment, seriously questions the notion that I will get a shot at that race. (Yes, wrong sport, I realize.)
But, then again, you can be two strikes down, and it ain’t the end of the game. So, I say, play ball, life, play ball. Let’s just see who wins.
janeyand2bigwhitedogs 