Reflection

Before Christmas, I wasn’t too bummed about spending it away from home for the third year in a row. I survived (and enjoyed) previous Christmases spent skiing in New Mexico and feasting with other journalist orphans in Casper. The actual holiday stretched weeks, brown boxes from friends and relatives arriving weeks before the holiday and into January. I made it home for Thanksgiving both years with some good luck and a one-way ride as far as Colorado from my sister.

Thanksgiving at home didn’t happen this year. Plane tickets were expensive, my sister’s schedule didn’t align with mine and Josh’s dad, stepmom and stepsisters decided to drive to Wyoming for the weekend. I hosted my first Thanksgiving and proved once again I am my mother’s daughter.

Perfect turkey. (Nov. 24)

We served way too many appetizers, including $40 worth of cheese, and enjoyed leftovers for a whole week afterward. We drank wine and played games and watched movies. We were too full for dessert (pumpkin-apple and French silk pies, a la mode) but ate it anyway.

A few weeks before Christmas, I found out family from Virginia that I hadn’t seen in years were driving home. I scrambled to find a plane ticket: $650-800 to fly out of Casper. Flights from Denver were a little cheaper, but I couldn’t afford booking a $350 ticket in the case I-25 closed and I never made my flight. And I didn’t have $800 for a guaranteed flight.

So Christmas at home didn’t happen, again. We ended up driving to New Mexico for a long weekend with Josh’s family. Of course, Nola came with and she behaved so well during the 10ish hour car ride.

Outtake from the Christmas card photo shoot. (Dec. 12)

And when I called my mom’s house where everyone was gathering on Christmas day, no one answered the phone. I called three cell phones before my brother answered, roaring laughter in the background.

They were doing the white elephant gifts, he explained. Apparently, in the Christmases I missed, my family started a new tradition. At that moment, I made a vow to go home next year, no matter what, even if it is only for two days.

Although I’ve done a good job of finding family around the holidays to celebrate with, nothing beats going home.

A colleague asked me why I run races — it’s not like I’m going to win them.

And the answer is different for each race. And it often changes from the time I sign up for the race to when I cross the finish line.

I trained for my first, a 10K in New Orleans, as a healthy distraction from my master’s project. I ran my first half marathon to raise money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. I ended up testing my relationship in the process, as my running partner (and boyfriend) and I had different race mentalities.

After that, I kept running, mostly for the mental escape and runner’s high and pushed myself in the Denver half marathon. I shaved 21 minutes off my Seattle time and gained an appreciation for the strength I’ve built in the past two years. I celebrated that strength with girlfriends on a trail run in Napa.

This year’s Denver race tested that appreciation and, after 10 miles, my patience.

I signed up in May for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Denver marathon — the full 26.2 mile race. I was in decent shape and had a whole summer ahead of me to train. Training went well, very well, actually, until the second week of July. I ran a 5K, my first race in 10 months, and injured myself by starting out the gate too fast.

I hobbled through runs for a few weeks, trying to self diagnose because my health insurance doesn’t cover sports injuries. I realized I would lose too much training time to prepare for the full. Over a few weeks, the point of injury shifted and I realized it was my IT band. I started a daily routine of stretching, foam rolling and doing awkward strengthening exercises such as the clamshell.

I stopped running and lusting after running and enjoyed the things I could do — hiking, biking, walking.

And one day, I could run. I was determined to run the half. I fit in a few runs including a 10 miler. I was in no shape for a personal record, but I knew I could battle through it. My boyfriend, less prepared than me, agreed to run with me.

A scene from Seattle replayed in my head: 12 mile marker. He wanted to walk. I’m yelling, “We’re almost there!” He starts walking. I threaten to run ahead. I do. I stop, walk backwards to meet him. He says, “My legs hurt. I think I broke my knee.” I say things I can’t repeat here. This continues for the longest 12 minutes of my life.

Going into the half marathon, I was more nervous about running with a partner than I was about my muscles falling apart. I have done and do a lot on my own. I also enjoy working on group projects, but I get frustrated with them when what I think to be the most obvious, right idea is ignored.

And this is why I struggle to run with others. For me, running has been such a personal, individual effort where I control when to sprint, how far to run and when to finish. I may not be fast, but my excellent internal clock makes me a terrific pacer. My body knows it can run at a harder pace when I’m only running 3 miles vs. 6 and I sustain that pace over time.

Josh doesn’t run this way. He runs hard, slows down and then, just when I think he’s completely exhausted, has an incredible burst of energy that propels him ahead of me and across the finish line.

Knowing this I set a different set of goals for Denver: Run the whole way with Josh, pace him to a PR and finish injury-free.

Coors Field, Rock 'n' Roll Denver (Oct. 9, 2011)

My hips started hurting after only 6 miles. Josh wanted to stop after 10, but stopping made my calves hurt. I channeled my frustration into obnoxious optimism. “We can do it! Only 3 miles to go! Your legs aren’t broken! Let’s run to that corner and then walk!”

The Seattle race gave me the longest 12 minutes of my life — Denver gave me the longest 3 miles of my life.

Like all races, it eventually ended. Crossing the finish line, I realized we accomplished all three goals. It felt better than a PR.

Rock 'n' Roll Denver (Oct. 9, 2011)

And there’s always more races to run for those PRs.

Now that it’s been a month since the biggest change in my life to date, it’s only appropriate to blog about it.

Nearly two years later and I finally get a picture in front of the welcome sign.

Josh, my boyfriend of three-ish years, moved to Casper three weeks ago. The Star-Tribune hired him to produce videos, piece together photo slideshows, find enterprise stories around Wyoming and cover breaking news. Basically, he was hired to be a super journalist. Only a few weeks in, he’s covered flooding, Wyoming’s drum and bugle corps and a legendary bucking horse outside Pavillion.

He’s been here a month and it really hasn’t felt strange any step of the way.

Although we lived 14 hours apart for the last two years, we saw each other quite a bit — at least once a month for the first year, a series of coincidental days off and vacations. It worked, we thought, but knew it was far from ideal.

But when Josh finally left academia for a photographer job, we lost that flexibility. Finding time became more difficult. More of our trips involved at least one of us working.

So he decided to move west and start something new.

Everything about the move just worked out. I found a house to move into the weekend he arrived.

We were so excited for the move, you’d think we would be all unpacked by now.

But we’re not.

We got rid of about half the boxes after we bought two bookshelves but the second bedroom is still full of boxes marked “office.” Only a few pictures have been hung — the rest are leaning against walls behind doors so we don’t accidentally knock them over.

We’ve been in Colorado for three of the last four weekends and working almost every day we weren’t gone.

We say we haven’t had time to settle, but maybe we haven’t because we don’t want to. Hanging pictures and finding places for every little knickknack admit that we’re here, and we’re here to stay for a while.

This is my ninth address in four years and his third job in two years.

We do well with change. Permanence is another story, one we’re writing every day.

I’ve been lurking on the Carnival of Journalism for a while now. Every month I told myself I’d write the next month. I finally got around to it for this month’s topic: Failure.

A failure in your life (personal or professional) that has lessons. It must be your failure and you must take responsibility. But this will be a safe space to discuss our failings and what we can learn from them.

I decided to write about this because I don’t fail.

What I mean is that I’ve developed a sense of optimism and resiliency that forces me to see the upside of a crappy situation and move forward. I fail every day — spill coffee on my shirt, forget to ask a key question in an interview, leave an important detail out of my story. But I frame the situations positively — I needed to get rid of that old shirt, I can ask the question again and write another story, I’ve got a blog post ready for the next day.

I don’t know where I get this from. A first child thing? Pressure from my parents to always do better? Too stubborn to admit failure?

I stopped moving for a few failures, and the one that sticks out the most happened during my first year in college.

I decided to fill my science requirements by concentrating in “brain and cognitive sciences.” It sounded smart and cool, which I thought I was — I won a big-money scholarship, achieved a 4.0 GPA first semester, edited the features section at the student newspaper as a freshman.

I signed up for Foundations of Cognitive Science — perception, language, memory — anxious to have my mind blown.

After a few weeks, the only thing blown was my GPA.

Reading for my three literature classes took priority over the obscure sciency text so I had no clue what was going on during the lectures. Not that it mattered — the class was held the mornings after production nights. If we put the paper to bed on time at 7 a.m., I could fit a two-hour nap in before class. If.

Final grades were determined by two out of three tests. If you did well enough on the first two, you didn’t have to take the last one during finals week. I bombed the first test and picked up the studying. But I was too far behind, and I bombed the second test. I calculated my odds of getting anything better than a C on the last test (which I needed to get a C in the class) were as good as winning the lottery and using the money to travel to the moon (this was soon after pop star Lance Bass announced his mission to outer space.)

My academic adviser told me I had two options: Fail or withdraw. Had I visited her a week later, I would have missed the withdrawal deadline and been forced to take a D on my shiny transcript.

My hand shook so much while filling out the paperwork that I had to start over. I cried in the adviser’s cubicle.

“I fail at waterskiing and playing video games against my brother,” I said. “I don’t fail at school.”

“But you didn’t fail,” she said. “You withdrew. You got out and are going in another direction.”

Lesson learned: It’s not failing to change midcourse, make a plan, move forward. Also, it’s better to seek help at the first sign of trouble — not when the ship is halfway (or two-thirds of a semester) to the bottom of the ocean.

Impending failures can be turned around and I look for them as I work on daily stories, investigative projects and redecorating my apartment. I persist through failures as best I can, and when I’ve flat on my face failed and there’s no way to fix it, I document the failure (journal, post-it on my desk) and start over.

I did this last night with this post. I saved the “failed” part in a file on my computer, a small reminder that it’s OK and even productive to fail.

Making and using a Plan B might not be called “withdrawal” in the real world, but it’s not failure either.

I’m gone, up in Illinois now and already procrastinating all the cleaning/sorting/packing that needs to be done.

Most of my stuff was packed by Friday so I could fully enjoy my last day. It started with one last run in Audubon Park and smoothies from my smoothie lady at Smoothie King. Then it was a mimosa toast and goodbyes with the family.

It wouldn’t be a weekend in Louisiana without a festival so it made sense to head down to the French Quarter for the Satchmo SummerFest music festival. Fit in a lot of lasts there: last New Orleans Moonshiners show, last Abita, last snowball, last crawfish.

Afterward was cocktails/apps with the roomie’s friends and White Linen Night, an annual street party with art galleries, food and beverages.

Rachel’s friend works for American Institute of Architects, which had a bicycle car to promote the annual DesCours architecture installation. I got to fulfill a childhood dream and steer it. At age 8, most girls wanted a pony. I wanted a quadracycle. I used to steal the Hammacher Schlemmer catalog as soon as it came in the mail and drool over all the cool and totally unnecessary gadgets.

If I stretched my legs, my feet reached the pedals

As has been the story all along, I came with friends but ran into people I met down there and people I didn’t even know were in town. My aunt called it “the Louisiana luck:” how things have fallen into place since I moved down there. Research, freelancing, volunteer work, visitors, friends, travel, summer sublet, temp job, full time job, caravaning home with the roommate, perfect timing. Let’s hope it followed me north and sticks when I go west.