i've got five more hours of highway
five more hours to go
five more hours of highway
till i'm in the place i know
heaven only knows the time i've wasted
i'm so close now i can almost taste it
five more hours of highway
till i'm in the place i love

-gabe dixon band-


So I'm committed. Gonna sign up. The Columbia Gorge Marathon is in October of this year, October 24th to be exact, which gives me over 7 months to work up to it. The brother and soon-to-be SIL are running it too, which was the impetus for me. I've missed running with them!! And this is such a great goal--something I know will be completely attainable. And can you imagine? Late October early morning along the old highways in the Gorge, running in the mountains and the ages and the cold sunlight with pride. I'm so excited!! 26.2 miles. I never ever thought I could run 3, or 5, or 6, or 13. And then I did. So what's 26? And I say that in all honesty. It's a HUGE goal and it will be a huge accomplishment. But I can do it.

Hard day today. I made it harder than it had to be and the SIL did a great job of reminding me that sometimes I need to get out of my own way. This job, this job that I love and wanted and worked for, this job is being haunted by the ghost of the woman who had it before me. And she was terrible at it, to the point where I am doing a lot of clean up. I've been letting it get to me, in to the very heart of how I work, until I was so frustrated by the time that I got home that I was in tears. Completely unnecessary tears at that! We sat down and the SIL reminded me to let it go as much as I could, acknowledging that it was hard to do when your heart was so in your work. Bottom line is, at the end of this day that was exhausting, that I'm going to enjoy my days at work. Even if it's just one or two things a day, I'm going to laugh and have some fun and come home knowing that I did good work. The translation of ideals from the agency down to myself is a large scale reduction, but the reminder that I got today was that I can't change the agency in total. I can, however, do very good work. I can learn from the mistakes of my predecessor and my own mistakes, I can keep the children involved in sight and remember that they're why I'm doing this, I can make the choice to be good social worker. And I can do it with what fits in my purse, not what fits in my whole heart and head. That's just too big, too much to pull around every day. So as I head off to sleep, I set two goals for tomorrow:

1) Reframe it. See my work as the whole picture, and set goals that I can attain. See what I can do, and what those around me do, instead of what I can't and what they don't.

2) KICK SOME BUTT ON THE COURT!!!