"Boy, I wish my camera had a phone on it right now."
Last week I promised myself and you, my readers, that I would try my hand at a 10K / 6 mile run very soon. I got up the energy and the nerve on Thursday, when I ran all the way from my apartment to the airport roundabout on the east side of town, and all the way back. By my reckoning, it's almost exactly 3 miles one-way, and a small but noticeable vertical displacement. Furthermore, I forced myself to start out at nothing faster than a 10min/mile pace, and was able to maintain that the whole way; my final time was 1:00:09. A perfect 1 hour of running! My first 10K! I was very proud, and not at all exhausted afterward – just far hungrier than usual.
A Ganar paperwork, data entry, filing and sorting and retrieving files at work is getting pretty dull. At six months out from Close Of Service, this is where the typical Volunteer begins to ask questions like, "Am I doing enough to support my NGO?" "Am I involved enough in my community?" and "Will my organizations be able to carry on the work I've done after I'm gone?" As I suspect is the case with other Volunteers, I am reluctant to seek definitive answers to these questions, already aware of their likely outcomes. Instead, I continue with the day-to-day and try to give myself something positive to look forward to on a regular basis, which feels like I'm ignoring the real meat of the problem sometimes. I hope this doesn't come back to haunt me in job interviews...
You know, self-efficacy used to exude from me like sweat after a run (refreshing and natural, but borderline antisocial to some persons more stiff-necked than myself), but the combined experiences of switching my major of study, cancelling a wedding, and fruitlessly searching for a job for 18 contiguous months had effectively curbed that. So it's been a nice change as of late to experience some reaffirmations of my potency: starting on Monday, when I was getting chatted-up by a very attractive local chick; then on Wednesday, when I achieved 100 pushups over 5 sets for the first time; then again Thursday, when I ran 6 miles uninterrupted for the first time; and lastly, I guess I should include last week's response to one of my applications that wasn't a rejection letter. Aside: at what stage in my job search do I have to be to not be emotionally affected by typing that I'm receiving plenty of rejection letters right now? The mature stage, or the jaded stage? It feels like more of the former, so I'm going to stick with that.
Oh, and some people still don't understand why I was scared of E.T. growing up. Those people can read this comic.
Happy Friday the 13th, everybody!
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