I Cooked Rice at 10:00 p.m. and Other Confessions

Hi friends. You’ve been so much on my mind, and I finally have a chance to catch up with you.

Here’s the deal: Nicaragua / camera stopped working / phone crashed / deleted all my photos / got new phone/ realized old phone was just backing up my photos to Google drive just for funsies (while also dying and deleting 15% of my best photos) / Google is evil / phones are evil+expensive / so backing up all old photos because #fear / external hard drive from Amazon stops working / Amazon=evil / garbage disposal stops working / license expires / must re-test in state / must change car registration / must change car insurance / must now pay annual car inspection fees / first time for everything / aaaaand Monday is my first ROOT CANAL / literally all my dirty laundry

Now, let me tell you what’s going RIGHT in my life.

1. I just spent a WEEK in sunny Nicaragua. It’s dry season, and the sun shone every day. I wore flowers in my hair, took pictures of adorable little girls playing with chickens, climbed a volcano, and spoke all the Spanish.

 

But really. It was all about these kids. Pretty find humans right here.

2. Even though I haven’t properly blogged my Nica experiences, timing was pretty tricky this year because I got off the plane from Managua, walked into a Lancaster County snowstorm, turned on the heat in my 50-degree apartment and began doing laundry to leave the very next day for Oasis Chorale rehearsal! I am honestly one of the lucky ones to sing with such talented friends every year. Talk about luxury to spend an entire spring weekend basking in chords! (In case you didn’t know, my choir makes videooooos.)

 

2. I played with this lil buddy all Easter long.

2. I cooked rice at 10 p.m.

I am honestly so sick of excuses. (You too. Stop it. Stop making excuses.) Get up early. Be polite. Be kind. Read your Bible. Care for your friends. Work harder. Put your phone down and read a book. Exercise. Practice your music. Do the dishes. For Pete’s sake, cook once in a while! (You all know how much of a trial this is for me.) Stop complaining.

This weekend I finally got over THIS THING, this icy grip winter has on me, and I’m finally blooming once more. It’s as if this week, I’m growing. This week started off with a bang: I had motivation for… a day.

And on that day I was still going strong at 10 p.m., so much so that I started cooking rice, SOMETHING I’M EXTREMELY BAD AT. (You can ask me how it turned out.)

You know when you feel like a total failure? Like despite the fact that you’re surrounded by so many people but you can’t shake the feeling of isolation and you kick yourself for every single tiny mis-step that you take? (Who am I kidding, now I’m just talking about introverts.) You know when people ask you how you’re doing and you respond sincerely, “I’m good!” but an inky black bunny, hopping up and down, robotically condemns you in your mind, “THAT IS COMPLETLEY FALSE. THAT IS COMPLETELY FALSE.”

Okay, what I’m trying to say is that even though I’m extremely bad at rice-cooking, and this week could honestly be labeled Week of Teaching/Friend/Human Person Mistakes, it doesn’t matter because I have so much hope AND I’M GOING TO MAKE IT.

For crying out loud, I WANTED to cook rice at 10 p.m. WANTED to.

You will make it too. But you better light a candle, calmly read Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s “We Wear the Mask,” and start changing the world one English lesson at a time, read thought-provoking BBC articles about the American criminal justice system, start following Jada Yuan on Instagram, the writer that the New York Times hired to visit 52 world-class travel spots in a year and write about each of them (we are all jealous), and remember that for some people dreams really do come true, and that you must do today what will get you closer to who you want to be tomorrow. Finally, remember that not everything is about you. Stop worrying that people might think you’re weird. “Nobody ever changed the world by worrying about people’s opinions of them.” (Lecrae’s Twitter this week.)

5. Last thing that’s going right: spring running season is upon us!

Announcement: the season is going to be about hurting.

I have a confession. When I run, I never hurt. I am the world’s laziest runner. I keep my paces comfortable because I don’t know, I have rules about hurting? And distance does not bother me physically. Distance for me is only a mind game.  I would rather run 5 times a week than even TOUCH an indoor workout. Why? Because cardio HURTS.

Painless running? Not anymore. Last fall’s marathon was a goal of a lifetime, and I completed it conservatively, fearful of reinjuring myself. Now I’m setting my sights higher, possibly returning to the half marathon, going for a sub 2. IT IS GOING TO BE PAINFUL. I’m giving myself plenty of time, looking for a fall race, but I’m already picking up the paces this spring, and I’m loving it.

See you at the races!