This past weekend, my daughter’s Girl Scout troop went camping for two nights. While last year we all went tent camping, this year we went yurt camping, which I recommend because there are, at least in this case, beds and mattresses. And you get to say yurt a bunch of times.
When I’m camping, whether by tent or by yurt, I try to make bargains with my body. The biggest one is, Let’s get through the night without having to get up in the middle of it and I’ll do something nice for you later! Tent camping with my family, it’s not a huge deal to crawl out of bed at 2am. The sound of the tent zipper breaks through the quiet, but for the most part, everyone stirs and rolls over and I’m staring up at the stars and it’s slightly chilly and I’m glad I’m sharing a little part of the night.
In a yurt with a dozen 8-year-olds and 3 other adults, suddenly it feels like breaking out of there without waking everyone else up, and potentially creating a line ten children deep in the dark at the door of a plastic outhouse, requires the subterfuge of Ethan Hunt and the wizardry of MacGyver. Just ignore it, I tell myself. Count slowly. Measured breaths. Change positions. What time is it? If it’s close to dawn, I’ll wait it out. 1:48am. But I’ve been up for hours! Have I even been asleep at all yet? Okay, I am an adult. Mind over matter. 1:54am.
How many times in life do we figure we’ll just wait it out? We’re less than comfortable. We’re less than happy. The solution is right outside our door, but we’ve fashioned an unscalable wall, an unvaultable chasm, made a pointless bargain, created a problem out of an easy answer. I have a skill set for this that’s remarkable.
I saw an Instagram meme recently that said, “You are far too smart to be the only thing standing in your way.”
A year ago, I was pretty much on top of my game. Previously, I had felt sick and tired and nauseous, dealt with horrible hives and random rashes. It was draining and limiting and I was done with it. I decided I wasn’t going to live that way any longer, so I cleaned up my diet, started exercising, started sleeping better, started feeling better. I promised myself that this was the new me. Actually, I didn’t even promise myself because it was so bleeding obvious that I would choose to feel good over choosing to feel bad. For about a year, it was the new me. But then I got a little cocky, or maybe a little lazy. Or I thought, I’ve got this figured out now, so I can stray just slightly from this path, and I know how to get right back.
Halloween came, and I bought the kind of candy I like, too. Because a fun-size Snickers never hurt anyone. And neither did an Almond Joy. Or a Reese’s. And Christmas came and I remembered that peanut brittle is both gluten free and packed with protein (packed! peanuts!). And even though I had found that 45 degrees is one of my favorite running temperatures, and even though Colorado nearly always has a least a couple 45 degrees days in any given winter week… well, I got the flu right after the holidays. And then it was suddenly February. And it is really dark and pretty cold in February, after all. Some weeks it’s not 45 degrees at all. Or if it is, there’s still snow on the ground and is it my fault when some neighbors don’t shovel and ice builds up? And when spring came, and I tried to dust off my running shoes, my hip hurt. So I took some time off. And then it still hurt. So I stopped altogether.
Somehow, even though I knew how to get back to the right path, I felt sick and tired and nauseous and my knuckles hurt when I made a fist, and I had a little rash under my wedding bands that never quite went away, reminding me that before, in the previous not-good stage, I couldn’t wear rings at all on my achy swollen fingers. Why am I not fixing this? How am I not taking the known path straight to feeling better? It’s 1:54am; the solution is right outside. What is wrong with me that I don’t begin?
So as of Friday, I have given up office chocolate, because I can’t be trusted with it. I don’t have to feel awkward about the 1200 calories worth of wrappers that the cleaning crew surely, and ought to, judge me by. I always expect that people are going to be somewhat scandalized by this sort of choice. No one ever is. My closest co-worker said, “We’ll keep track and I’ll make you a 30-day medal shaped like a Butterfinger.” Clearly he didn’t feel abandoned, forced to eat candy alone. I told one of my good friends and she said, “I want to start doing better, too. What day are you available to walk this week?” Just like that. As if it was just that easy.
Today, on my fifth day without a mini chocolate anything, I cut open an avocado to throw into a hearty lunch salad and I remembered a well-halved avocado is actually kind of pretty, in that botanically-amorphous is-this-a-fruit-or-a-vegetable way. And I like avocados. And hearty salads.
My Butterfinger-medal-making coworker asked me today, as I was leaving work, “Do you sometimes feel like we come here for 8 hours, but then our day actually begins at 5pm?” School has started back up and with it fall schedules and homework and bedtime skirmishes and relentless alarm clocks. I was, in that moment, beyond exhausted, miles to go before I sleep (I mean that only as a Frost tribute and metaphor since my body’s given up sleeping of late). Miles to go. Promises to keep.
I met my friend for a before-dinner walk, our children thrilled by an unexpected play date. And I felt better for it. A lot better, actually. We talked, they played. We broke a light sweat as thunder rumbled just over the horizon. I came home to the dinner my husband had made while we were out, because sometimes I forget we’re a team who can divide and conquer, and then I took my daughter to dance. 
I stopped at the library to pick up a book that she had placed on hold, and I talked to a far-away friend, tucked under the library’s outside awning, as the thunder grew closer and an unforecasted downpour turned the air earthy and metallic, cleaned off the pavement and created puddles that children jumped through, their parents protecting their newly chosen library books. I had to run to the car in the downpour, back to dance class, catching a sneaky puddle midway across the parking lot. But I didn’t feel tired or harried or just a little bit ill. I felt connected and appreciative and content.
I don’t know if I’ll magically get some sleep tonight, fortified by avocados and good friends, a little exercise and a cleansing rainfall. But I think I’ve remembered, at least a little, that if I can magically create a problem out of an easy answer, I’ve also held the solution all along.
It’s me… just deciding not to stand in my way today.