Thoughts While Running #017

unsetting goals.

Apparently when I commented on my son’s stellar sleeping habits the other week I jinxed myself. Beginning a full week before the dreaded event known as daylight savings he began waking at all hours of the night. At first he'd hang out in his crib for a couple of hours, not saying anything before either I woke up and noticed him or he eventually fell back asleep. We told him if he wakes up when it’s still night time, he should call out to momma or dadda that he ‘needs something.’ Turns out the night wakings weren’t without reason. After night two of waking up at god-knows-when he spiked a fever and we’re now on the backend of daycare cold #587 (but who’s counting). And since through all of this we’ve seemed to have given our child his ticket to freedom, we’re also in the midst of ‘momma, dadda, I need something’ requests at all hours of the night. These can range from the specific ‘momma, dadda, I need my feet covered’ or ‘momma, dadda, watch me sleep in the chair’ to the more general ‘momma dadda come in here!’ Turns out 2 can be quite the demanding age.

Somewhere along the way the universe had decided I needed humbling so consider me humbled. As if the side effects of disrupted sleep weren’t enough, I also came down with a terrible sinus infection earlier in the week when I woke up to one clogged nostril that quickly became two and within minutes my nose was rendered nonfunctional. I’d been ignoring some on again/not quite off again sinus issues for the last 4(ish) weeks since the HFM pandemic of 2024 and apparently I should not have. Drugs in hand I’m happy to report that I can once again breathe freely.

I’ve had a ‘Stuff I Like’ post queued up, meant to be written and sent out last week, and then pushed once again due to a lack of time (Grammy was visiting us from Michigan!) which will now be pushed out once more due to the hot mess of my sinuses and an imploding week of mounting tasks. I had planned on showing you, among other things, the crème de la creme of running jackets (not really, just one I liked). Here in SF it appears the worst of El Niño might actually be behind us as we have warm and sunny days on tap for the foreseeable future (*knocks on wood*) which is most definitely not rain jacket weather. While my recommendations might be a month too late for me, April showers bring May flowers so possibly not for you!

Given these recent events, I’ve found myself extremely annoyed at the start/stop flow that is life at the moment, the kind where it feels like despite all my best efforts I can’t gain any sort of real traction on anything. Instead of crossing things off my To-Do’s I only seem to be adding and they appear to be multiplying exponentially. Three turns into nine and next thing I know I’m at eighteen and all I’ve done for the day is make breakfast. Such is the nature of starting a business while part-time mom-from-homing and I suppose (hope) I’ll feel a shift once I return to a five day work week next month when he resumes full time daycare. It also could be the effects of a never-ending cold and flu season that for some reason this year has felt incredibly worse, perhaps because I seem to be catching more of whatever virus du jours come home.

my monday run with the mister before I realized the reason I was so tired was because I’d been fighting a sinus infection. Had I embedded the video you’d hear huffing and puffing (me) and singing (him).

I was most definitely not a pleasant person to be around Tuesday morning when the plans I had for the day shifted to a mindless task oriented day of doctors appointments, prescription procuring and humidifier purchasing. I hadn’t had a full week to work in a while and therefore had high expectations of being incredibly productive. Not only was I looking forward to chipping away at one of several ongoing projects (the biggest of which related to the opening of Wylder IRL) I was also very much looking forward to taking full advantage of our sunny forecast and logging some long and leisurely miles.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a perfectionist, as I have long ago come to the acceptance/realization that perfectionism is an unattainable goal. It’s why I no longer run races or care about how fast I run outside of the occasional ‘oh cool, I’m running about the same as I always have’ because what I’ve learned is there will always be someone faster than me and isn’t it far more enjoyable to run for fun rather than for some sort of external time-focused goal? For me I discovered the answer was yes.

So while I’ve let go of striving for perfect, what I haven’t let go of is striving to finish, even if it means crawling across the line. I might be running for fun, or specifically for the fun that comes from the freedom associated with momentarily untethering oneself from responsibility, however I still set some sort of goal for myself, one that might present as a Type B ‘let’s just see how it goes’ but really just masks a different form of Type A perfectionism, an external goal in sheep’s clothing. In my mind I’ll preselect a loose outline of a route (it varies regularly) along with a rough mileage goal ‘5-7 miles but we’ll see’ (the ‘we’ll see’ meaning I actually plan to run at least 7 maybe 8). There have been so many runs where my legs have been dead or I’ve been tired or I’ve been unknowingly battling a sinus infection and despite a general feeling of garbage, I refuse to modify my route. Cutting it short somehow feels like a failure. Like if I run 5 instead of 7 it might as well not even count (even though I’d given myself a range that clearly included 5). The course has been selected / the goal set : the run must be completed.

This goal oriented mentality applies to all aspects of my life, down to even the most menial of tasks. It’s one of the many reasons I struggle to accept verbal compliments. Acknowledgements of ‘good job’ or ‘thanks for doing all that’ go unheard because why would I have done anything less? So many times I’ve found myself running around all day (literally and figuratively) only to finally sit down and realize there was one more thing I needed to do, a thing that under no circumstances can wait because I had said I was going to do it and so I must drag my poor, tired bones off the couch to complete it. While I might not be striving for perfect execution, I am uncompromised about modifying my expectations for what is completed.

So perhaps rather than a humbling, the universe was offering up an opportunity, a shift. To let go of these preset expectations, to become less attached to the end result. This repositioning in focus allows more presence and attention to what’s occurring in the moment, more awareness on the process of doing (versus completion of the doing being done) and an openness to wherever that may lead be it shorter, longer, or an unemptied dishwasher. Trusting whatever needs to get done will get done, eventually. March isn’t over yet. The ‘Stuff I Like’ post will get written. Wylder IRL tasks that need doing will be done. And if that third load of laundry waits until tomorrow no one will be forced to go naked, they just might have to wear their yellow pajamas instead of the green.

Related/unrelated, a friend recently gifted me a one month subscription to DrawTogether with WendyMac, a drawing substack by an insanely talented artist named Wendy MacNaughton. I’ve been trying to find my creative spark after many, many years of working in the corporate design world and have bought watercolors, pencils, pens, markers, signed up for numerous online courses, and yet could not find a sense of play or exploration or like in anything I was attempting. I have an art minor from a tier 2 public university, have not engaged in art for art’s sake since graduating in 2005, and I would by no means ever call myself an artist. In fact, I like to remind myself just how terrible I am at drawing every time I attempt to draw to the point it actually brings up a huge amount of anxiety for me, as if someone would be appalled to discover a person who was a Director of Design can’t flawlessly paint with watercolors. You work in fashion and you can’t draw? Off with your head!

Much like my mileage or route driven running goals, I would have an expectation for myself and then be unwavering with achieving it, more often than not (always) getting frustrated, anxious and wanting to destroy everything I’d attempted to paint. The only difference between running and painting is that I’ve had years of practice at the former, slowly building mileage to the point that a goal of 5-7 miles isn’t unachievable. With the latter however, I am sorely out of practice. Rather than setting small, attainable measures for myself, I would see a reel on instagram of someone painting a bird and think ‘that doesn’t look too hard’ and then lose my shit when I discovered it actually was hard because I’d never done it before. I was stuck in this goal oriented comparison cycle of wanting to create something unique to me but wanting the end result to be whatever beautiful artistic image had inspired me while lacking any compassion for what the journey and process looked like to get there.

a nature drawing from wednesday. this actually took me closer to 30 minutes and it’s only supposed to take 10 so i just kept repeating the timer. which means i totally followed the rules…right?

For some reason, this time around it’s been different. I think it’s Wendy’s approach to drawing, because she focuses on the process and letting go of whatever attachments we might have to the end result. To start, we have to set a timer for ten minutes and when the timer goes off, it’s pencils (or markers, or paintbrush) down. Ten minutes doesn’t allow for overthinking or over complication. She draws in a way that is unique to her own individual personality, encouraging us to do the same and most importantly to let go of expectations (LAUGH! THIS IS SILLY! No such thing as perfect! LOL —> direct quote). I decided to try her 30-day drawing habit and for the last eleven days I’ve drawn something every day. And what’s even better is that I’ve enjoyed it. My drawings are by no means perfect and I no longer want to set my sketch book on fire. I’ve done a couple of the drawing sessions with Dougie (although if I’m being honest I think I enjoy them more when I do them on my own) and we even got Grammy in on it while she was visiting. What I also love is that it’s a tangible thing I can do for myself every day, something besides running or a work out that provides physical evidence I took time out of my day for myself, with no predetermined goal in mind other than a sketch book, Wendy’s drawing challenge and my ten minute timer. What I also love is that it allows me to work a different muscle for a change; my creative one.

So as my 3-day work week wraps up and I transfer my growing list of To-Do’s to the next, instead of focusing on what didn’t get done, I’ll focus on what did. And trust that while it might not always feel like it, there is in fact time for everything. It isn’t bad to establish goals (it’s actually necessary and helpful) I just don’t need to grasp them so tightly my knuckles are white and I’ve lost all joy in my achievements. It’s important to find joy in the process and it is also 100% okay to modify where the finish line lies. Five miles of running can be just as rewarding as seven.

*k