What’s the point of doing something without having a long-term goal in mind?
As a striver in recovery, I struggle with this question a LOT.
On the one hand, I strive with a goal for my efforts in mind. It’s where I shine!
On the other hand, I can get pretty controlling with my training. A bit obsessive. Ok, maybe more than a bit obsessive.
Controlling things was an area of both strength and weakness I found when I was working on the 12 steps of ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families).
The thing about recovery for me is learning to face some of my demons in a more balanced way.
One challenge for me here will be getting ready for trail race, for sure.
There’s an added challenge for me now being in recovery. Before, I would’ve gone out, done the training and gone beyond what the training program stipulated. Overworked out depending on what was going on in my life.
So, this race means more in a way than races I did before because there’s now an extra layer of an additional challenge of trying to make sure I stay in balance with myself and not overdo the training.
I’ll be doing the training during a typically difficult time of year for me: the holidays. Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is an incredibly difficult time of year for me. While I can’t predict how I will feel this year, I do anticipate feeling some anxiety and sadness over not hearing from my mother. I’ve invited her to Thanksgiving dinner, and I doubt she will even get back to me on whether or not she can make it. I will also be dealing with the anticipation of my in-laws. There’s also my in-laws. There’s usually some kind of drama or flair-up there as well that causes some discomfort over the holidays.
One of my past ways of being was to take out my anxiety on my body and my training, even if I wasn’t training for anything.
The good things in my favor:
Having a targeted race and specific training plan to follow so that I can stay balanced, try to follow the program and not overdo it. I feel the training program is suitable for my body and level of activity so I am not at risk of overtraining and burning out.
This race means a lot to me. Seeing I can run a 5k trail race is something I’ve been wanting to do, especially seeing if I can do it coming off of such a horrible back injury.
I’m very aware of my tendency to overdo it. I’ve been facing my demons of exercise bulimia and overworking out/overtraining, and I’ve been ok so far. Part of recovery for me has been learning to face my old demons in a balanced way because while the are “demons”, they also make me who I am. Demons represent what makes me me and sometimes the “demons” get me through hard times and are part of my greatest struggles.
I have a recovery coach who I see once a week to help me through my recovery process. When I see my coach weekly, it’s a chance to check-in and hold me accountable. I already talked to my coach about my issues with working out and that I was starting a new training program for a 5k trail race as one of my smaller goals to lead to my main goal which is a 50k trail race.
The bad things that don’t seem like they are in my favor:
The holidays, stress and relapsing into old ways of controlling my emotions by taking my anxieties over family out on my body. Exercise bulimia and overtraining are not new to me.
Final Thoughts:
Being in recovery and in 12 step has made me more aware of my old ways, and I’ve had to learn to confront them and deal with my old ways and form new habits that are more balanced and aligned with the person I’ve become. I can easily slip into old ways of being, but I have support around me to hold me accountable. Based on my list above, the good far outweighs the bad. I’m pretty sure I’ll be ok with the support I have around me. I believe I can do this in a balanced and healthy way. I think, in some ways, the severe lower back injury was good for me because it showed me how out of balance I was in my life and that I needed to come back into balance with my life in all aspects, not just fitness.
Resource links:
Here’s a link to the race if you are interested in signing up and doing it with me:
If you’d like to train with me in real life or virtually, email me at sarathlete@hotmail.com and let me know. Here’s the training program I’m following:
It felt awesome, a little uncomfortable and fears bubbled up.
I was stronger than I thought.
I was able to run further than I thought.
My body remembered what running felt like after 8 years of NOT running.
My expectations were so low for myself that I wasn’t sure I would be able to do the workout or not. I underestimated myself. Years of low self-esteem was detrimental to myself.
I need better support for my girls. This was probably the most uncomfortable part of the run for me.
Zone 1 training matters. I didn’t realize what a base I’d built for running. Activities like weight training, cleaning, hiking, easy cycling, walking on the beach, you name it, that I did as Zone 1 helped me build up basic fitness and a very good base for starting a beginner trail walking/running program.
This was only one run. Now, I have to get through the next run.
I did something I thought I couldn’t do.
I felt unsteady in my running shoes on the trail. I ran in a pair of trainers with barely any support. I tried on my old trail shoes when I got home (yes I know that sounds weird), and I realized how different any sneaker feels compared to minimal-like trainers. I wear No Bull trainers for gym workouts. I think I might try a pair of Vivobarefoot trail shoes. I don’t want to go back to super-padded running shoes. I might try to keep running in the trainers I have, order a pair of Vivos and gradually build up my foot strength that way with running in my trainers and starting to wear Vivos for everyday use to build up foot strength and then eventually transfer that to the gym and the trails.
I felt scared being all alone as a female on the trails. I didn’t feel that way when I ran on the roads in populated places. The siren feature on the Apple Watch Ultra didn’t make me feel safer because I doubt anyone would be able to hear it where I was at. I think the siren would be great for a woman being alone in Chicago if I felt unsafe, and maybe as a woman on the road, but I don’t think it’s helpful on the trails.
I questioned myself as to why I stopped running. I don’t know the answer even now.
It felt so good to be outdoors on the trails. I could’ve gone further, but I didn’t.
I didn’t respect the time of the workout. I went further. I’m a striver. Of course I went further and didn’t respect the time.
Training based on time vs. distance feels different. Anything I’ve ever trained for in endurance has been based on mileage. The training program I’m doing is based on time spent running and is not focused on distance.
I ran fasted, and it was perfect for me. I’ve been doing intermittent fasting to help me lose weight. I ran fasted, and it went well. I felt good. As I grow my mileage/time base, I’ll eventually need to add a nutrition and hydration component, and I’m not sure what that will look like on a lower carb lifestyle.
I need to learn how to use my Apple Watch Ultra. I don’t have a clue how to use any of the fancy features it comes with. So, I need to do some research to see how to actually use the trail GPS features for longer runs. Better to learn how to use it first on shorter runs so that I’m used to using it for when I do go on longer runs.
I depend on my husband to lead me around the trails when we go hiking. I’m afraid to go on trails I haven’t been on before because I feel that I have no sense of direction. I don’t know if that’s actually true or if it’s a left-over story I tell myself from a trauma of being lost somewhere at some point in time. But my husband wasn’t there to lead me around today. I took a trail we’d hiked before so I knew my way, and I didn’t get lost. I am afraid of being someplace I don’t know and getting lost.
I want to build a community of runners, walkers and hikers. I never appreciated the last time I had friends was based around like-minded activities. I miss that, but I don’t see a big trail running/hiking/walking community in my local area. So, I’m going to find those friends and build a community of runners, walkers and hikers.
I probably will never be fast. I’ve never been fast. I’m strong and resilient as ever, and I know I will try my darnedest to cross the finish line.
I need to pick a goal trail 5k race so I have something to shoot for and a goal to achieve with the trail running program I’m doing. I always do better with a goal to achieve in my life.
I’m coming back from a pretty big-for-me injury. I injured my lower back in February 2021. The pain first started with swimming. Then it went away after a few weeks. I thought I’d just thrown my back out from too much stress. Then, in March 2021, I was doing a resistance band workout and my lower back went to the point of pain that I’d never felt before.
In all my years of activity, I’ve never had an injury that took my breath away, caused me so much pain and incapacitated me for a year to where I was afraid to move because I was in so much pain.
I stopped moving for a year because I was so afraid of this pain. I did everything the medical professionals told me to do: physical therapy, get an x-ray, get 2 MRIs, get two steroid shots, stop moving, start moving again and lose weight.
I just couldn’t understand why my body betrayed me after being active for years and only ever suffering from three injuries and only one of those three injuries was extremely painful.
Oddly, all three injuries were on the right side of my body. My first injury was the ball of my right foot mostly near my big toe. I was doing a Jive exercise and I slammed my foot into the ground at the suggestion of my coach, and boom – injury. It made it hard to walk and to teach for a while. The injury was around for about a year, but it healed and it was gone. Second major injury was on my right calf and lower leg. I injured it running. It went away after about 6 months. The current injury has lasted over a year, but I’ve seen the pain reduce since the last steroid shot in December 2021. The injury is still there. My body can feel it in my lower back. I’m never comfortable sitting. This injury is something I’ve learned that I must accept and live with. I hope it will heal, but no one has given me a good outlook on that. The last doctor I saw was in March 2022 who told me I’d need a spinal fusion. He said we’d have to work on pain management and trying to make me as comfortable as possible. He recommended I start exercising again and lose 20 pounds.
I was 5 feet tall and 198 pounds at that point. Hearing I might need a spinal fusion got me moving again. Slowly I’ve built fitness back up, and every day I go a little further than before and I surprise myself. I still have the discomfort of the pain and the fear of the pain coming back at the intensity it was at. That shooting pain down my right leg was too much, and my body remembers that pain.
To build myself back up, I started vlogging for one of my YouTube channels with a little vlogger kit and my phone at a local park. The terrain was soft, it got me outside, it got me talking and being creative while I was “exercising.” I put exercising in quotes because it didn’t feel like exercise. I started doing it in March and it lasted until it got too hot outside for me to want to keep doing it. Eighty degrees is too hot for me, and in NWI, that means I stopped vlogging outside around the end of June.
The next step to rebuilding my fitness was going for walks along the beach with my husband. Sand was a soft terrain for me but it helped build up my core and leg strength without impact on my joints. We also started going into the water in July when the weather got warm. I would aqua jog in Lake Michigan or we’d take a walk along the beach where the ambient temperature was generally cooler than it was in the park.
I found my way to twelve step in all of this towards the end of July 2022. I started going to my recovery center and participating in their programs in very early August 2022. They had an outdoor cycling program going on, and I decided I’d try it. I was terrified of the back pain and potential discomfort, not to mention I hadn’t been on my road bike in years.
Cycling turned out to be a blast. I missed two rides between when I started in August and the last ride of the year which was end-of-October 2022.
Cycling didn’t bother my back too much the same way aqua jogging and walking on soft surfaces in the park or beach walking didn’t bother it too much either. In fact, cycling seemed to help it.
I started doing yoga again as well on Apple Fitness + in August. I started to build myself a workout routine that was low impact and had cardio and core and some easy strength.
In September 2022, I did a duathlon. It was supposed to be run-bike-run, and I thought I couldn’t run at the time. I knew I could bike the distance of the race: 12 miles. I also knew I could walk the run portions of the race. The first leg of walking was 1.5 miles. The last leg of the walking was 3 miles. I knew I could do all three things, so I challenged myself and signed myself and my husband up for the duathlon. We did it! We crossed the finish line together. We were the last finishers. That didn’t matter to me. I’ve been the last place finisher at many, many, many races back when I participated in running races, triathlons, and cycling events.
I was so excited to see myself progress and cross the finish line nearly pain free, that I used it as motivation and kept on going.
My recovery center has a gym with dumbbells, kettlebells, TRXs, boxing bag, barbell weights and some cardio machines like ellipticals, rowers, stationary bikes, and treadmills.
The first workout I did was mix of boxing and TRX. I walked out after my first workout with very little pain. Workouts have increased in intensity and I have added resistance training to my workout with dumbbells. I even jump sometimes.
Impact. Jumping. I had to stop doing anything like after I first injured my back.
Jumping got me thinking about running again.
I asked myself if I could run again?
In October my husband and I started going for hikes and they have increased with distance and intensity.
This got me thinking even more and I asked myself if maybe I could run again, but do it it on the trails this time. Running is high impact, but it would be much softer to do on the trails.
Then I bought Apple Watch Ultra to challenge myself. If I bought this watch, could I train to do an ultra trail race, like a 50k?
I bet I could.
The watch came in and we’ve been getting used to one another.
This whole time, I’ve been avoiding running.
That fear of the old pain is still there.
This blog keeps me accountable. If I put out into the world that I’m doing X thing, then I tend to keep showing up and doing X thing.
So, I’m holding myself accountable today for trying to go outside and walk/run on a trail near my home. Want to join me virtually? I’m not sure exactly how virtual walk/run trail workouts work, but I do know that I can post my training plan on this blog, and people can follow me. I can share my workouts on here, and post my feelings and you can follow me here and on my social media platforms.
So, here is the first part of my recovery center building program planning and also the details on holding myself accountable for eventually running.
I’m starting with a trail walk/run because I think that will be easier for me than just flat out trying to run the whole time. I’m starting easy and will work my way up. I may not be near a 50k trail distance right now, and my plan is to walk/run that distance, but I hope I blow myself away with my strength and resilience like I have this entire back pain journey that’s been going on since February 2021 and is nearing the two year mark. Yuck.
I may have to live with the pain my body feels. However, if you made it to the end of this post, you will have read my physical recovery story of my body and see i’ve built my body back over time with various methods and that I’m going strong.
You’ll also be reading this line right here: I’m scared of the pain.
I’ve been saying for a week now that I’m going to do a trail walk/run race. My first goal race is a 5k walk/run. But I’ve yet to go out for the walk/run.
If you’d like to post virtually about your experience, email me at sarathlete@hotmail.com and let me know you’re interested and I’ll create a space for other like minded people to join me.
Something else I’m very bad at is social media. It’s the social part of social media I don’t do so well with. But I’d love to build up a community of like-minded people who are interested in doing some group runs both in-person and virtually. If you live in Northwest Indiana, and you’re interested in guided trail walk/runs or hikes, email me and let me know.
I’ll build the space once I have interest both in-person and virtually.
My workout today is going to be walk 5 minutes and walk run 30 seconds for 5 intervals on the trails over by Bailly Homestead/Chelburg Farms in Porter, Indiana. I’m really scared of the running. But I’m going to try it and see how it goes. I’m hoping the pain won’t come back and be as bad as I fear it was in the beginning when I first injured myself.
Sometimes I wonder if my body holds onto the intensity of the pain to keep me from re-injuring myself. I remember how much pain I was in, and the fear of that pain holds me back. Yet, when I exercise, I don’t feel any pain at all. No shooting pain. Sure I’m a little stiff in my lower back, but nothing like before.
I’ll post tomorrow about how this goes. Worst case scenario is that I try running for 30 seconds, discover the pain, and I go back to my car and drive home. I can always stop and go home. I can always walk it if running is too much. I’ve got this, in some form. I have to get out and try though. I hope you’ll join me in person or virtually down the road!
Let’s build a recovery community of like-minded athletes!
Have a good run, walk, hike, bike ride, whatever you do. Get out there and move!
You build consistency. You learn to be kind to yourself daily. You build your life from the ground up. You never have to work a day in your life in an arduous way and you build a life of no dread because you care for your mind, body and spirit daily. These are some of the greatest lessons I’ve learned in my life to date.
The lesson really started with ballet when I was 6 years old. Dance taught me that practicing something every day for three decades got me to a point where I was at the top of my craft. I never had to work a day in my life at it because I worked everyday of my life at it. It was my profession and my hobby and my passion for a very long time. Until it didn’t serve me anymore. When it was done, I walked away from it, and started to build new routines and a new life around new things. The lesson of building consistency went with me and served me well in the next chapter of my life when I was a total beginner and didn’t have dance to fall back on anymore.
When I left the dance world, I only had one thing in my life. It was hard to find new loves and passions because I only had nourished that one thing. I felt a huge void in my life when I chose to leave dance because I had nothing to replace it. That was another invaluable lesson that I learned: nurture many things in your life, not just one. It’s the adage of not putting all of your eggs in one basket.
You’ve seen glimmers and glimpses of my journey to replace dancing and teaching on this blog if you look at older posts. Most of the activities I did then, I kept doing over the last decade, and I still do many of them to this very day.
The differential in the equation is time. I’m not a novice at any of them anymore.
Here’s what replaced dance for me:
Fine Art
Food as fuel
Fitness like weight lifting and endurance sports
Going to more live cultural events such as ballets, operas, symphonies, musicals and plays
Writing
Seeing my life as an experiment and constantly testing and trying new things
Entrepreneurship
Minimalism, Essentialism and Intentionalism: Minessententionalism
Plants
My new hobbies are all somewhere in this blog.
Fine Art
I saw my start of art class when I wrote about my Wine and Canvas adventures. That launched a decade of a love of doing art. Drawing, Zentangle, pastels, stained glass. I enjoy art journaling, water colors, origami, photography, videography.
Food as fuel
You saw my love of food as fuel as I wandered into veganism and out of veganism and into got into growing my own food. I’ve also tried different manners of food as fuel in trying out organic foods and different diets like keto, low carb, intermittent fasting. I also struggled for a long time with emotional eating and got out of balance with food so that I could come back into balance with food.
Fitness
I’ve written about triathlons on this blog. I’ve explored marathons, cycling, swimming, hiking, duathlon, yoga, sitting on my butt, and injury and have come back from injury. I’ve learned to enjoy weight lifting. I love to move, and that has always been at the center of this blog.
Attending live cultural events
I got into this more heavily in 2016. I’ve gone to cultural events since I was a child. It started with going to the symphony and ballet every year with my mother, and the love expanded beyond her whether she was in my life or not. My husband even started going with me to some of these events and developing his own love of live cultural events on his own.
Writing
I’ve always had an interest in writing. I’ve always been good at it. It was one of my best subjects in high school and college. Writing and public speaking were my two best subjects in college, and dance too. Even though I didn’t go to school for any of those things. If I didn’t love to write, I wouldn’t have started a blog. Sure, life got in the way of regular posting in 2015, and I had to take a break. But writing for me has been a constant, whether it’s blogging, journaling, doing morning pages, writing scripts for YouTube videos.
Seeing my life as an experiment and trying and testing new things
You can see many experiments that I started and failed at and repeated on this blog. This is present in the blog itself- an experiment recording my life as I go; my life on the move.
Entrepreneurship
When I first started this blog, I saw it as something I could build and scale. I thought about writing, yoga, video, the sky was the limit. Life got in the way for a long time, and I wasn’t present on this platform. But I never stopped being an entrepreneur. I launched an art business that failed. I launched a life coaching business that failed, but I’m still trying to do at saradaltoncoaching.com. I’ve kept sarathlete.com going even when I wasn’t posting. I launched a plant business at therareplanthaus.com and sold tropical plants. I came back to sarathlete, and I still have the plant business and the life coaching business going. I want to start a photography and video business. I was an ballroom dance coach for years for private business and as an independent coach. Working a W-2 job as I tried to build business endeavors crushed my soul to the point where I couldn’t do W-2 work anymore. Doing W-2 work for so long taught me that I don’t fit in there and that I can never go back to for my own inner peace and sanity.
Minessententionalism
I have always believed at my core that I am a minimalist, essentialist and intentionalism. Living my life in a way that aligns with my beliefs of the cross between living a meaningful life with what is essential and with great intention and having minimal things in my life. I created a word around it as a result of how much I love living my life this way. It’s simple. It serves me well.
Plants
Plants brought me back to the land of the living. When I wanted to die because I thought life was no longer worth living based on the realization of what had happened to me and finally figuring out why I felt so awful, plants were the first thing that made me want to restart my life. They were living things that required nurturing, but not a ton of nurturing. When my in-laws, husband and parents abandoned me and rejected me and the COVID-19 pandemic was going on and so much of what I loved to do was put on hold, this was a brand new activity I found on my own and nurtured and developed. I kept an orchid alive! I built a business around selling plants. I got on video and talked about plants. I built terrariums as home decor pieces in my house. Living things made me want to live again. I’m so grateful for that.
Final Thoughts:
Dance taught me to do one thing and do it really well over and over and over and over. Dance taught me mastery and consistency. Dance also showed me that I when I stopped wanting to try to fit into the world of dance and rejection came that I couldn’t do it anymore, and that I had no other activities to fill the void. I learned to be a beginner in my life at so many things. I had to rebuild my life. The activities that I started nurturing and was a beginner at, I am no longer a beginner at anymore. I learned to explore new things, not put my eggs in one basket and nurture many things daily with the consistency I’d built from dance so that my passions and purpose aligned and I do these passions every day so I never have to work a day in my life because I work every day of my life a little at a time!
I have gripes about my current recovery center, yet, at the same time, there are aspects of it that align with me.
What works for me (and these not in priority order):
Art class
Outdoor cycling night
Music lessons
Outdoor hikes once a month on a Saturday
Yearly duathlon race
Recovery coaching
What doesn’t work for me (and these are not in priority order):
Faith night that involves g(G)od being shoved down my throat and feeling excluded from faith night because I don’t want to hear about g(G)od.
Art class with no guided instruction that doesn’t go deep or allow enough to time to do long-term projects and dig my teeth into something.
Art class that is usually something to do with acrylic paint, and that’s about it.
Feeling forced to eat at art class because people look at me like I’m crazy for not wanting to eat high carb foods and they don’t understand not wanting to break my fast.
Art class is loud and people are so chatty and it’s never a quiet, restful experience.
The person that leads the hike talks and talks and talks and talks. It gets old when you want to hike and you don’t want to listen to someone talk at you for half an hour.
There’s no training program for any of the fitness activities that are offered.
What’s on the calendar isn’t truly what’s going on at the recovery center. Lack of organization drives me nuts.
Cycling night was surface level with no organization or planned or supported rides. The rules of the road are never followed.
What I would change or add to build my own recovery center (not in priority order):
I would offer a combination of virtual and in-real-life experiences. Virtual for people not with me and and IRL planned experiences for people that live near me and can participate in real life.
Planned rides that build and follow some kind of training plan.
I’d have a training plan that gets people ready for the duathlon that the recovery center hosts so that the people that do attend the recovery center can be a part of the race. My husband and I were the only people who participated in the race who also attend events at the recovery center.
I’d charge for membership. When people pay money, they have higher levels of commitment because they are paying for the experience. I believe having a place that is completely free is wonderful, but I think people would commit more and be even more involved and would show up more if they had to pay for membership.
Guided art classes that focused on working on a longer-term project each week.
IRL athletic programs and virtual ones targeted to people who are endurance athletes or who want to try endurance sports and not targeted to just recreational athletes. This would include cycling and running – things we can do IRL or virtually and talk about how things went for us afterwards.
Community night that focused on spirituality and faith that didn’t shove g(G)od down people’s throats. There’d be no bible involved. There’d be no mention of g(G)od. It would be more based on meditation, gratitude and gathering as a community of like-minded people with a shift of the conversation to talk about how to contribute to society and be a good person without talking about the Lord. It would focus on community and helping one another out and building a recovery family without even having to mention g(G)od.
Quiet hikes IRL and virtual hikes. Hiking for the sake of hiking and not having someone talk your ear off in the process.
I’d have the correct messaging and a consistent message throughout my center.
Planned field trips into the community I do live in and to Chicago.
Culture club. Field trips that are IRL to meet up and go visit Chicago and local places near me to see plays, operas, ballets, symphonies and also do other fun stuff like architectural tours or walking tours. Maybe plans to go out to eat afterwards and a chance to enjoy each other’s company.
I don’t think I’d offer recovery coaching unless I could hire someone else who is trained properly to do it. I think recovery coaching is invaluable, but I don’t know that I could be the one to do it because I don’t have the experience or the training or the desire to act as a coach for someone for their life.
Final Thoughts:
So, if I build it, will people come? I don’t know. That’s part of my fear. This would be a for-profit recovery program that people would have to pay a membership fee for. It would be for people like me who like to dig deep, are introverted, who enjoy nature and endurance sport, are culture buffs and who aren’t religious. That’s me in a nutshell. I have a hard time finding people who are just like me. Sometimes, I don’t believe that they exist. I’ve been told that I don’t fit in and that it’s not ok to be who I truly am by my family of origin and my in-laws. I go so many places alone and by myself because I don’t know that many people who have the same interests as me. Yet, I know they are out there. I hear them speaking in podcast episodes I listen to and YouTubers I watch. I know people like me who are into what I’m into exist in the world, but I have such a hard time finding them, and I don’t want to keep struggling. I want to find them. I want to build a community of like-minded individuals.
So here it is: I’m going to start building it piece by piece and see what happens. I’ll start small and work my way up. In building any business endeavor, part of the challenge putting yourself out there, testing to see what works and what doesn’t and continuing to keep trying until you find what does work. It’s easy to criticize an existing program, say what I like and don’t like and what I’d change, but it’s another thing to put it into practice.
So here we go. Keep an eye out on the blog for upcoming events and community invitations. I’m going to build something big, and see what happens. See if people show up.
Yes, girl!
Sarathlete
P.S. Email me at sarathlete@hotmail.com if you’re interested. I’d love to hear from you, your ideas and feedback and to know if you’d be interested in being a part of my community I’m going to build.
A Minessententionalist is a hybrid word I made up for someone who identifies as a cross between a minimalist, essentialist and intentionalist.
I even Googled the word I made up just for fun to see if it existed because Google must validate everything, right? Well, it kind of does.
Check out my four screen shots for Minessententionality, Minessententionalism, Minessententionalist and Minessententional showing zero results in Google.
Where the lines draw out for me when it comes to what I chose to bring into my life, is someplace between minimalism, essentialism and intentionalism. So, I get Minessententionalism. Hard to spell and say: Min-essen-tention-al-ism! But hey, the word Sarathlete is hard for other people to spell and say, too.
Minessententionalism: the minimal things I own or bring into my life with intention behind them which are essential to my me, life and my views.
What are some things (people, places, items, experiences) that are minessententionial to you?
Here’s my list of 5 items/experiences I’ve recently brought into my life, and how they are intentional, essential and minimal to me:
Apple Watch Ultra:
How it is Intentional: Getting back on track for my fitness goals as a come back from an injury and rebuild my body. I want to be very intentional with my training. A watch that will last me on long runs that can track my sleep and get me where I need to go without having to be tethered to a phone is exactly what I need.
How it is Essential: Movement is essential to me and an extremely important part of my life before, during and after recovery.
How it is Minimal: One watch. Simple. No more distractions from my phone. One device that can do it all and not leave me dependent on a potentially distracting device.
Heated blanket:
How it is Intentional: I needed a heating pad because my old one broke. I’m always cold. I found a heated throw and decided to try it as an alternative to a heating pad. Now I’m always warm when I’m under it, helps increase blood flow for my entire body which aids in muscle recovery for athletic performance, and it takes the place of having a heating pad.
How it is Minimal: Solves two problems for me as one item.
How it is Essential: When it’s that time of the month, a heating pad is essential for pain management. The last heating pad that I had broke, and I needed to buy a new one for myself.
Steam mop with reusable steam mop heads:
How it is Intentional: I wanted a way to lessen my carbon footprint. I wanted to throw less stuff away. I want to do my part to saving the environment. Previously, I was using products that were one-time use and then throw them away for cleaning my floors.
How it is Minimal: Less waste is coming in and going out overall.
How it is Essential: To me, having a clean house essential to living. My house needs to be clean. When I say “my house”, I say it collectively and am referring my house as my body, mind and spirit. However, for the sake of this blog post, let’s roll with the physical house I live in. Clean floors are apart of having a clean house. Bonus: I get a deep clean with steam, without the nasty cleaning product smell that I had before. This change was a win for both the environment and a win for my health.
Show tickets to see Don Carlos at Lyric Opera and A Christmas Carol at The Goodman:
How it is Intentional: I have something to look forward to doing. It feeds my mind and soul, shows me new things and I learn a lot.
How it is Minimal: I am gifting myself experiences and not stuff. Experiences keep me going. They feed my soul.
How it is Essential: Live cultural experiences like dance, plays, musicals, operas, symphonies or even movies are essential to my mental health and well-being because they bring me to a place of peace and bring me so much joy. The joy of what is to come gives me something to look forward to, I find peace at the event and there’s peace and meaning and feeling after the event is over.
YouTube fireplaces and other winter scenes to watch and listen to while I write
How it is Intentional: I want to create a space that I can write in that is cozy and makes me want to write for both my work and my life. I want to create Hygge in my home.
How it is Minimal: It’s on my TV. It’s ad free because I can’t stand YouTube ads. It takes up no space beyond the TV I have and internet connection I use.
How it is Essential: The fireplace creates a cozy space for me to write. Writing is part of my work and life. We all need a space.
Final Thoughts:
I thought it would be fun to exemplify some of the overlaps between the three components of Minesssententionalism. There’s a lot of overlap between the three categories of intentionalism, minimalism and essentialism.
And just for fun, we have a new word mashup along the way. You know, Straight No Chaser is coming to the area in December. That would align with Minessententionalism and me! Who doesn’t love A capella music and a good mashup?
I wanted to share that I feel guilty about not being able to post more than this post.
So, I’m posting this tiny post, and then getting on with my day.
My brain is fried, my body is fried, my spirit is fried.
Sometimes we need to take a pause.
The goal of doing something every day is a hard one to achieve because we are human, and humans aren’t perfect.
Deviation from what is normal is good because we come back refreshed.
Last night, I went to see the movie “Singin’ In The Rain”. The stars aligned for me last night, and it was one hour and forty-three minutes of pure bliss. I saw music, singing, acting and dancing on the big screen with barely any people to irritate me whilst sitting in a heated, leather recliner. I was so happy and giddy afterwards. That is therapy for my soul. The things I love that make me truly relax: the arts, no people and sheer comfort. Wow!
ALL of those conditions aligning at the same time rarely happen.
When they do align, I realize that I need a break.
Today’s dose of wisdom is to take a break. Take the rest day and don’t feel guilty for resting and enjoying yourself.
Have a great day. I hope you pause and relish in the break and do something you truly enjoy. I hope all of the stars align for you and whatever it is that makes you happy!
Quick disclaimer: None of the products or apps mentioned in this post are sponsored or affiliated with me in any way. They are all products and apps I’ve purchased with my own money that I enjoy using.
I received an Apple Watch Ultra with the beige trail loop on Friday 11/4/22. I started wearing it on Monday 11/7/22. I had trouble getting the watch hooked up to AT&T’s cellular plan. If you ever have this happen to you with Apple Watch and a cellular plan with AT&T that’s not new, call for support and ask to speak to a real person. This was a nightmare when I tried to transfer my second ever cellular version of the Apple Watch from Series 3 to Series 6. This time I tried to find a solution on my own, but I remembered the hours of frustration I spent trying to figure it out on my own and had to speak to a representative at AT&T anyways.
The problem: AT&T doesn’t activate your ESIM a/k/a EID when they send you the watch if you order it online. You do have to deactivate AT&T’s NumberSync on their website. You also have to call and speak to a representative because NumberSync doesn’t work for Apple Watch on the AT&T site. You must set up cellular for your Apple Watch in the Apple Watch App on your iPhone. If the ESIM isn’t activated on your Watch when AT&T sends you the watch then you will get an error message when you try to set up Cellular. The workaround is to call and have support activate the ESIM on your watch and wait with them on the phone to make sure the cellular feature is working on the Apple Watch. To do this, you’ll need to turn off your phone, use another device you can make calls on and have the representative on the phone call your cell phone number and see if it comes through on your Apple Watch (without your phone being on). Then, you are set!
This was a big pain point for me because I suffered with the frustration of not being able to do it on my own. Go figure! I had to ask for help, and that’s something I struggle with anytime.
So, my gripe with setting up cellular on the watch is a gripe about AT&T and not about the actual watch itself.
The watch has been great. Even though it wasn’t set up with cellular, I did have it on over the weekend and took my phone with me so I could use it tethered to the phone since it wasn’t capable of working completely on its own yet.
Likes and loves so far:
I like the night mode. I use it during the day so there’s less brightness. I use night mode during the day to cut down on blue light. Night mode makes the watch less interesting to always be distracted by. It’s a nice option to turning on theatre mode as a way to not have the screen constantly on and being bright and distracting to me.
I like the bigger screen for my eyes. I can make the font bigger, and it’s just easier to see things on the larger 49mm screen vs. the former 44mm screen I’m coming from.
Battery life is great so far.
Stat tracking has been awesome.
I like how light the Trail Loop watch band is. I had a silicone band on my previous watch. The Trail Loop band is very light and acts like a seatbelt keeping my watch firmly attached to my wrist so it doesn’t slide around. The silicone band wasn’t as comfortable as the Trail Loop. The slack that I tucked in always poked into my wrist and I never liked it.
Sleep tracking and wearing the watch over night was comfortable and I slept through the night without it waking me up. (I’m an insomniac and a very light sleeper and fear anything waking me up during the night. I didn’t wear apple watch to track sleep for years because I was terrified it would wake me up, but it didn’t!).
Athlytic app. I’ve never done much with the statistics I’ve gotten from the 5 years of owning Apple Watches in the past. I like the Athlytic app so far and I’m looking forward to integrating its scores based on data analysis on how I should train every day using things like sleep analysis and heart rate variability.
Dislikes and complaints so far:
The color of the Trail Loop band. I chose the beige/yellow/light blue one, and it’s really ugly. I struggled to pick out a Watch band I really liked. None of the options were really what I wanted.
The Watch feels like it was made for men only. Yes, you can wear it as a woman, but there’s nothing feminine about the watch on the wrist of a woman, in my opinion. The watch size is a plus, but it’s also a negative. It’s huge and really sits prominently on my wrist. With small wrists and forearms, the watch really stands out and that’s a negative for me. I’m not a fashionista, but I do like having a watch that complements me and whatever I’m wearing and isn’t the only thing people see when they look at me. Like, “Wow, that’s a big Watch!”. That is what my husband keeps telling me.
The Trail Loop looks like a seatbelt. The aesthetics of this watch band are a negative, even though I like the feel of the Trail Loop Band.
The Trail Loop isn’t waterproof. I like to swim, so this was a struggle for me when I purchased the Watch. I’ve never had a watch band from Apple that didn’t dry instantly. I’m keeping my silicone band from my Apple Watch Series 6 so that I can wear it in the water when I do swim. However, for daily things like doing the dishes or showering, the band gets wet and doesn’t dry instantly.
The Trail Loop could stain. I’ve never had a watch band that could get truly stained because it was a fabric. My husband made spaghetti and sauce the other night. I noticed I was being extra careful when I was washing out the sauce pan to make sure I didn’t get tomato sauce on my watch band. I’ve NEVER had to worry about stains with any of the other watch bands in the past.
The watch face feels heavy on my wrist. I miss the lighter version of the regular Apple watch.
I had to purchase a third party app to do anything with data analysis that I do get from the Watch. This is a complaint about any Apple Watch I’ve ever had. If you want to build a weight workout, you need a third party app. If I want to get suggestions about my training based on the stats the watch provides, I have to purchase a third party app. I like having all things in one place, on one platform and one ecosystem. I don’t like having a bunch of different apps to deal with. I wish Apple Watch (not just Ultra) gave me suggestions for my training and suggested ways to track my training without having to purchase third party apps in order to do so. The workaround for this is to use Apple Fitness Plus, which I have and use on occasion. But if I want to track weight workouts, see the next lift I’m going to do on my watch, then I need to buy a third party app to do so. I use Fitbod for these weight workouts. I use MySwimPro for swimming workouts. I use Apple Fitness Plus for yoga workouts.
Things I’m looking forward to trying and things I’d like to see in future Apple Watch Ultras:
My first trail run! I got this watch so the battery life would last me for a trail ultra marathon I’m planning on running. So, yes, in a sense, I got the Apple Watch Ultra to motivate me to do an ultra trail marathon. I’m excited about this, and a little scared given the injury I’m coming back from. I ran a marathon and have done other distance events like triathlons and duathlons and cycling distance events, but it’s been a long time since my last marathon (11 years)!
I’m not a diver or skier so those things on the ultra watch mean nothing to me. I paid for the trail running features for both trail running and long distance hiking.
I would love to see a future watch built for an Ironman athlete and a matching watch band to boot. Doing an Ironman distance triathlon is a goal of mine. I’d love a watch that could support and was made for all triathletes for swim, bike and run and has a band to match with the waterproofness of the silicone band or like the old Nike Watch Band that was breathable, but that had the comfort and velcro option that doesn’t dig into my wrist like the Trail Loop has.
I’d love to see a lighter version of the watch for women (i.e. a version that weighs less).
I’d love to see a watch that could integrate into your daily life and outfits that doesn’t look so masculine.
So, those are my updates so far and my review, likes and dislikes about Apple Watch Ultra after wearing it for less than a week.
More reviews to come after I do go for my first trail run and also just use the watch more and more day-to-day now that cellular is activated. I’m looking to use my phone less and the Watch more, and I haven’t had a chance to test that yet. That’s another thing I”m looking forward to trying along with my first trail run.
I had one of those lightbulb-on moments at my recovery coaching session yesterday.
Here’s the conversation:
Sara: My husband said I put him in the middle of him and his family.
Recovery coach: No, you didn’t put him there. Your husband put himself there.
Sara: But my husband said I put him there.
Recovery coach: Your husband said that, but you didn’t actually put him in the middle of you and your in-laws. Your husband put himself in between you and his family.
Wow.
Lights flashing. Sirens going off. Fireworks exploding in my head.
My recovery coach was right. Yet, the concept was one I really struggled to grasp because of what happened to me in my past.
I’m going to be on the lookout this week for blame that I have taken on as “being my fault” and try and determine if the event was my fault, or if I perceive it as being my fault.
When you’re told your bad and that you’re not enough or not good enough by your family of origin, for me that’s my grandmother, mother and father, then you tend to take those beliefs with you into your adult life. I remember many times where both of my parents told me I wasn’t good enough or that I was a disappointment to them because I didn’t live up to their expectations. What a terrible thing to do to a developing mind. They did it to me because their parents did it to them.
Alcoholism, with or without the substance, truly is a family disease. Alcoholism without substance abuse is called dysfunction in the ACA framework.
So, when my husband told me I put him in the middle of him and his siblings and parents, he believed that to be true. My coach had to drill this into me that it was not the truth. I didn’t do that. My husband put himself there.
What else am I carrying around from my past that I believe to be true that actually wasn’t my fault in reality? I’m going to notice and figure it out!
So, I’ve written several posts about my marriage and its current state.
In yesterday’s post, I was ready to cast off my marriage. My husband knows how I feel about our marriage. He has known for a while, since June 2022, that the marriage itself will not last. We’ve laid our cards on the table regarding how we both feel and what has happened to us and to each other individually over the years to know that the marriage is irrepairable.
When I say I want the marriage over, it’s not a revelation I’m just coming to.
But something shifted in me yesterday.
I went downstairs after I was done journaling and then writing my blog post. I was writing and synthesizing my experiences for 6 hours yesterday. I thought I had it all worked out. I was going to cast off both my husband and my marriage.
He convinced me otherwise.
We talked, again.
Sometimes it seems like we talk so much and say change is coming and we end up in the same place in about 6-8 weeks: angry at one another and me expressing my frustrations with him and him saying he’ll change and then he changes a little and we are right back to where we are.
Yesterday was different.
I told him that I thought we should do things separately now, and live our lives separately while we continue to live in the same house as we pay down debt and get things in order for when we do divorce and separate our lives.
This wasn’t news to him about the impending divorce of a legal marriage between two people. We know we will move on from one another.
But something was different. Yesterday he expressed how he was feeling and asked for what he wanted.
He was fighting for me.
He’s a very emotionally unavailable man. He doesn’t express his emotions hardly ever. He pushes his feelings down and doesn’t deal with them or express them.
I tried to push him away and cast him out of my life because sometimes it’s just too much and in moments of anger and rage, all I can see is my anger and rage. I don’t often see the friendship we have or the love that we do have for one another. The mutual respect and admiration we have for one another that has evolved over the years.
He does see that more clearly than I can see it sometimes.
There’s an 11 year age gap between us, in case you haven’t read my other posts. That age gap matters here. He has more life experience than me, and his wisdom benefitted us both yesterday when I was ready to throw it all away because all I could see was my anger and rage, and his wisdom won me over.
He said, “I know the marriage is over. I used to hope it would come back, but I know it’s over and that one day you will leave and probably move out of the country. But that doesn’t mean we have to lose each other as friends. We’ve become one another’s best friend. I like doing activities with you now, and I don’t want to lose that. I don’t want to lose you. I don’t want that. I don’t want to live in this house with you and not speak to one another.”
He’s never fought for me like that or spoken quite that emphatically before.
I think my age, even though I often identify as an old soul, holds me back in our friendship and relationship, and I can’t always see what he sees because I haven’t lived as long as he has lived. I don’t have the gift of that much perspective in life to see what REALLY matters at the end of the day. He can see beyond his anger at me in a way I can’t always see things.
I’m grateful that he brought it to my attention yesterday. He talked me off of the cliff of throwing everything we’ve built over the years and our friendship out of my life. At the end of the day I apologized to him for treating him like crap and for wanting to just chuck him out of my life like that. I apologized for being so mean and thanked him for his perspective.
Being in recovery and going through it together is an emotional roller coaster at times. Sometimes there are moments of great anger. Other times there are moments where you feel like you’re getting so much better, making so much progress and you’re never going backwards in time to your old ways again. Sometimes there are hiccups and you bounce back to your old life and ways of behaving that used to serve you but you don’t stay there as long as you used to because it doesn’t serve you or control you anymore.
So, he asked me if we could keep trying. When he stated he didn’t want to lose me, I could see that I mattered to him in a way I hadn’t seen before. He’d never expressed his feelings to me of not wanting to lose me. I didn’t believe I mattered or our friendship mattered that much to him. I didn’t realize how much he enjoyed our time that we do spend together as friends.
We enjoy each other more now and we spend more time together. We’ve settled into being companions and each other’s best friend. We both know the marriage we had isn’t coming back.
I was watching Brenè Brown’s Atlas of the Heart show on HBOMax. I’ve seen it before, but I wanted to go back and rewatch it. There are multi-language speakers in the audience of her show that talk about how language affects the words of emotion and how the English language lacks words for emotions. Like, when I say my husband and I love each other, it’s a different kind of love than we had when we first met and when we got married 10 years ago in April 2012. The love we have for one another now has evolved to a friendship-type of love, but it goes deeper than that. It’s not romantic love anymore. It goes deeper than friendship-love, yet all we have to describe it is the word love in the English language. There are other languages that have many words in their vocabulary to describe the different kinds of love. But English is pretty limited. One word like love can have so many different meanings. Without the right language, how do we communicate our emotions properly?
I think I get confused in my own marriage about love. The word marriage, or union or partner. That is confusing to me too. Another example is marriage or wife or husband. The language around those words has changed in meaning over the years. The original Minimalists, Joshua Fields Milburn and Ryan Nicodemus both have life partners that they refer to as their wives or spouses, yet, they always say they aren’t legally married to their chosen life partners. They always use the words wife or spouse to refer to their partners because it’s easier than saying my fiancé or my girlfriend.
It changes the way I think about the word wife, husband, partner, friend and marriage. My husband and I were the same way as Josh and Ryan and their partners/spouse/wives. We’ve been legally “married” for 10 years, but we’ve been truly “married”, or together as partners, for 18 years and have never been apart for more than a few months of separation in 2010. We called one another boyfriend and girlfriend, then fiancé, then exes, then friends, then fiancé again, then spouses, but now what? Married but friends? The words we have available to us don’t really help to define what we’ve become to one another. Even when we do divorce, we COULD still live together and have it be like we are still married. So, what would be the point in divorcing?It’s so odd. We are more than surface-level friends, but not lovers. We are best friends, but our love for one another goes deeper than that. I guess you could call us companions. Yet none of those words really describe our situation, our “marriage” or present situation, as to whatever the word “marriage” is defined as these days. There must be another word for two people who deeply admire each other but aren’t romantically involved anymore. What’s the word for that? It makes it hard to define, and sometimes can be really confusing when you’re the one struggling to come up with words to make sense of what your relationship has evolved into now and you don’t have the right words to express it because there isn’t a word to help you label your situation and say, “ok, this is what I have with this person now.”
The words may not matter in every situation, but when you’re looking for answers and trying to express how you feel and what’s coming up for you, words DO matter. The right words matter when you’re communicating how you feel to another person.
So, we told one another how we both felt as best we could. We agreed to keep going on as “best friends”. We are going to keep figuring things out and spending time together. As much as I want to cast the fighting and the old marriage out of my life, I can’t cast out my feelings for my best friend.
If you read my post about Monster and dogs and how they love you unconditionally and how I haven’t found that in people yet, I was wrong. I did find that in a person. I found it with my husband. No matter what, this man accepts me for who I am, purple hair and all. He accepts I’m shy and quiet and he’s never tried to change me at my core. Same is true for me with him. He drives me crazy, but I’ve never tried to change the person he is at his core. I may not love his need to hold onto everything he owns, but I’ve also never given him an ultimatum to get rid of his stuff or just disrespected his wishes and gotten rid of his stuff that I see little value in. I accept him for who he is, stuff and all.
Sometimes my anger and rage and the age difference we have gets in the way. Yesterday his wisdom saved us. He got me to see past my anger and rage and he showed me I mattered to him and that he didn’t want to see what our relationship has evolved into end. While we don’t have words to describe exactly where our relationship is right now, it is still a relationship even though it’s not the proper definition of the word.
I laid down my anger and rage yesterday. We went out for a hike. We came back laughing, happy and regulated. Nature always helps us out. Movement helps soothe us, align us and reset and re-sync us. We go from dysregulated and dysfunctional and move back to happy and best friends.
Recovery has been filled with highs and lows. Sometimes I feel like I’m going crazy with rage and other times it leaves me feeling crazy with happiness and high on life.
And so, I’ll let it be. Whatever it is that we have now vs. what we had in the past and how it’s evolved and though I don’t have the right words for it, I’ll just let whatever “it’ is be.
sarathlete 