Wait a minute, wait for it...

I have a slight procrastination problem.

Give me a postmark deadline to complete rebate paperwork, and I'm frantically scrabbling together all of the necesary receipts, bar codes and signatures needed the night before. Hell, it's a good thing if I can find the receipts, first of all (my organizational woes are another issue).
Set me up with a kitchen full of fruits and other expirables for a week's worth of yummy meals, I'm scraping the mold off my tomatoes or slathering peanut butter over my bread to "moisten" it and fool my tastebuds two weeks later.

I've always been like this. As a youngster, during piano lessons, I'd wait until Monday night to start practicing the pieces due for my Thursday lesson; field trip today? "Ahh! Sign here, dot there Mom, hurry, herecomesthebus! See you after we get back!"

I guess this is why journalism never really freaked me out, with its deadlines and all. I'm pretty good at getting shit done at the last minute, head butting against reality all the way. But sometimes there are things that are out of my control, and as used to having things mostly go my way as I am, this means a big upset in my world when it doesn't happen the way it's supposed to.

Like today.
Never mind that I lost my passport last year because I had put off getting a new ID after losing my old one (organization what?), or that I thought about getting a new passport months ago.. I finally decided to make that happen today, when a spectacular trip now hangs in the balance (the balance being a mere five weeks). And never mind that I'd been thinking about checking on the travel credits I had with Delta in October to make sure they expired in March and not sooner..

Do I even need to say it? Should I wait any longer, or is it clear?
The airline credits expired earlier in the month. The passport "office" at the Post office closes at 4 pm, you need cash, and the price is going up tomorrow. I nI was there at 3 pm., but I never carry cash, I had an hour to find it, and with the blizzard going on outside, I was too far from a bank to get it done.

So the lesson here is a hard one, the kind I lean best. I'll be paying more for a passport than I could have, when I go get it done. I'll be paying more for a flight than I needed to, when I finally book it. I'll have these reminders to prompt me into action next time something needs doing. But for now, I'm at home, in out of the snow, and warm, temper tantrum avoided (although I snarled at every smiling person on Michigan Ave. on my way home).
I'd still like to pitch a fit abou the plane tickets, when I think about it, but eh. Why?
There's always tomorrow.

Running for my life

I do it because I can. I do it because each step is my own, and at one time I wasn't sure I'd ever been in control of something so natural ever again. I run because much like the reason I write, there is something in me, something that needs out something that gets out, fast and hard, with each jarring, pounding step.
I run because when I was in the hospital, the doctors and nurses and concerned parents and therapists wouldn't let me, wouldn't let me so much as shuffle down the quiet hallway by myself.

I watch the seconds round into minutes, and I find another reason for running. It is here, on the treadmill, or out on the sidewalk, the trail by the lake or through the park, that time moves slower for me. Each step, at first, during the warm up, is taken slowly and deliberately, without the urgency I apply to my life. As the slow rubber tread whizzes by and hums with the motor inside, it is a step in time and nothing more. It's not like that for me at any other time during the day.
See, when you almost die at 22, everything afterwards--everything--must be more deliberate (even if it is spontaneous). Actions must be recognized and appreciated because you never know when they will be the last of their kind. Time moves faster for me than is does for you. No, no, you say, science and physics... I know. Sure I do. But its inexplicable, this time warp thing. It might be the crazy pinging and flashing of my brain gone awry, but my world simply moves faster than yours.
But when I run, it all seems to slow down.

I squish up on the green arrow, feel the mechanized button below my finder dip into the electrical board to set off the chain reaction that increases the speed. Below me, I feel the metal (plastic? who knows) board supporting me give ever so slightly under my foot an the whirring black tread. Even when the speed increases and the blood rushed quicker, hotter, faster inside my straining legs, time is slowed for me and I'm lost in the movement of the run and taken out of my body and my world.

I run from myself not because I'm afraid of death--when I'm gone, I'll be gone, poof-- but because I'm afraid of one day not being myself, totally and completely. I'm afraid that I won't be able to run, to think the thoughts I think while doing it, won't be able to lose myself in a run because I'll already have lost it all anyway.

Seven is a good place for the squishing arrow to stop at, and as I increase another arrow to five and feel the incline's burn in my calves, I'm fighting and pushing and huffing to keep up with the course. After a half hour, I'd just like to sit down and call it a day. But this thirty minute struggle is nothing, just one machine fighting another. And that too, is why I run. Fighting myself, grinding against my own faulty machinery reminds me that I am alive and able to do it, normal in my own way.

Eventually, because my leg is numb and not to be trusted after the two miles at this clip, I slow down, ease the mobile track down to a walking speed, imagining myself zooming off the treads backwards--splat! a cartoon caricature of eyes and mash on the wall behind me.

That's ok though, I was getting tired anyway, and nothing compares to a good stretch and recovery after a long hard run.

The middle way

"I'm going to teach in Japan or Korea or something next year."

The comment came as a surprise in the shuttered light of the early morning, but then again, nothing was a surprise in this relationship.

"Asia? So... we should break up. I know you have a thing for the Asian girls." I'd been thinking of ending things anyway-- what timing.

What? Big steely blue eyes open wide in surprise.

"No, I..."

"No, really, we should. Go do your thing, live the life you want, without a girlfriend at home. I'd hate for you to have to think about me when you have the opportunity of a lifetime a world away. It's fine."

And that was that. But the conversation from earlier remained open. We'd been talking about doing some traveling together, taking some fabulous trip to South America or Indonesia or some exotic place far removed from the drabness of South Dakota and the misery of our lives there.

"So, if you're over there already, lets go travel when you're done. I'll meet you in Thailand, we'll see the country, then I'll go to Cambodia. It'll be fun?" I wasn't sure if I could still ask this question, pick my own cards and then play them too.

"Really? Really? You want to do that? Yeah, that sounds awesome, dude! Yeah!"

Ok, "dude"- the official term of affection still applied. I was still cool. Good.

The conversation we'd been having for weeks remained open, and if all went well over the next few years, I'd have a friend to traipse around Thailand with. Would this "middle way" of having a friendship with a past lover maintain, or get too weird? I knew the friendship would be fine, as I stay friends with most ex's, but this might be different, especially if we thought we'd still travel together at some point. And to a place as lush and diverse as Thailand.

That conversation has remained open, and as my ex and I have gone off from South Dakota to do our own things-- he in Korea, me in Chicago-- we've managed to maintain a long-distance friendship that's been the best sort of relationship for us at this time in our lives.

"Chicago's going to be so good for you, there's options there and room for you. Here, it's... stupid," he had said to me, the last time we talked before I moved. "You're going to love it."

And I have. Probably more than he loves Korea, but likewise, that's been good for him, the right place at the right time to make him grow up and do things on his own. Change is good.

But now, what began three ( or was it only two?) years ago, is finally coming to fruition in the form of that oft-dreamed of trip to Thailand. Change hasn't happened there; I haven't changed my mind on it, have been dreaming of it and talking about it since I moved to the Windy City.I have held on to the idea of real Thai food and gorgeous beaches and all the history I can handle, but I do wonder a bit if change would do me good in that too, if giving up on it would be a wiser decision. Right now though, my mind is made up. All that's left to do is buy my ticket (once I know he's got his) and pack my bags. And for that, there is time. There is always time, with the middle way.

But will those beaches and decadence allow me to maintain this patience, this nuetrality? For this, too, I must wait and see. Even if it had been a couple of years, complete with change, I still know me.