December 27 – Ordinary Joy. Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments. What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year? (Author: Brené Brown)I've said it before on this blog, but I'm aware of how lucky I am to have lots of "ordinary joy" in my life. It's hard to pick a single one, so I'm going to pick two, though even that is tough. And both happened many times over the year.
First, I would pick lazy Saturdays with my husband, which seem to occur about once a month, which is far too infrequent in my book. We really only spend every other Saturday together, and it seems like every other one of those is filled with errands or friends or other commitments. But I get so much joy from the ones that we're able to reserve for ourselves. My best friend would sometimes put "BBD" on her calendar on a weekend day, which stands for "Big Blank Day," meaning nothing scheduled. It was fine if things ended up getting done, but there could never be a list. I'm trying to do the same thing. Then we have the option of sitting and watching movies all day, cooking something unplanned and wonderful together, going somewhere just for fun, playing a game, napping most of the day away, going for a walk or a run or to the gym or the pool, just doing whatever we want. I love those days when we just hang out and relax. There never seems to be enough time for that otherwise. During the week, we get home from work and hurry to eat and then get to bed since we both wake up at 5 or earlier every weekday.
Second, something I've posted about before, I ran with a great group of guys during the week this year, a few of whom I've run with for years and a couple new people. It was all male except for me and one other woman, though she was out for a few months with injuries -- though we haven't logged as many miles together, we'll hopefully have many more in 2011 as she's also Boston-bound. Anyway, the other day on FB, she sent an email to our little group and asked if we were up for about 8 miles early tomorrow morning from a Starbucks right by my house. I responded saying that it was so early, but of course I'd be there because I missed them like crazy.
The second half of December is always an odd running time for me (and likely many others in Dallas). The big local marathon has just finished, and training for spring races doesn't start until Jan. 2, and then with people on vacation, etc., it's been routine for the last several years to have no routine. You run with a few people on random days whenever schedules coincide. I'm looking forward to next week Tuesday, Jan. 4, so I can settle back into my weekday running routine.
Running with more guys sometimes means there's a lot more discussion about sports than I want (particularly during the months I was the only female there, and the weeks/months of brackets/division assignments/coaching changes/World Series/all kinds of stuff I kind of tuned out) but some of them get roped into watching The Bachelor by their wives (one of my guilty TV pleasures) or other such things and will happily talk to me about that for miles.
But seriously, I feel a lot of ordinary joy when running with them. We talk and vent about so much, jobs, marriages, families (or pressure and decisions about whether to start families), hobbies, vacations, politics, news, life, pretty much everything. We share a lot. I once read something about how it's sometimes easy to talk in the car because people are facing forward and sometimes that can encourage you to share things you might not otherwise if you were looking at someone directly. Well, that's also true of running.
And besides the ease of conversation, there's also the quantity! It's rare to spend so many hours of free time with the same people and be talking the whole time. I don't spend 3 hours a week talking to my best friend on the phone, so these people end up being a lot more involved in my daily life.
My running buddies provide me with a lot of ordinary joy in my life.
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