Reality of Doing

Running Out of Step

Posted on 07. Apr, 2009 by sethcaskey.

I went for a run this morning, and it sucked. If you’re a runner you know the kind of run I’m talking about. It started off awkward. I couldn’t seem to find my pace, my shoes were too tight, my breathing was off. I just felt out of sorts. But instead of giving up and going home, I just kept running. I kept putting one foot in front of the other and pretty soon I wrapped up an easy five mile run not too far off pace.

I love a good analogy, and today has been much like my run. I set out with tons of stuff to accomplish today, but for some reason I could never quite find a rhythm for getting my work done. I kept getting distracted and discouraged. But instead of beating myself up about it, I just kept moving. When I would reach a place of wanting to quit, I looked down at my to-do list and simply moved on to the next thing. (even if I was in the middle of something else) And as it turns out, I was actually able to complete quite a few things. Maybe not all that I wanted, but made decent progress on quite a few fronts.

My point? Training for a marathon is much like the pursuit of this career. As the mileage gets longer, the more things can creep into my training to potentially throw me off course. But I have a goal, and I remind myself that a marathon is not run one mile at a time, but one step at a time. So even if I didn’t have an audition today, or can’t figure out how to update the CSS on my blog, or my Twitter client keeps acting up. It’s OK. I’m taking the marathon of my career one step at a time, and at the end of the day pausing to say – look how far I’ve come.

photo credit Glossyboy

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