This evening, after dinner and after a long day of work, I made myself go to the gym. I hadn't been all week, and I knew I needed to get some stress out. On a good day, I'll go a couple miles on the treadmill and then several miles on the bike, with weights intermixed. I love working out. It's the only time I listen to certain songs, many from my younger years. Blink182, NSync, Bon Jovi... with some Relient K and other bands sprinkled in. I blast my ipod in my ears so loudly that it forces my brain to stop whirling and I can't think about anything. Usually. Today, I was on my last mile on the bike, adding up my total miles, when a thought struck me. I had "gone" about 8 miles, all told, without actually going anywhere. Now, I am not one of those ladies who gets a gentle sheen and a nicely pink face when they work out. My whole face and neck turns red and I sweat like a horse. That's a lot of effort and temporary discomfort to have not actually gone anywhere, visibly. Then I started thinking about why I work out. For those of you that haven't known me very long, here's something you may not know about me: about 3 years ago I was 8 sizes bigger than I am now. It was a combination of busy-ness, laziness, and depression that got me those extra pounds. Zoom forward to now, where I run on a treadmill going nowhere fast. Now that I've lost weight and am back in shape, my new goal is to start participating in 5ks, and then in a sprint triathlon that my dear friend and co-worker Joy did last year. When I get home from the gym, there are no noticeable differences in my exterior except that I'm smelly and red-faced. However, I am moving towards that goal. (Here comes the metaphor...)
Since school started, I have been overwhelmed with busy-ness. I do a lot of work, spend a lot of time exhausted, with nothing immediate to show for it. I'm sure a lot of you can relate. Life sneaks up on you and then next thing you know, you're drowning in a pile of papers, the dishes are dirty in the sink, the laundry is piling up, you're running with nothing to show for it. You haven't gone anywhere noticeable. I was thinking about where I've been... directionless, then working, then laid off 4 months into being a newlywed (along with my husband, by the same employer, but that's another story...), then not knowing how we were going to get by, then having a job dropped into my lap, which I ended up hating but was grateful for employment. Zoom forward to now... I love the school I teach at now. All those steps along the way, some very difficult, just like getting back into exercising was, have brought me to this level of intensity. At the end of the school day today I felt red-faced and smelly on the inside. It's a hard job. I don't often get to see immediate results in my students. But I have a goal. I want for them to be able to navigate their future: high school, college, life... with a firm foundation. I got to see some of that when a student emailed me to thank me because when she arrived at her new high school and went through her first day, she felt prepared.
It took me a few years to see results from getting back into physical fitness. It might take weeks, months... even years for things to really "click" in students. But that doesn't mean I get to hop off the treadmill because after running for 30 minutes, I still have some flab. It just means I have to be ok with being faithful to do the steady work.
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