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Day 1 - A New Counter

When I started this blog last August when I got laid off, I didn’t stop to think about how long it might last. I wasn’t sure if I’d get bored of it, and I was certainly hoping I’d get to Day 20 and be like “omg everything is fine! I found a new job with better benefits and higher pay” and drop this blog like a hot potato.

And then I hit a month. Two months. Three months. Triple digits. At each milestone, I panicked about the mistake I had made to title each post with the number of days I’d been unemployed. I was so scared about eventually reaching 200… 300… 365…

But finally, a job offer, and I reset the counter for a short 10 (ish?) days until I started the job. Then I reset it again on Day 1 of the new job, and decided the naming convention was once again Future Stephanie’s problem.

So far, she has figured out everything else I have thrown at her, so she seems fairly responsible. I trusted her abilities.

But yesterday on Day 131, as I wrote about brunch for today, Future Stephanie was starting to get fed up with Past Stephanie’s shenanigans. What happens if 13 years from now, I’m on Day 4,763 of this job with no professional demarcations to speak of?

Today at brunch, as we were talking about everything from the difference of drinking in our 20s compared to our late 30s/early 40s, women in politics, and Ina Garten, I mentioned my Grand Plan™️ of training for the Buffalo Half Marathon next year. I am telling everyone about it so people can hold me accountable. Even a simple “how is training going?” is enough to make me think twice about skipping a workout.

Anyway, it’s next May-ish, I think Memorial Day Weekend (to my sister - YES I KNOW THAT MEANS WE HAVE TO FIND A NEW TIME FOR SISTER WEEKEND), so I have almost exactly a year to train. I built in other races along the way - like the Sponge Candy 5k in September, and the 8k Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving - and will be doing cross-training like weights, yoga, swimming, and Zumba. The plan itself is *chefs kiss*. A solid plan that seems absolutely reasonable to do in the next year, and definitely not something an unhinged person would plan for.

But I bring it up and the conversation around the topic was, all things considered, pretty quick. A good chunk of the time was about how miserable running actually is. Then how I should document the training. YouTube or TikTok. And then, there it was - your blog! And we moved on.

Well, the conversation did. It obviously stuck with me, though, because here I am, about 2 hours after my first run, writing about training for a half marathon. And it was miserable. I struggled. I got back and chugged water and then felt like I was going to pass out. And to be quite honest, I ran very little of it because as it turns out, going from no fitness to any fitness is harder than it looks, and it has never looked easy.

So someone check on me tomorrow. Not just to make sure I get to the gym for my weightlifting day, but to also ensure my legs are working. Right now, I am not confident about their ability to go on.

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