I'm Not Fast, Just Tenacious
I've got a sick boy today, as the semester begins. Best laid plans, right?
So, I'm going to take a minute from my unproductiveness and beg for sponsorship. I'm about to tackle the biggest physical challenge of my life, the AIDS LifeCycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles. A year ago, I would have laughed myself silly had you suggest I take on such a thing. Funny how life twists back on you, sneaks up and surprises you with the damnedest stuff.
Yet, here I am...researching nutrition for the endurance athlete (me? an athlete? that's still kind of hard to digest), and reading about training and how to prepare physically for this Everest I am about to scale. Why?
Survival. It was just a year ago that I had to watch my mother struggle through her last breaths, watch my family cope with that struggle in the best ways that they could. If I could, I would ride up Everest and back to end all such suffering. There isn't a lot of rallying cry or medical research or much known about the terrible disease my mother had...the one I wonder about each day, whether my sisters and I have this, whether it's a genetic thing. I can't wave a magic wand and make these diseases go away, neither can I just plug my ears and shut my eyes and pretend they don't exist. I need to DO something.
And I need to LIVE.
My lifelong depression had gotten so bad I was sitting on the couch slowly waiting for the effects of my meticulous suicide to take me. Oh, I wasn't actively trying to kill myself, but I was doing nothing to promote my survival. Watching my mother die only made it worse for a time. I'm not going to talk about what turned me around today, but skip to the part where I turned. Recovery and renovation.
Physical activity is a big part of that recovery. Life without the body, as much as I want to believe Descartes (I think therefore...), just isn't physically possible. I've witnessed that now, in a very visceral, indelible way. I have awoken. Sitting still is not an option, and riding for a cause makes my heart feel better, makes me feel like I won't suddenly up and say, "fuck it" one day. Somehow, I can always justify putting someone else's needs ahead of my own. So, if someone needs me to ride for them, to take up a torch or shoulder a cause...I'm SO there. Committed.
Catch is, I need to sell myself, because I can't do this ride alone. I can train and I can workout and I can eat right and prepare myself--but I also need a community of support...and let's be honest, the dough to make the fundraising piece happen. I know times are hard, and I've never been much of a salesperson, but stretching appears to be good for the will to survive. If you're reading this, I'm looking for ideas as much as I'm putting out a request to pop a little paypal dough into my official fundraising account. If you needed to raise $3,000 for a cause you believed in, what would you do to make it happen? Have any advice? Ideas?
So, I'm going to take a minute from my unproductiveness and beg for sponsorship. I'm about to tackle the biggest physical challenge of my life, the AIDS LifeCycle from San Francisco to Los Angeles. A year ago, I would have laughed myself silly had you suggest I take on such a thing. Funny how life twists back on you, sneaks up and surprises you with the damnedest stuff.
Yet, here I am...researching nutrition for the endurance athlete (me? an athlete? that's still kind of hard to digest), and reading about training and how to prepare physically for this Everest I am about to scale. Why?
Survival. It was just a year ago that I had to watch my mother struggle through her last breaths, watch my family cope with that struggle in the best ways that they could. If I could, I would ride up Everest and back to end all such suffering. There isn't a lot of rallying cry or medical research or much known about the terrible disease my mother had...the one I wonder about each day, whether my sisters and I have this, whether it's a genetic thing. I can't wave a magic wand and make these diseases go away, neither can I just plug my ears and shut my eyes and pretend they don't exist. I need to DO something.
And I need to LIVE.
My lifelong depression had gotten so bad I was sitting on the couch slowly waiting for the effects of my meticulous suicide to take me. Oh, I wasn't actively trying to kill myself, but I was doing nothing to promote my survival. Watching my mother die only made it worse for a time. I'm not going to talk about what turned me around today, but skip to the part where I turned. Recovery and renovation.
Physical activity is a big part of that recovery. Life without the body, as much as I want to believe Descartes (I think therefore...), just isn't physically possible. I've witnessed that now, in a very visceral, indelible way. I have awoken. Sitting still is not an option, and riding for a cause makes my heart feel better, makes me feel like I won't suddenly up and say, "fuck it" one day. Somehow, I can always justify putting someone else's needs ahead of my own. So, if someone needs me to ride for them, to take up a torch or shoulder a cause...I'm SO there. Committed.
Catch is, I need to sell myself, because I can't do this ride alone. I can train and I can workout and I can eat right and prepare myself--but I also need a community of support...and let's be honest, the dough to make the fundraising piece happen. I know times are hard, and I've never been much of a salesperson, but stretching appears to be good for the will to survive. If you're reading this, I'm looking for ideas as much as I'm putting out a request to pop a little paypal dough into my official fundraising account. If you needed to raise $3,000 for a cause you believed in, what would you do to make it happen? Have any advice? Ideas?