Back Home...for a While

So, is it just me, or does the basement drain back up with sewage only on the night before dayshift/fun things out of town (say, Writers Conferences)?

Oy giminee cricket for the love of goodness vey!?!!

But that's fixed. Still cleaning...but it's fixed.

So, the Conference, right? Waaaaay too much to talk about, as usual, but I'll hit on some highlights:

- the lovely and talented Renee Nicholson and Natalie Sypolt, back again with writaliciousness. Scored three workshops.

- always love a workshop with El Presidente Eric Fritzius. Podcasting this time...

- discussion panel called "The Appalachian Inquisition" with Irene McKinney, Denise Giardina, Daniel Boyd, Norman Jordan, Gretchen Moran Laskas (love her!), and Tim Noland. Does an authentic Appalachian voice exist? Is Appalachia a myth? Hmmm...

- pitch session with an honest-to-goodness, award-winning agent...! Hyperventilated. I'll let you know.

- got to catch up with the incredible Granny Sue Holstein

- laughed at the banquet with my table of friends until we nearly shot tea from our nostrils.


Sigh. And now, it's over for another year. I dearly love the WVW Conference...

The Conference!

Getting ready to go the West Virginia Writers Conference! Yessss!

And this year I have a lot of excitement scheduled.

But I'll tell about that later...

1.) When do you feel happiest?

When I'm outside.

2.) How do you take care of yourself?

Go to bed on time (or early?!)

3.) Are you internally (by yourself) or externally (by others) motivated?

Internally. If the external pressures me too much, I retreat inside or run off. But I push myself harder than external influences most of the time, anyway, so...

4.) What do you do for fun?

See blog title.

5.) What intimidates you?

People. And paperwork.

That morning...

¹⁵Jesus spoke to her, "Woman, why do you weep? Who are you looking for?"

She, thinking that he was the gardener, said, "Mister, if you took him, tell me where you put him so I can care for him."

¹⁶Jesus said, "Mary."

And, just like that, He calls our names and we suddenly recognize the One we've been looking for all along...

...And our dead hopes come back to vibrant life, better than we ever could have imagined.

Happy Easter!

Staff Work Day

...on April Fools' Day. Uh-oh. Nervous.

I made a little playlist for the occasion.

Aneurhythms

Obsessed with this song right now.

And this one, too.

Thanks, Alicia.

Have a sweet weekend!


**UPDATE**
Hey, remember Savage Garden? Hahahaha, they just popped up on my Pandora station. Soooo huge with this song when I was gearing up to graduate high-school. I'll just thumbs-down them now...

Slow Down

So I have this book, and this book, and I'm attempting to do periodization as a training program this year. I did it, somewhat loosely, last year, and thought it was pretty great, so I'm trying to stick to it a little more closely this year.

The thing with this program, though, is that for the first three months of the year, you go slow. It's counter-intuitive. And sometimes it's hard to go slow.

I think, a lot of times, in this society/culture, we want to go fast. We feel the need to go fast right now. If I don't hurry up then __________ will happen, and this will mess everything up/put me at a severe disadvantage/be the end of the world. There's so much pressure to do as much as you can, as fast as you can, as long as you can.




But in periodization, you learn that training too hard, too fast will limit you in the long run. Oops... It kind of puts a ceiling on your performance. You end up hurting yourself.

The thing that takes so long is building aerobic capacity, and your ability to, mm, process oxygen more efficiently. You have to give your body time to build more of the tiniest blood vessels, capillaries. So all this is going on while you're pacing yourself at this slow, steady rate. Invisible. But it's happening. You end up getting more out of each breath you take.

And I was thinking that it's the same, spiritually. We want to rush results. We want growth now. We try to force it.


We get burnt out.


Sometimes the fastest way is to go slow.