Those of you who own a Mac won’t get this analogy, but the rest of you undoubtedly will (sorry, shameless Apple fanboy plug). Have you ever been working away on your computer and things just come to a screeching halt? Your programs freeze up, your mouse moves at a snail’s pace and there’s nothing left to do but reboot and start over?

I feel that’s where I am right now in life. This year has been an absolute whirlwind for us and we’re just now getting back into some resemblance of a routine again. We took a week-long family vacation to Disney in February and had an awesome time. We got back home and were starting to get adjusted again when we found out Carrie’s grandfather passed away. So we headed up to Pennsylvania, were planning to only be there a few days and got snowed in for several more. So yeah, February was a blur for us and here we are approaching April already and I’m wondering where the time has gone – crazy!

Back in October I set some pretty tough personal goals for myself, both physically and spiritually. Things were going great up until my first 5K race back on January 23rd, and I started experiencing some pretty intense hip/foot pain. Fortunately, I was able to finish my race but decided I better back off and just give everything time to heal. In hindsight, it was a good decision with everything that’s gone on. But in a weird way, my not running has made me slack off in other areas of my life too… funny how that works isn’t it?

So this weekend is a “life reboot” for me. I’m just stopping and recommitting myself to God and to the decisions and goals I set for myself back in October. It’s a good thing to do every so often — to take a look back and retrace your steps; to see what’s gone right and what you’re going wrong. I started running again today – my time absolutely sucked and my pace has suffered horribly, but I ran a 5K again and that was my only goal.

God reminded me of this short verse a moment ago — it’s exactly what I needed today. God, help me live as only you are able!

We plan the way we want to live, but only God makes us able to live it.
~Proverbs 16:9

What about you? Time for a reboot?

This is going to be a random post, but I feel like the majority of them are anyway, so here it goes. I hate anticipation. I hate things hanging over my head. I really hate waiting for a date on the calendar to arrive, especially when it involves something out of my comfort zone or out of my carefully scripted list of routine.

I had this crazy notion one night a few weeks back to sign up to run a 5K race on the 23rd. It may sound stupid, but this is something I never thought I’d be doing. Ever. A lot of my friends and people I follow online are running 10K’s, 1/2 marathons or full marathons and I feel stupid even mentioning it, but this blog is all about transparency–so I’m not going to lie–I’m nervous. I know I can do it, but the anticipation is killing me. If I could run it right now (even after running 4 miles at 6am this morning), I’d do it in a heartbeat, because I hate having things hanging over my head.

It’s even like this at work. I do IT/Development support, so I get tickets all day long about problems and issues that need to be addressed. I respond as quickly as I can to get the ticket off my desk. Sometimes I even reply too quickly when I should take more time to think through a proper response, but it’s just the way I am.

I’ve always been impatient and I know this is something I definitely need to address in my life. I just need to take one day at a time and slow it down. I need to stop looking at life too far in advance, anticipating certain things with dread and uncertainty. But I’m not quite sure how to do that.

Any suggestions? Anyone else out there like me, or am I just crazy?

If you haven’t seen that episode of the office, then that title makes absolutely no sense to you. Check it out on NBC.com or something. Ok, so for some reason today I’ve made up my mind to start running again… the day after we just canceled our membership to the Y, mind you. I’m so stupid. But anyways, I really want to lose some weight and get back in some sort of routine. I went through a running program called “Couch to 5K” back last year and earlier this year as well and actually made it all the way through before the summer. But then summer hit, I got busy, we found out we were having a baby and I’ve been eating crappily (is that a word?) ever since.

Getting old sucks, you know? Back in high school/college, I never in a million years would’ve though I’d be 29 and have some baggage to lose, but here I am and there went my metabolism. It’s not like I’m morbidly obese or anything, but I’m not where I want to be either (in so many ways). The reason I’m doing this is because I really want to be healthy for my kids. I don’t want them having an overweight, out of breath daddy running along behind them. That is not my definition of coolness and I know it won’t be theirs either, speaking from experience.

So the goal is to lose 30 pounds in 130 days or something like that. It seems impossible, but so does everything I ever try to do in life to be totally honest. Oddly enough, I find that running and just being in this mindset really helps me focus on my relationship with God as well. Must have something to do with being disciplined, which I am definitely not right now.

A friend of mine at work told me about a website called SparkPeople. Looks pretty cool, so I’m going to be using it to watch the “caloric intake” and all that crap, so we’ll see how it goes. If any of you out there want to join me, that’d be awesome. We can put on a Richard Simmons wigs and spandex and cheer each other on.