Insert "Chariots of Fire" theme song here
This is from the " Best of 2009" "challenge" that I am "doing." The original post is here!
December 9 Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?
You can tell a yoga teacher wrote this question because it's only in yoga classes that I ever hear people talk about their 'edge' in this particular way! But that's okay, I like yoga teachers. This is another question that is kind of hard to answer because I feel like nearly everything I do is fucking challenging in some way or another. Making films is challenging. Living in New York is a challenge. Walking up five flights every day multiple times a day is a challenge. Dating dudes is a challenge. Being broke/freelancing is a challenge. I can't really look at my life and say anything is easy, but that's fine with me -- because obviously I like challenge, otherwise I wouldn't have built it into my existence like this. I like challenges because I find them fun. I prefer fun to boredom, so lo and behold, here I am.
But for 2009, I think the challenge that helped me to grow and really just made life incredible would be the fact that I took up running and stuck with it, even now, with the freezing cold and precipitation and I suit up in my special running tights and my lined jacket and my special hat and mittens and brave the cold. When I think about what I could do last March, when I started and got way grumpy in the first mile, versus now, when I can easily run 5-10 miles and not really find it difficult -- it's mind-boggling to think that it's the same human being. I'm always really proud and happy when I finish a run, no matter if it's short and intense or longer and leisurely. It calms my mind and improves my health, but I also have this weird ineffable sense of peace when I do it really well. I guess what makes it the best challenge for me is that it'll never be something I can parlay into something else -- it exists as it is in my life, which is just something I do on the side, for fun and for exercise. It has this very self-contained role in my life, and yet it feels really central to my well-being. I also think it's my best challenge because it's something that I do entirely for myself -- it has no other purpose in my life other than to make me feel good. I'm just really happy that I stuck with it, even in the first 10 minutes of any run when I'm thinking, "God, tell me why I do this again?" The persistence is what counts, and in a way, that is its own reward. That, and my legs are pretty kick-ass.