Our building at work is making a noise like a big metal shipping container being reluctantly dragged across a rough cobbled yard. It's a blustery day and tonight I have an appointment run...the usual Monday night 'easy' with the boys. The obligatory reminder has already gone out, with the added words "wet and windy". For once, I'm not keen. While wet and windy doesn't trouble me, my drive home illustrated quite how vulnerable pedestrians can be, the gullies washing head height over the pavements as each car passes, drowning those I saw.
Who knows how many I didn't. I don't mind it not being fun, but for once, just once I found myself thinking, this is dangerous, I don't need it...and was derided for suggesting as such! Also, I wasn't terribly keen for any voluntary running over the weekend. And not even a walk. I've just been at home, going slightly crazy, awash with all the ingredients I need to improve things, but lacking the recipe with which to put it all together. I ponder on this at the same time others are enthusing about starting a pre-festive December running streak.
It sounds appealing, to simply set a modest 'target' to make a run every day for a month. That's not hard, is it? Except I'm really not interested..at all, and that's a curious thing! And today I've become hugely irritated by a small group of people who in an environment of supporting others are only interested in promoting themselves. Volunteers! I met someone recently who is a Mountain Rescue volunteer, and the joy in listening to and feeling their enthusiasm ooze for what they do and why, is simply infectious. It should be like this.
Yet today, in a totally different group of volunteers and something I value closely, I hear only how amazing they think they are. I'm blowing it out of proportion, but today I'd had enough...and snapped. I can feel I'm tense. I need to run...away. I want my eyes to see beyond my own nose, my heart to beat with passion, not rage and my mind to be opened, not slammed shut. Curiously, I spent a chunk of the weekend in an unusually challenging place for me. Loneliness, they say, is a crowded room!
