As I have had to take a couple days to unpack from my trip I just now realize they are gone. By "they" I mean my favorite pair of Columbia black flip flops. Rugged enough for any beach or rocky shores, yet supportive enough to do a full day of errand running without a problem, yet versatile enough to wear with any outfit. In fact, when I was in Arizona a friend pointed out in the desert heat they were starting to melt a bit and I took great care to move them out of the sun.
These shoes have many memories in them. Past vacations where I wore them to watch the sunrise over the Atlantic in the Outer Banks to watching the sunset over the Gulf of Mexico on the beach at Marco Island. They held the memories of pool days with my babies, an epic cruise to the Bahamas and now an epic girls' weekend. I suppose from that Kistner it could be surmised I am a bit of a beach girl. I have often said I needed little more than a stick and a tarp and the sound of roaring waves. I suppose I had always envisioned this pair of flip flops would work well in that vision too. I guess in the end I am a bit lost without my shoes today but it reminded me of something. Taking this journey to change my entire life I have had to leave a lot of old favorite things behind.
I have had to leave behind foods I truly loved such as chips.....ah chips. I have left behind some old habits of dealing with life in unhealthy ways, and left behind a whole lot of sleep for those early morning OTF sessions. I have begun to now think those old ways and my old life was as simple as my favorite comfortable pair of flip flops. Never wavering, always the same. Trapped in a sea of complacency disguised as a comfortable shoe.
As I wrestled with my latest goal.....do I run a Spartan Race for my birthday? I find I have submitted to my earlier complacency and have started to come up with reasons why not. It was simply more comfortable to rest on the laurels of the mud run. Eighteen months of training, 5.5 miles of mud and 30 obstacles and a good cry at the finish line. All in all an epic day that surpassed anything I could have imagined for that experience.
Resting on that experience I realized it was becoming more comfortable to just put other things ahead of this Spartan Race now that it is getting close. I needed to go see my granddaughter. I should probably work. The holidays were close to that race. It was becoming easier to pick a different race much further away. As I do this I have once again found myself in that usual place of anxiety over being able to do this. Paralyzed in my own comfort zone. As I found myself doing the dreaded burpees at OTF I had several people remind me of the role of burpees in the Spartan Race and I decided it was time to get moving. As I cautiously tossed out the inquiry on social media to see which of my teammates wanted to do this I found the response terrifying. The team is being assembled as we speak with an offer to help us train in an obstacle gym between now and then.
So there it is. Comfortable shoes gone. Comfort zone once again shattered. Cheers to my team for pushing me into a birthday celebration the likes of which I have never seen before, and here's to our next five weeks of training. Guess this means I should ask for new flip flops for my birthday too, may this pair see more happy times and epic memories than the last.
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