angst in bed

Date	Place	Duration	Long sprint (uphill)	Pull-ups	Long sprint (downhill)	4 flights	Time
18 Nov	Rruga Kavaja	39 min	1:05.73	15,9	58.59	20.35	07:24

Date	Place	Duration	Bus Stop 1	Push-ups	Pull-ups	Long sprint (downhill)	Time
20 Nov	Rruga Kavaja	41 min	44.67	25	17	57.83	07:28

     On Thursday morning, I had just begun a typically rough throat problem.  I knew from experience that I would soon have a husky voice and runny nose—a cold had entered my body.  

     Add to this oncoming cold, the fact that during the days before Thursday, I had also been sleeping

especially poorly because of and inability to turn off my mind.  This day, I woke at 3:25 a.m.  For years, I’ve had this problem of waking up much earlier than necessary.  Then I would fret about the fact that I couldn’t sleep.  I’d do this for several hours before finally dragging myself out of bed.  After tumbling out, the worry and angst I experience in bed calms almost immediately, and the day transpires as normal.  I am able to hide my troubles and operate my life.

     While I’m in bed NOT sleeping, but wanting to sleep, I thrash around, getting into one comfortable position after another.  In these comfortable positions, I sometimes recite prayers from childhood.  I say, “Our father, who art in heaven, hollowed by thy name.  Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses and we forgive those who trespass against us; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.  For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory for ever and ever. Amen”   I don’t just recite those words, I try to think about their meaning.  I figure that if the words are memorized and we are simply reciting them, they become more of a chant while your mind thinks about anything under the sun, much like it would if you were not thinking about anything at all.  Oftentimes, it will take me 15 tries before I feel like I have truly thought about the words as they are passing between my ears.  Of course this number is greater when when I’m nodding off, or crumbling in the depths of despair.  All the time, though, I’m hoping that I will be able to sleep.

     I sometimes have the idea that I should just get out of bed and begin the day. Usually, however, I just drift in and out of mild sleep until I get up with less time to get stuff done, and therefore, more problems.  THIS Thursday was a day when I DID in fact get my butt moving.  I dressed in running clothes and I was in the office by 4:00 a.m.  I planned the lessons for the day, printed out some papers, sent some emails. 

     After planning the lessons, I ran over to the bus stop…I know there are many bus stops all over town, but the one that I call the bus stop is the one where the bus leaves for Skopje, Macedonia.  I boarded the bus there two years ago on my way to Moscow.  This was the 20th of November—above, you can see the details have an entry for Bus stop 1.  That’s a run down the median of the street in front of the bus stop starting at the point farthest from the center of town.

Date	Place	Duration	Along the lake	Pull-ups	Classic Sprint	Time
22 Nov	Rruga Kavaja	55 min	1:05.04	17,13,13,13,7	49.13	13:49

     One email was a request for my teaching colleague to bring in some coffee—one of the days lessons involved the 5 senses and it called for coffee as an example of something bitter.  Since I don’t drink coffee, I had to rely on the author’s judgement.  In the end, it went very well.