Commitment. Elaborated.

Earlier I posted a blog about commitment, but didn’t really give much more than a couple of announcements revolving around my inability to commit and my recently made huge commitment of 100 days of running, possibly leading up to a 5k.

It’s 3:39am at this very moment, and I have three pages left to write for a paper due in five hours, and I cannot focus for the life of me. I have seriously run out of things to say. Hopefully this blog will get my brain working again and I can fluff-fluff-fluff until I hit that eight page mark and can finally breathe again.

Commitment.

Why am I afraid of it? Because I’ve never really been able to commit to anything but change. I’m okay with plans flopping, because plans I’ve made have just always seemed to flop. I’m okay with not following through with plans, because no one ever said.. hey, you should do what you said you were going to do. Also, I’ve never been huge on commitment because usually commitment entails some sort of LARGE change in my life. And while I welcome change, “change” in my vocabulary is more like how the Florida sun can disappear and turn into a monsoon, then back into Florida sun in a matter of twenty minutes; “change” to me is deciding last minute to go to the Celebration Starbucks instead of the Starbucks ten minutes away because it’s bigger and better and three times as cool; “change” is what I keep in my pocket, what collects dust in my car, and what falls between the cushions in the couch (this is possibly my favorite kind of change).

I’ve never been forced into commitment, and no one has ever given me reason to be seriously committed to anything other than Jesus. AND, if we’re being 100% honest here, sometimes I completely bomb of that commitment, too!

Why am I no good at commitment? Lack of self-discipline, lack of self-esteem, and an unusually high success rate at being self-aware at ALL TIMES. And by self-aware at all times, I mean I can notice every little thing I do wrong at any given time, from posture to the length of my finger nails to the wrong flip of my hair, from the pace that I’m walking at to the tone of my voice to the look on my face and the downward curl of my smile when I know I really need to smile big in order to pull this off. Being self-aware is good… being self-aware of the bad things all the time? Not good. Not healthy. Not good. Bad.

What’s brought on this commitment to run for 100 days? Emotions. In short, emotions. I am an emotional human being. Recently, I’ve been numb, or feeling absolutely miserable. This is due in part to my self-diagnosed depression. That sounds lame, but there are many reasons that lead me to this conclusion, and I’m not the first one to tell me that there’s a really good chance that I’m depressed. So, in short… running is something that helps my depression. It makes me feel alive. That burn in my lungs? That’s proof that I’m alive and living, not just going through life. That pang in my side? Life. The gasping for breath because I haven’t and might never master the art of breathing while running? Life. Alive. Feeling. Living. Good things. I’m going to run because running, doing something, doing ANYTHING where it hurts? That makes me feel alive. That beats the depression with a stick and says, get out of here. Remembering that I’m alive and can still do things worth while is key to my success right now. And by “success,” I don’t mean with this whole running thing…I just mean with life in general. If I’m going to succeed in life, I need these sorts of things.

On a side note, doing laundry also helps make me feel alive. Not that it’s exciting or it hurts or whatever. It just helps keep me focused. Running keeps me focused. Laundry keeps me focused because I have to keep up with it, I have to remember to switch loads, I have to fold clothes and iron clothes and bring clothes in off the line. It helps. It helps. It helps.

So that’s the emotional side of things. I need running. I need anything that has a little sting to it, really. And running is as good a place to start as any, right? Right. Right. Right.

 

I’m going to go now. I feel my brain beginning to wake up a bit again. Holler.