Don't Let Being At Ease Become a DNF

If you've ever wondered whether you're resting on purpose or quietly giving up on your mission, keep reading for the two questions that tell you which one it is.

My six-year-old is home from surgery, and for the next few days, I’m the one managing his pain, his meals, his rest. The surgery still ran long, even after the team decided not to perform two of the procedures we’d prepared for.

My brain keeps reaching for something with real shape to it, a podcast episode, workshop content I’ve been needing to build. What I get instead is five or ten minutes at a time before he needs me again, just enough to start a thought and never enough to finish one.

I feel like a caged squirrel, certain there’s a deep project sitting right there and reduced instead to reactionary, mindless tasks. This has to be temporary, my brain tells me. I am not built to do this forever.

Three mornings in, my teenager woke up early and offered to watch his brother so I could go for a run.

I laced up shoes I hadn’t touched all week. My legs felt heavier than they should have for an easy pace, like the stillness of the week had settled into the muscle itself. A quarter mile in, my chest loosened in a way it hadn’t since the waiting room. My son still needed me. The book, the podcast, none of them had room to happen yet. But in the moments of my feet repeatedly hitting the pavement, something in my body recognized motion again, and for thirty minutes, I felt like myself again. It was glorious.