It's the end of a busy couple of weeks and last night I came across
this article on the Guardian website. It was one of those 'Ask Molly Ringwald' features. Someone was asking how they could stop being lazy and get motivated and as I've been feeling my own motivation start to slip away these past few days, I decided to give it a read.
Two sentences struck a chord with me;
"Your brain desperately needs the hormones that fire during exercise.."
and "..our living spaces are reflections of who we are."
Ok, well I know exercise is good for you both physically and mentally. I know that when I ran regularly, I felt and functioned better. I know that the 'runners buzz' you sometimes hear about is actually a thing and I know that surprisingly it's also addictive.
I also know that the first run is an utter bastard and isn't so much a run as a walk with the occasional Bambi-like, legs flailing everywhere, shuffle thrown in. Because no one tells you that you won't look like a proper runner at the beginning. I learned this the hard way when I caught sight of my shadow during my first run.
The image I had in my head of what I might look like (Paula Radcliffe having a gentle jog), was shattered as I saw my shadow self lolloping along in a slow Quasimodo style. But if you can past the lame excuses, the fact that you will not look like Paula Radcliffe (at least, not yet) and push yourself through that crappy first run, you'll find genuine enjoyment.
So yes, that will be happening this weekend. I will kill my demotivation dead with running.
And of course, the other thing I took from that article was the bit about our living spaces reflecting who we are.
It made me look around my living room and I saw, splashes of pretty, unfinished projects and a LOT of mess and clutter. Which pretty much sums up who I am perfectly I think. If I had to change anything from that little lot though it wouldn't be the mess or the clutter. Which shows how much I've changed in the past few years as I was a self confessed neat freak. Nowadays I view the mess as a sign that we're a family and I've written before about how bloody grateful I am for that, so no regrets there whatsoever. That said, perhaps I wouldn't be adverse to painting over the crayon and sticky hand prints on the wall now.
No, if I had to change anything it would be the unfinished projects. But as Alessi is now at a more independent age, we're finding that time is ours to play with again. That feels like a gift in itself. So I'm sure there will be more DIY and projects coming up in the not to distant future.
This post doesn't really have a point necessarily. But I've noticed that I've been self censoring what I write here lately. This blogs readership has grown over the past year which is what I'd always hoped for, but oddly this has made it harder for me to write as freely as I have in the past. So this morning, while Dan took Alessi out I thought I'd just sit down and write. The Molly Ringwald feature and my thoughts on it seemed perfect. Does it affect anyone else? No. Will it enhance anyones life? No. Is it even relatable? Probably not. Do I care about it? Why yes, yes I do. And that's the point.
I want to get this blog back to being what it was, a personal space for me to write shit. It isn't a platform to sell my work. I share my work here and on social media because it's a huge part of what I do and I bloody love it. But I don't make money from this blog. It's merely my spot on the internet to record my inner monologue of thoughts and today that includes Molly Ringwald, running and my living room.
I fully expect my next post to be about what a stupid idea running is, how I hate my living room and how Molly Ringwald can suck it. ;)
