Good day! I hope you are doing awesome. Had a nice run this morning! I finished June with 51.3 miles run for the month! After not running but a few steps in January, February, March and only a couple runs in April and May, I’ll take it. All those months ago when my physical therapist said my running days were over I just knew it wasn’t true. Maybe I am not running as fast or as far, but I am a running. Glad to be back after it and to be running fairly comfortably.
Sometimes when you run, you get lost. No joke. There is a point on any new run, for example, when you could still turn around when you realize you do not know where you are going next and find your way back, but sometimes you just do not turn around. Why? Because (and I am guilty of this for sure) you just “know” you’re going the wrong direction but you also believe you “know” it will still be alright because in your gut you just “know” you’re good with directions. However, you end up being so far off course you cannot get back to your home or your car or hotel, etc and you are in serious trouble. I’ve been there. My most infamous time getting lost while on a run was at Disney on a trip with my family in August of 1994. I am not sure they’d even remember it and/or if I told them the exact details. We were on this before school started trip and one morning I turned a 3 mile run into a 10 mile run on the Disney properties (not in the parks). Not only did I get lost and turn a 20 minute run into an hour and twenty minute run, but I had to use the restroom so bad that I hid in some woods off the main resort roads to do so. And…I never made it back to the hotel on foot. I had to flag down one of the Disney busses to allow a stinky, sweaty mess of a person on board the bus to get back to the hotel. Thankfully, the driver drove my sorry tail back. There was a point in that run when I could’ve listened to my other voice (the good one) and got back with three miles run, but I didn’t listen. And…that caused my family to wonder where I was and probably got our day off to a later than expected start. Sometimes, though, going the wrong way can provide a new, unexpected opportunity that has a good outcome. For instance, I once took the wrong turn in Annadel State Park out in Northern California (where I used to live) and found this trail that would go so high up into the foothills that you’d actually run above the morning fog. Talk about a view?!? You could see the sun and sky clearly as you ran on fog topped foothills and could not see below it. It looked like what I envision a heaven for runners to look like. It was beautiful. Sometimes the wrong direction isn’t bad, but rather a different opportunity. Just kind of depends on circumstances.
The same can be said for life about going the wrong direction. A couple weeks back when my wife noticed all the yearbooks others kids from school were bringing home on the last day she said, “Josh, did you remember to order Liya and Luke’s? Can I see them?” As soon as I heard her say that, inside my head I was like “oh crap, I forgot.” We had a short conversation about it and I got some deserved feedback and before responding to the deserved feedback I noticed I had two directions to go. At that moment, I politely excused myself without making any comments, grabbed an IPA, and I walked outside to our deck. While I slowly sipped on a delightful IPA, I considered my options which I had nailed down to two directions: (1) apologize and try to make it right or (2) dig my heals in and cite all of things I remembered to do and how could you focus on just this one. After a couple minutes of reflection about going down the wrong road in the past and after a few healthy sips of the IPA I was drinking, I went back inside and said, “Sarah, I am sorry. It’s my fault. You asked me to order those and I screwed it up. Heck, I am even on the PTA and heard updates about it and got emails about it and I still screwed it up. How can I make it right? Sarah looked at me, smiled indicating I was headed down a good road, and Sarah gave me some ideas (kids make their own yearbook and you’re going to make it happen. I said “alright” in my best Matthew McConaughey voice and we were headed back in the right direction.
The kids’ yearbook projects may not have been the direction we were supposed to go, but doggone if it’s not provided us a different kind of opportunity to create a memoir to their school years, kindergarten and third grade. We found over a hundred photos from the year and have also been able to utilize all papers and artwork I refused to throw away–I’m a pack rat. The kids are having fun, we are learning even more about their year, and we found a way to find a different opportunity to memorialize their school years even though me not ordering the yearbooks took us in the wrong direction for a moment or two. Life is full of all kinds of moments where we have a chance to turn a mistake into something positive, and I was glad that happened in this situation. Some situations cannot be turned that way (or we choose not to turn them that way–goodness I have been guilty of that from time to time) and so it’s good when we can recognize an opportunity to make going the wrong direction into a new kind of opportunity.
Thank you for taking the time to read and/or listen to my blog post from today. You could have spent your time doing something else and I’m glad you spent it with me. If you’d like to interact, you leave leave a comment, comment on the Facebook link, send me an email at joshuadavidskillman@gmail.com or reach out to me on Twitter. Have an awesome day and remember it’s never to late to be great!
What I Learned While Running 