my internal reset button

When I went to Kentucky around Thanksgiving, I'd been living in the California suburbs for a few months. I felt out of place in California and kind of resented that Colin didn't move to Texas instead. I was doing an inside workout program pretty faithfully and occasionally would take a jog outside to mix things up, but the area around the house where I was living didn't hold too many surprises. It did offer an occasional view of the mountains or some rolling hills, but mostly it was suburban America.

In Kentucky, as I got outside more often to spend time alone, I felt like my internal reset button had been pressed, that I was like a phone that finally got back into range where the clock could reset itself with the satellite to tell it what time it is. The expanse of the hills and long country roads put some spring back into my step. I went outside to find space for myself and took deep breaths of what nature had to offer.

In this journey of knowing another person more deeply than anyone else, I've found that I need to make space to release. Time to go out and run is sometimes more about personal therapy than exercise, but I'm glad it can serve both purposes. In the weeks leading up to the wedding, there were days I would work on wedding stuff until I got tense and then go for a jog. It worked pretty well to take me back to a state of near normality.

Now, for a month or so, we're living in Pasadena, in a real neighborhood! On both jogs that I've been on this week, real people have actually talked to me. (In contrast to the suburbs where it seems like people are rarely outside, and if they are, seem somehow still distant.) I jog by houses with character and independent businesses with their doors open and it makes me happy. I jog by palm trees in the foreground, setting my sights on mountains in the background, so close that it looks like I could jog right to their base. Enough writing then. Time to reset.