After Many Days

For the entirety of my life, I’ve always hated one thing: running. 

I think this hatred of running is both a personal preference and the result of a childhood in sports. I played basketball for many years, and under every coach, running was the punishment. You miss enough free throws, you run. You’re late to practice, you run. You get a technical foul in a game, you run… for the entirety of the next practice! You make a mistake of just about any kind, and your ass is running laps until the end of time.

From that point on, I think I’ve just associated the act of running in any form (other than for my life, of course!) as a version of punishment. And now that I’m an adult who gets to choose for myself, why would I choose to be punished?!

I had a particularly stressful start to the year this year, and it brought with it a lot of anxiety. Suddenly, my old coping mechanisms and tricks for stopping that stress/anxiety combo from taking me out weren’t holding up anymore. When I lamented as much to my counselor, she said, “Have you thought about something like running? Even just once or twice a week, it can do a lot for your mental health.”

I shut that idea right down. Or at least I tried to! I told her how much I hated running and how likely I was to never do it. Her reply was simple: “Well, maybe you just need somebody to help you figure out how to enjoy it. Maybe you need a coach.”

Let’s be clear: The number in my bank account isn’t anywhere near high enough to allow me the privilege of hiring a coach to run beside me for six weeks or whatever. And more than that, it sounds like my worst nightmare. I truly dread that one day I’ll marry into one of those families that does the Thanksgiving 5K instead of eating cinnamon rolls while watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. No thank you! 

But because I take both my counseling and my mental health seriously, I decided to give it a shot in my own way. I regularly use the Peloton app to work out, so I found a compromise there: I’d use a guided, 8-week program to give running a chance. The audio instructor of each week would be my own personal, virtual coach of sorts.

I’m writing you this blog at the end of the final week of the program. For the last two months, I ran twice a week with my virtual coach in my ear. Did I hate it? Most of the time. I never found that elusive runner’s high that I have now come to believe is a myth designed to keep you running. But with the help of a coach, I did finish. I found a way to run that worked for me, and unfortunately, I’m here to report that it did, in fact, help with my anxiety. I wouldn’t call myself a runner by any stretch of the imagination, but after many days, I saw progress, I saw accomplishment, I saw the finish line.

What my counselor didn’t know when she made the suggestion to find myself a coach is that I’d actually already taken this advice in another area of my life: my career. Being self-employed is awesome in about a million ways, but one way it’s not so awesome is in the isolation. You’re sort of siloed in your career and that makes it challenging to find anyone to turn to for advice, guidance, feedback, and more. As last year was closing, I found myself hitting a wall in my business and needing some help to climb it.

Enter Ruth.

She’s the incredible coach I meet with once every couple of months who pushed me out of my comfort zone in my career. She’s had me try new things, put some money where my mouth was in terms of ideas, and create systems that make my life easier. She’s really the reason you’re even reading this blog, as picking up my own writing again was her idea, too. She’s helped me in tremendous ways not only be a better writer but move the needle in my career if even just a little bit.

Last time we met I expressed a little frustration at the stop and start nature of this career. Sometimes it feels like you send a million emails, jump on a million phone calls, meet a million potential clients on Zoom, and then… nothing. After all that effort, you still don’t get the job and that’s hard. Listening quietly for a while, she finally took a pause and said, “Keep casting your bread on the water. After many days, you’ll see it return.”

See what I mean? She’s basically the Yoda of writing coaches. It was her way of saying, “Don’t give up. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep putting in the effort. And eventually, after many days, you’ll see the return on those investments come in.”

I don’t know about you, but so often I see these overnight successes and assume they just happened. But what we’re not seeing are the many days it took them to get there. The many days of casting their own bread on the metaphorical waters and seeing no return.  

It’s that “many days” part that really gets me here. Because honestly, I hate that part. Many days feels like it should be like three at the most, right? I can give it a couple of days, and then, I want to see results. Unfortunately, that’s not usually the way it works.

We show up, we cast our bread on the water, and then… we wait.

For many days, we wait. And the longer those many days go on, the more difficult the waiting gets. Then we start assuming, fighting, getting discouraged, wanting to quit. The many days are brutal, right?

When I said as much to Ruth, she suggested I reframe the way I thought about them by reframing the way I responded while in them. Maybe in those many days, something better can happen. Maybe there can be growth, life, hope, expectation, a learning opportunity, a moment to get better at what I do.

Does thinking about those many days this way make me enjoy them more? Not at all! But does it help me see progress in the journey even if the destination isn’t in sight? Absolutely!

Every day I laced up my shoes and hit the pavement with my running coach in my ear felt like many days. Eight full weeks of many days! But if I’d given in and given up when I didn’t get the results I wanted as quickly as I wanted them, I would’ve never hit the finish line and found a new tool to help in my most anxious moments.

And the same is true here! If I gave up within the first year (or let’s be real, even three years!) of this journey to be a writer and editor, you wouldn’t be reading this blog today. The many days it took to even get to this point have proved worth it in the long run (and it’s been a very long run!).

Maybe you’re in the middle of your own set of many days.

Your kids are young, and you suddenly have no time for yourself.

You’re saving money to buy that house, or take that vacation, or make that investment.

You’re at the beginning of your college career and longing to be done already.

You’re waiting to find out if you get that job, that promotion, that deal.

You’re submitting your writing to one place after another to no avail.

If that’s you, waiting and hoping for a return on your investment, you aren’t waiting alone. Keep showing up to the water’s edge every day. Keep casting your bread on the water. Then, look around. I imagine when you do, you’ll find a crowd of other people doing the same. At the very least, you’ll find me. Still showing up, still trying, still putting in the work, and still standing in the midst of many days.

I can’t wait until the day we finally get to look at each other and say, “This is it! The tide came in, and the return is finally here. After many days….”