My cardio session today involved running. I'm trying to keep the size of my legs in check, and throwing in a couple of miles of running here and there throughout the week seems to do the trick. But when I do cardio, my mind tends to wander and roam, and I always wish I had pencil and paper to jot down these random thoughts. I desperately try to hold on to them as if they were drops of water in a desert, and yet by the time I jump off the treadmill or the elliptical trainer or the stepper, the words seem like a distant image...so blurry and vague. But here's what I was thinking while panting and gasping for breath on the treadmill today.

Do you ever wonder what your life will be like 20 or 30 years down the road? Do you ever sit back and examine what you are doing at this moment and how it will relate to your future? In the July news update on the site (yeah, yeah, yeah, I know I need to do the August news update, and it's already September), I talked about time speeding by us. I actually told my students while teaching Fahrenheit 451 that every single second counted. And that when we wished for the weekend or we wished for a particular date to arrive or wished for a certain action or event to end, we are wishing our lives away. Well, today, I had--for a brief moment--begun to wish I was done running and had actually thought, "only nine more minutes, and I'll be done." I had to mentally take a step back and remind myself that I chose to be on that treadmill. I chose to run. I chose to compete, and I chose my life. To wish for something else would be wishing my life away. Interesting. I began to see the running in a different light and look at it as a means to an end. The running itself may not be the most pleasant action in the world, but when I saw how my legs looked in the weeks before Junior Nationals and Figure Nationals this summer, I am thankful for every step I lunged, for every mile I ran, and for every piece of cake I passed up.

So, I guess I want to ask everyone who reads this to examine what you are spending your days doing. What are you preparing for? How is today creating tomorrow? And finally, are you happy with the road you are choosing?

Until the next entry . . . .

Jodi