Running less than a marathon in the middle of a government shutdown

Big news; I was able to finish running 10 miles this week in a local run. It wasn’t easy, I almost dropped out because the humidity was so high I felt at times that I would not be able to finish. But like the other thousand participants, I kept going. At times, I sped up, and at times my jog was no faster than a stroll.

It was my third time in this race and the weather made the run extremely difficult. I felt buckets of perspiration pouring out as I ran, which has a huge psychological effect on you as well. I inched along and finally I finished, and it felt great. Painful, but great.

I guess the real big news this weekend wasn’t the race, but the government shut down. In fact, while I was running, I overheard a government employee discussing her paycheck or lack thereof. But the government has reopened and now it’s back to business as usual, right?

I don’t right about politics much, and as a reporter, I hate it when people bash the media, but I have been annoyed by the many headlines touting the Republican’s loss. It annoyed me because I think always framing political debates in terms of winners and losers hurts us in the long run. The criticism of making politics into some sort of sports competition is nothing new. In fact, this opinion was widely articulated in the last presidential election. But I would say when we use it to describe conflicts in Congress, it does even great damage. The incentive to compromise is lost because you don’t want to be the loser. Losers don’t win primary elections. In the game of politics there is no tie, only winners and losers. So the budget battles and debt ceiling are reduced to little games, replayed every couple of months.

Here’s my suggestion. If we have to use a sports analogy, why don’t we compare it to a marathon. In marathons there are no losers. I mean of course, it is a competition, and people do win. But for the majority of people, they are not running to win first place. People are running to reach their goal. For a select few, that is getting first. For some, it is beating their own personal best record and for others it is just finishing. Besides the most elite runners, if someone else reaches their goal, it does not mean I failed at reaching mine. 

PERFECTION AND PINTEREST

My imperfect photo of our vacation.
Not portfolio quality, but it brings back happy memories.

    I like Pinterest as much as the next person. It has a lot of good ideas and a lot of neat tricks. It has also introduced me to a lot of great blogs that I otherwise would not have discovered. But like so many other things in our culture, I also think it's partially successful because it preys on our insecurities.

   Pinterest  posts mostly fall in two broad categories. First are do it yourself pictures. These feature a lot of cute tricks, such a 101 uses of coconut oil. Common tags are along the lines of, "Why didn't I think of that?" or "I feel dumb not realizing this all this time." There are also a lot of homemade alternatives to store bought items, and the comments run along the same lines.

Now, while I appreciate saving money and making things homemade, I really don't have time to make board games at home and make all my furniture from refurbished items at a yard sale. Most of my toys are store bought as is my furniture.

Another type of picture found on Pinterest are pictures of people's dream homes, dream vacations, dream clothes, hair, and husbands. This type of visual exploitation is similar to ones found in a lot of advertising and catalog
s. The coffee commercial in the immaculate quiet house, the plain white dishes in a charming country home.

These graphics showcase a level of lifestyle perfection that is unrealistic as the airbrushed cover model we criticize so often.

I don't mean to pick on the site. I actually do like it a lot. But we have to constantly remind ourselves that we are being manipulated into wanting our lifestyle to be so unrealistically perfect. It's not a conspiracy, it's a fact. We can fight against this buy educating ourselves and our kids using on visual literacy.

Part of this is limiting what we are exposed to, such as tossing all those catalogs we get in the mail :) And part of it actively telling ourselves that the images we see are being used to get us to buy products.

When I started this blog (which I am so bad at updating), I want to focus on constant improvements in my life, but I think I was focusing too much getting to some unrealistic domestic utopia. I do want to make sure I raise healthy happy successful kids, but does doing that mean my house needs to be a manifestation of Mother Jones meets Southern Living? Probably not.

I am not throwing in the towel on my goals, but I am going to change how I approach these goals. My new approach is simplicity and contentment. And I'll try to share any tips I get on how to do that.