"No matter how many mistakes you make or how slow you progress, you are still way ahead of everyone who isn't trying." -Tony Robbins
I found this quote yesterday on Pinterest and I absolutely love it. It is so easy to simply compare yourself to everyone else. In reality, the only comparison that we should make is between our past self and our present self. As this quote says, the effort that you put forth is what really matters. It doesn't even matter if you achieved your goal in the end. We often forget how vitally important mistakes are. Mistakes are how we learn. We learn that we cannot always succeed and we learn what we might do differently the next time around. We learn our limitations, but these limitations should not hold us back. This brings me to another one of my favorite quotes: "Know your limits and then ignore them."
Two years ago when I hurt my foot I realized just how slow progress can be. I was way too anxious to get back to running. As much as I tried to be patient, it was tearing me up inside. This time around I am constantly keeping in mind that with an injury, it is going to be a slow and steady healing process. Today I broke out my new swim cap and goggles at the rec. center. I am so legit looking as I casually swim super slow laps with awful swimming form. However, I do feel like my technique has improved significantly over these past few days of lap swimming. I'm making progress.
I am only taking one Spanish class this semester and then I will be done with the Spanish major. Sadly, I don't really like the class though. There are a decent amount of grad students or Hispanic people who put the rest of us to shame. It doesn't help that I am way too out of practice with speaking Spanish. When I attempt to participate in class, I just babble like an idiot, mis-conjugating verbs like crazy and forgetting important vocabulary words. It's pretty frustrating.
A girl that I had a few of my Spanish classes here at ISU is studying abroad in Granada this semester. I have been stalking her blog and I am so jealous as she mentions all of the familiar sights and people, such as El Parque Fredrico Garcia Lorca and the program leaders Dani and Jorge. She is off in a beautiful foreign country, surrounded by Spaniards and soaking up the beautiful Spanish language while I am here struggling to form sentences in my one and only Spanish class. Blahhh.
I had a dream last night that I was traveling through Mexico. As dreams usually are, this one is difficult to explain. All that I know is that I was able to communicate with some Mexican shopkeeper and it was successful and helpful and awesome.
I am taking two ESL classes this semester for my TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) minor and I like those. My Rhetoric class is decent but I LOVE my teaching of literature class. The teacher is so passionate and able to make every class session different and fun. Maybe I should just be an English teacher. I think I'd be better at that anyways.
Yesterday, three miles into running a half marathon, I pulled or tore or sprained my groin. I had some mild pain a few days leading up to the race, but I was still able to run on it. I knew that it would hurt a bit during the race, but I figured it was something that I could just tough out. I was okay the first mile or two but then, a little past mile three, something went terribly wrong. I could barely walk and I had to slowly and painfully limp about six blocks to the aid station but the start/finish area.
It was pretty terrifying. I was in so much pain. I couldn't move my left leg. I tried to use my mom as a crutch, but even that was a huge struggle. I was so ready to kick some ass in that race. All summer long I had been running with Alyssa. We did 12 mile long runs on the weekends and they felt great. I was so devastated when it happened. However, I am a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and that things have a way of working out in the end.
Running is such a huge part of who I am. It is my stress reliever It is what gets me awake and moving in the morning. Now all I can do is be smart and be patient. I'll stretch and swim and ice and heat. As my mom and dad did anything and everything to help me out after the race and as I talked to my sister on the phone, I thought to myself just how extremely lucky I am to have them in my life. I can't stress enough how much those three mean to me.
Day number one on my $2 Goodwill crutches was a little rough. My armpits and all the area around them hurts/aches. and I am already annoyed with being so limited and dependent. I never realized how much we take for granted, like being able to get dressed in the morning with ease. I really hope that this injury heals soon though...
I am having somewhat the opposite experience with the shared roommate spaces that I had last semester. When I moved in to my last apartment, it was one girl's second year in that apartment. Apparently the old roommates decided to leave several items in the apartment, such as ridiculous amounts of canned and boxed food, toothpaste, bath products, etc. At one point we had six bottles of shampoo in the shower. Everything was in excess.
I'm confused as to why none of my roommates leave their toothbrushes, toothpaste, face wash, and other toiletry items in our bathroom. Do they think this is still dorm life where you can't leave things in the bathroom? I don't get it. We have a large cabinet under the double sinks in our bathroom. I keep my mouth wash, toothpaste, face wash, moisturizer, and a few other items under it. I'm taking up about one third of the available storage space, yet there is NOTHING else under the sink besides toilet paper.
Then there is the kitchen. My roommates also keep just about nothing in the fridge. Last semester our fridge was always overloaded. My roommates would sometimes buy things and forget that they were in the fridge. It got to the point where I would start throwing some of their forgotten food items away without saying anything, such as fruit and produce, because they were starting to go bad.
Although all of these things are strange, they are not problematic. However, there is one thing that is somewhat bothersome to me. The two girls who are friends from their hometown always use paper and plastic plates and silverware. WHY?? We have so many plates and cups and plenty of silverware. It's so wasteful and bad for the environment. Oh well, to each his own.
Last night my roommates and I hosted an apartment warming party. I was a little nervous about it at first, but it turned out to be a lot of fun. My friend from run club brought his three guy friends along and they were all really cool. I found out that one of them is the older brother of one of my favorite coworkers at Dairy Queen. What a small world! Not so fun was when some guy threw up on our carpet and when my half empty bottle of Malibu mysteriously disappeared along with my deck of cards. Oh well that's the risk that you take when you host a party.
The current time is 12:40 PM, which means that I have been up for exactly five hours. I have ran, showered, eaten breakfast, taken a load of empty bottles and cans to the recycling bin down the street because our bin is overflowing, rode my bike to ghetto Kroger, eaten lunch, and am now blogging. My roommates are all still asleep in there rooms and it is making me feel very confused and disoriented. Two of the girls have been here since Monday, yet have almost nothing in our fridge. What they do have is a bunch of pantry items like mac and cheese and ramen noddles along with frozen pizza rolls, corn dogs, etc.
I will never understand how to many people live like this. Then again, I'm guessing that the majority of people would think that I'm the insane one considering that I was up at 7:40 this morning after being up until 2 AM the night before...
Although huge, gorgeous, million dollar homes are pretty sweet, I would never want one. I know that my mom is semi disappointed that we are still living in out tiny "starter home." I also know that it doesn't help that several of our cousins live in one of these ginormous million dollar houses. When I someday have a house of my own, I definitely want a house that is on the smaller side. I would like a cozy one that doesn't take a lot of time and effort to maintain. I am not going to be SUPER picky, but my ideal house would (on the outside) be a mixture of yellow siding and brick, have a front porch, a sun room, two bathrooms, and a decent size kitchen. Large houses are just a pain to clean and not as comfy and inviting. I'd take a small cottage over a huge mansion any day.
Lately I have becoming even more grandma-like, with the exception of the fact that work forces me to not go to bed until around 11:30 instead of my normal 10 PM bedtime. There are several reasons why I am becoming more like a grandma...
First of all, I have come to the conclusion that being sun burnt is not worth the pain and the skin damage. Therefore, when I am outside for an extended period of time, I always make a point to apply massive amounts of sunscreen and to reapply frequently. Yesterday at Target I bought an adorable sun hat for only $7! I can't wait to break it out tomorrow at the Wisconsin State Fair. Since my hair is so obnoxiously thin, my scalp usually burns when I'm outside. Gotta protect my head.
I love that we now get two Sunday papers (the Daily Herald and the Chicago Tribune). That means I can be even more of an extreme couponer than I already am. My dad likes to make fun of me for collecting so many coupons. However, the joke was on him when we saved $22 on out massive back-to-school Walmart shopping trip the other day. Hah!
Finally, I am glad that I have the attitude that I don't care about this "grandma status" of mine. Who cares if the people around me give me strange looks when I break out the sunscreen in the middle of a set a Lollapalloza? What does it matter if people give me shocked and confused looks when I mention that I normally go to bed about 2 hours earlier than the average college student? I get up early every single day to run so I believe that it is justified.
I am going to try to be better about writing in my blog more often. I know that I've been slacking lately.
Today at Barnes and Nobles I purchased a beautiful, Eco friendly journal that is 100% handmade by woman in Nepal using local raw material. It's so cool! Now I am going to have to find a balance between writing in that and writing in my blog.
When I search Google for "facts about" the first two things that came up were facts about dreams and facts about the Sun. Sadly, the facts about dreams were surprisingly uninteresting. However, I did find some fascinating facts about the Sun. Apparently, the Sun accounts for 99.8% of the mass of the Solar System. Most of the remaining 0.2% comes from Jupiter, so the Earth is only a fraction of a fraction of the mass of the Solar System. In reality, we barely exist!
It's so crazy to think about just how small we are in comparison to the entire Universe. The Solar System is sooo interesting and ginormous and mysterious and cool. How far does it actually go? There has to be more out there than we know about. Are there other planets with life on them? Ahhh I want to know. Trying to comprehend just how infinite the Universe is hurts my brain. Therefore, I tend not to give it too much thought.
