Hear Me in the Harmony

The Greek word for “return” is nostos.  Algos means “suffering.”  So nostalgia is the suffering caused by an unappeased yearning to return.
— from Ignorance, by Milan Kundera

We’re coming up on the tenth anniversary of my hearing loss at the end of this month, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how my life has changed as a result.  I expect a series of posts on the topic over the next couple of weeks.

Things I miss:

falling asleep to the sound of the rain on the roof

the sound of my arms sluicing through the water when I swim

listening to the radio on a long night car trip, hearing it slowly start to fade out as you head out of range

being able to tell whether a baby is laughing or crying just from the noise (without seeing the baby)

audiobooks

watching TV while doing anything else at the same time (needing captions means I have to be looking at the TV to follow what’s going on)

hearing and differentiating between many different languages while walking in a diverse area

listening to ball games on the radio

talking on the phone for hours

eavesdropping – not in any nefarious way, but just on the Metro or walking down the street

easily understanding children, who never want to look you in the face when they talk, and who do some of their best talking from the backseat

Heights by great men reached and kept
were not obtained by sudden flight,
but they, while their companions slept,
were toiling upward in the night.
— from Success, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Rules are not necessarily sacred; principles are.
–Franklin D. Roosevelt

For 30 days, starting tomorrow, I commit to doing the following things to feel better about myself and be healthier:

• In bed by 11, lights out at 11:30

• One dessert a week (and candy bars after lunch and Slurpees after WW on Tuesdays are desserts, Mel) – choose carefully

• Floss (I got out of this habit some time ago, and it’s time to get back into it)

• Four workouts a week, minimum, including at least one weight training session

• Wash my face nightly (I never do this, and I’ve never really needed to, but I suspect as I get older, it will pay off)

• Track everything, no excuses – if I can’t figure out the points BEFOREhand, I can’t eat it

Obviously, the hope is that these things become permanent habits, but I’m not going to look that far down the road.  One month.  That’s totally doable.

She loved the big, proud bodies of the women in the choir, and how they could swing, and how planted on the earth they seemed, with no apology for taking up so much space.  It was as if they assumed they were beautiful, and only needed to decide what color to dress the beauty in.
— from Blue Shoe, by Anne LaMott

Another week, another failure of . . . willpower? Determination? Giveafuck?  I don’t know.  But once again, when I weigh in tomorrow, I’m going to show a gain.  I hate this.  I hate myself like this.  And yet, given the choice between, say, chocolate or an apple for a snack, or going to the gym or coming home and screwing around on the internet, I nearly always choose chocolate and the internet.  I’m so tired of being tired of this.

I don’t know how to start making better choices.  I don’t know how to commit to something, for real, long term.  I mean, just DO it, is the short answer, but how?  I can string together days, even a week or two of good habits, but somehow I always get off track.

I think I need to have something to work for, besides just losing weight.  For example, I realized once Couch to 5k training ended weeks before the 5k, which isn’t until the 22nd of this month, that if I didn’t have something to keep me going, I would just quit running altogether.  So I signed up for a local series of 5k Fridays – a 5k each Friday evening in April!  That’s kept me running at least twice a week (though I haven’t done anything else).  I did the first one this past week and finished in 45:00 exactly.  For me, that’s amazing – my mile splits were 14:29, more than a minute faster than anything I did in training!

Once April’s over, though, I don’t have anything to work for.  I don’t think I’m interested in running longer distances – it’s all I can do to stave off boredom in a 5k.  I could maybe do a 10k, but that’s not what’s next for me, I’ve decided.  I think what I’m going to work towards is a sprint triathlon.  I first read about this mysterious thing on Big Life, Little Blog, and it planted a seed. I didn’t even know there was such a thing – I thought all triathlons were those crazy Ironman ones, where you swim 2.5 miles, ride 112 miles, and then your insane ass runs a marathon.  That would probably kill me.  But a sprint tri?  This one, in particular?  I can totally do that.

I can already swim 300 yards, bike 12 miles, and run a 5k.  The challenge for me will be doing those things in succession and in anything resembling a decent time.  Practically speaking, the biggest hurdle for me will be finding a pool and getting there regularly to train.  I love swimming, so much, and I’m excited to get back in the water.

So, I’m telling you here: I’m doing this.  I need to do some more research and figure out a training program, which I will post here, for accountability purposes.  Come September 17th, I’ll be able to call myself a triathlete!

Talk not of wasted affection, affection never was wasted,
If it enrich not the heart of another, its waters, returning
Back to their springs, like the rain, shall fill them full of refreshment;
That which the fountain sends forth returns again to the fountain.
— from Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow