What a week. I’ve got to learn how to deal with stress better… between birthday festivities, a very busy week at work, knee therapy, and our first Ghost Ghirls shoot, there wasn’t a point where I didn’t feel overwhelmed by all that was happening around me. I got so overwhelmed in fact, that yesterday when I woke up it was hard to breathe.
All this boils down to vulnerability. Sometimes I don’t deal with exposure well, and I’m left craving some serious alone time. Putting yourself out there with the either the opportunity for success or failure is a thrilling high most of the time, but when you fail… it sometimes hurts twice as much.
Is my heart still hurting from my missed marathon last Sunday? Maybe. It has been so frustrating to not be able to run or do high intensity exercise. While I am learning how to get a good workout from deep water running, it doesn’t quite feel the same. I desperately want to go for a run in this amazing 70-degree weather we are having… it is literally calling my name. Maybe I just need some sunshine. After my pool workout today maybe I’ll go and lay in a park somewhere for a little bit. I need to remember that my knee will be better in the next week or two, and I’ll be back out there in no time!
When I find myself down like this, one of the only comforting thoughts is to envision myself crossing the New Orleans Half Ironman finish line in late April. I swear, racing is like crack. Food used to fill that void for me, but now I rely heavily on exercise to give me joy and fulfillment. I just want to get out there, sweat it out, and prove to myself that I CAN DO IT. It’s validation like no other. I need it.
Ghost Ghirls went pretty well last night, though we figured out pretty quickly that we need more ghost hunting equipment & devices. We also need scarier places to visit. While visiting happy ghosts sounds like fun in theory, in our first experience they weren’t very communicative. Luckily the history of our first location is pretty fascinating and we will be able to carry the webisode purely based on that. I guess I wasn’t expecting such a learning curve, but now that we’ve experienced our first outing it only makes sense with so many variables involved. Because of this, we will have to push back our “season premiere” to April 1st, but I promise it will be worth the wait! :)
Today I am going to visit my 92-year-old grandmother West who is very sick in the hospital. She is an amazing lady who had 7 sons and created LOTS of beautiful artwork in her lifetime. My mom and dad named me after her – Jennifer Louise West, her first name being Louise. I have over 20 cousins on that side of the family alone! Anyway, I am feeling a little down about that as well because looks like we might lose her pretty soon. She is ready to go though, she has been waiting over 20 years to be reunited with her husband Howard who died when I was in the 5th grade. She also lost two of her sons over the years and I know she can’t wait to see them again, too. She is a beautiful woman with the most amazing skin & smile. I can’t wait to hug her neck today and spend some time with her. It will be bittersweet.
After visiting with her today, I want to go camp out in a coffee shop and work on my book. I am feeling very open & transparent at the moment, which works really well for writing. I got some great advice from some of you the last time I posted about my book, so I can’t thank you enough for sharing your wisdom with me! I hope your Sunday is beautiful. Love to you all.
