Being a race manager is every bit as awesome as I expected, but it's also incredibly time consuming. We handle so many events covering a very broad area, and many of my days are spent zig-zagging around town for meetings, course work, packet pickups, and any other little extras needed to put on a great event. Weekends are booked with races, and while I love every second of being at event days, the early mornings are still hard to handle until I get a little more experience. Once I'm more comfortable in the various roles I take on during my typical work week, and have a better feel for what to expect of different tasks, I'm sure I'll settle into the ebb and flow of the industry a little better.
Meanwhile, I still spend several nights a week at the gym, teaching back-to-back group exercise classes to some of the greatest ladies on the planet. Mondays are the "big night", with an excellent Turbo Kick class preceding my Zumba-Pound twofer. It's high energy and smiles for hours! On Thursdays, my core and Pound classes are much smaller, and sometimes are empty. I finally made the difficult decision to cut down to just Mondays to be a little more selfish with the time I've been spending traveling to the gym, waiting for a chancy class, and feeling burnt out when only two or three people show. Having an extra night to myself - without pushing myself through two tough workouts because it's my job - will help me immensely with my ability to balance rest and hobbies with my work schedule.
Pretty soon, I'll be adding dedicated marathon training to the mix, and honestly, I'm a little worried about that. Though I'm slowly developing better habits like coming home from work and running immediately, rather than "decompressing" myself into lethargy for the entire night, I've also experience many evenings of total exhaustion after spending days at a time running around town for my jobs. Again, I'm hoping I'll eventually settle a bit with the schedule and things won't be so hectic once I have more experience, but what if that doesn't actually happen? There's no way I can just show up to a marathon and expect to actually finish without some serious training, so I'm going to have to be careful and stick to my training plan amidst everything else.
Then of course there's the blog. I have so many cool things to try during my training, and already am learning lessons that I'm dying to share, but with everything else on my plate, the time I have to write usually goes towards "me time" for now. Yes, blogging is partially "me time" because it's something I love doing and actively want to do more often, but it's also something that requires focus and brain-turned-on-ness (okay, maybe that sentence proves it doesn't have to be turned on to blog) and lately there are many days when I don't have that focus. Not having a place to set up a desk or office is another point not in my favor, though hopefully I will be able to find a place of my own soon.
On that note, I think a place of my own will make a LOT of this schedule headache go away. Having a home-base, a safe zone where I can have my own things and my own space, will take a lot of the stress off my shoulders. The transient feeling I've had looming over my head since leaving Chicago last year is in some ways a very heavy burden. I know I'll feel much more grounded once I am able to settle down once again. It'll be a mess, I'm sure, but it'll be mine and that's a big deal these days.
Sooooo... All that said, I'm not sure how to wrap up this post nicely. It's my first stab at Thinking Out Loud Thursday and I'm pretty sure I nailed it, but whaaaat do you say after you word vomit for so long? I guess you say this: check out the linkup host Amanda at Running with Spoons and see what other bloggers are Thinking Out Loud this week! And live from New York, it's SATURDAY NIIIIIGHT!
So glad you're taking steps to find your balance! It's so important. And glad to see you succeeding at so many things!
ReplyDeleteI have no balance either good job
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