~~9:49am 

I’m on a schedule but not too tight of a schedule. It’s race day, and I need to begin the two hour drive to Boston at around 2:30pm. So yeah, my day is mapped out and I know exactly what snacks I’ll eat when, when I’ll shower and suit up, where I’ll stop to eat dinner when I head back home late tonight (Cava in Framingham, just off the Mass Pike). 

But there’s just enough dead space right here. Jesse is at yoga, and my face feels kind of greasy in a way that I like when I’m sinking my teeth into whatever this is. I did some of the dishes. I made myself a smoothie. 

I started folding clothes from the giant nest on the floor at the foot of my bed. I decided to listen to music. I googled “how to find music that you like.” I love music, but I don’t really enjoy going to shows. I need 100 percent full focus and quiet to do most things. I do not idly let ivories be tinkled in the background. In times of leisure, usually jesse is the music master. So i don’t really…ever dj my life. 

I went to my spotify ‘liked’ playlist and started listening to the full discography of a few artists I’ve added recently. This quickly led me down an Eliot Sumner rabbit hole. I had no idea the person behind this one song I’ve been into lately is the child of Sting and played a very compelling character in Ripley. A new celebrity crush develops. 

The music I get into is not usually upbeat or what you’d really queue up to get your game face on, but my mind is a whirling dervish, so I’m really just grateful for that buzzy feeling I sometimes get when I have a few hours to mindlessly work on the order of the house and think to myself deeply earnest and hopeful things like — I am 35 and it is NOT too late. 

I finally discard the tattered and threadbare light blue hooded Nike shirt that K gave me on my 18th birthday. It’s time to let it go. 

I was still 17 the night she gave it to me. The rest of the cross country team was going out to a club to celebrate Catie and Chris, two other teammates who shared my birthday, but they didn’t think to choose an all ages spot, so I couldn’t join. To cheer me up, she had me over to her place in Buckhead, gave me my present, and took me out for hookah and dinner with Clarence, the tennis coach she was kind of dating. She was my first big love, best friend, and it’s legitimately hard to let go of that old dumb shirt because I associate it with being really seen and loved for the first time. 

I’ll have my second coffee soon, and I’m almost loathe to get on the road this afternoon. I want this greasy, active, domestic moment to last. I want to put pen to paper and write a heartfelt note to my new friend in California. I want to carefully call my mom. Maybe. Keep dancing to all my searing sad songs and smell the lilacs through the screened window.   

But these highly specific running passions were put in my heart for a reason, and I have to follow that through, put the saddle on, and fight through the pain again tonight. I’ll just appreciate the vibe while it’s here and I can hold it, just barely—a manic, happy, creative, productive energy that will all too soon dissipate.

p.s. BEGONIAS