Taking a Break

Recently I wanted to delete my entire manuscript.

I felt like it is not grabbing the reader; people who know me already might be interested, but I do not share enough for other people to relate to me and want to keep reading.

The brutal realization hit me that most people do not want to read about some random person's new experiences.  It is thoughts like these that make me feel like I've spent countless hours only to discover I'm a failure.

I walked away from the manuscript to save myself from myself.  When I came back, instead of deleting it, I decided I must rewrite it from a new angle.

I am not going to write this book as 'some random person.'  I have been through struggles that many people will be able to deeply relate to, and I'm going to be upfront about them so people have a reason to keep reading.  This year of new experiences changed my life and helped me overcome incredible obstacles, including those which had been holding me back for over a decade.  I believe writing this could truly help somebody.

Before that can happen, there is an incredible amount of work ahead of me.  I am going to take a break from this blog for a while, as this writing will be far more personal and I am not ready to share it yet. 


I am definitely not giving up.

Chapter Three: "Breaking and Entering"

Here is my third chapter.  Thanks for reading!

#3 “Breaking and Entering”
January 13

I deliberately wore my swimsuit beneath my clothes.  My younger sister Tiffani and I were the only people in the locker room, but to be naked, I needed to surround myself with a curtain or a fortress. 

I considered myself a very sheltered person.  At twenty-six-years old, I still lived with my parents and even felt naïve among people far younger than me.  For example, I stood in a blue one-piece swimsuit; Tiffani, seven years my junior, wore a pink bikini.  I had never worn a bikini in my entire life.  There was no precise reason why; all I could say was it was out of my comfort zone.  I did not even feel comfortable changing in the locker room.  After swimming, I would towel the water out of my long ponytail and put my shirt and jeans back over the wet swimsuit.  It was more comfortable to be damp and chlorine-rich than briefly flash anyone.

All the better to push myself with these new experiences.  Tiffani and I had run laps around the college track several times together, but this was our first time visiting the pool and trying a new exercise to help me with running.  

The locker-room pool door wouldn’t budge.  “How do we get in?” we asked each other.

Tentatively walking back into the hallway in our swimsuits, we noticed a door at the end of the hall with a heavy-duty combination bolt over the frame.  The door was slightly ajar, with POOL ENTRANCE printed in large black letters.

The smell of chlorine brought back blissful childhood memories.  I pushed past the padlocked door.

The vivid blue water stood still.  Even the lifeguard chair sat empty.  “Um, apparently no one wants to swim at ten o’clock Tuesday morning.”

“Oh wait, there’s someone over there,” Tiffani said.  A man kneeled by the drinking fountain with heavy tools.  He did not look up as we passed him.

I felt too excited about accomplishing this week’s experience to care.  Our bare feet cool on the damp cement, we reached the shallow edge of the pool and stepped in slowly, the cold water shocking us stiff.  When at the deeper end, I asked, “So you’d do this exercise when you were captain of your cross country team?”

“Yeah, pool running is basically running in place in water.” 

I kicked my legs, feeling uncoordinated and foolish.  Less than a minute passed before I grabbed the concrete edge of the pool.  “This is tiring!”

“Yeah, but you asked me to show you something new.  Think about how it builds strength and gives your joints a rest at the same time.”

 The man at the drinking fountain continued to avoid eye contact; I was relieved he wasn’t watching me thrash around like a mime trapped in a submerged box.

A white clock hung on the wall facing us.  Wondering how long I could pool run without stopping, I decided to go back to the locker room and grab my glasses to sharpen the red second hand. 

On my way back to the pool, a middle-aged woman wearing a black long-sleeved business suit walked slightly ahead of me.  When I reached the POOL ENTRANCE door, the business suit blocked my passage.

“You can’t get in through here.”

I felt awkward, standing next to this fully clothed woman in my swimsuit.  Too many experiences left me feeling a terrible shame about the body, and this did nothing to help.  “The pool doesn’t open for another hour—the times are on the door,” the woman in the business suit said, closing the entrance with the hours behind her.

             I had been so relieved that I didn’t have to pool run in front of other swimmers, I never questioned the empty pool.  Maybe I should have warned her that my sister is still in there, I thought as I humbly retreated to the locker room.  Why did I not speak up more? 

Tiffani joined me, red-faced, a minute later.  “We’re gonna be banned from the pool for life!”

 “What happened?”

“I was pool running when this lady ran up to me shouting, “No, no, no!”

 Tiffani’s vigorous thrashing in the deep-end wouldn’t even vaguely resemble swimming; it would look like a maniac about to drown.  “I didn’t know!” my submerged sister had tried to explain, certain the business suit was about to be ruined out of anger and a hardwired lifeguard response. 

“Now our photos will hang above the pool with red slashes across our faces,” I said, turning both of our fears into laughter.      

As we walked back into the hall wearing our clothes over our swimsuits, Tiff started loudly joking, “No, no, no!” just as a long black sleeve reached behind us.

“Here’s a schedule for the pool,” she said as Tiffani’s face grew red again, but the lady only smiled this time.

I looked at the paper in my hand.  Imagine that, a schedule!  We can’t just go to a pool whenever we feel like it.  I started to feel sympathetic towards the woman in the business suit.  She understood risks of unsupervised swimming better than I did.  It wouldn’t look good for the college if there were dead bodies floating face down in the pool. 

As Tiffani and I reached her red convertible in the parking lot, I said, “Now I’ve made my goal for three weeks,” excited despite my fresh embarrassment.  The illicit pool running lasted only ten minutes, but I also broke an entering by simply walking through a door and gave Tiffani the most humiliating moment of her life, so there are actually quite a few firsts here.

“So, what’s your new thing next week?” 

“Well, I will . . . I . . . I have no clue.  It’s so hard finding new experiences.”

“And you’re going to do this for a whole year?”

“Yes.  Somehow, I will do it.  Although I still can’t believe we just walked into a closed pool.  I’m afraid I’m going to embarrass myself over and over this year.”

“Well, at least you can embarrass me at the same time,” Tiff said with a smile.

Chapter Two: Digging Deep

Here is my second chapter; thanks for reading!


Chapter Two “Digging Deep”

January 8

My heart pounded as I leapt up the carpeted stairs, amazed that my legs were already back to normal.

 “Holly, what’re you doing here?  How was your 5K?”  Jo asked as I entered the office near her yoga studio.  She had repeatedly told me I was crazy for running a race in the middle of winter, but not without a hint of encouragement in her voice.

 “I ran the whole thing, Jo, even beat the New Year!  And I’m so glad I found you.  Can I schedule an appointment with you this week?”

            A few days later, I returned, standing alone with Jo in a room silent other than soft music.  Incense smoke lightly spiraled in the air. 

            “Take a few minutes to undress, but leave your underwear on so it’s not awkward for me knowing you’re ne-ked,” she joked.

            Undressing in a new environment was always exciting and scary.  I studied each corner of the room, even though I knew I was alone.  The window blinds shut out the cars passing on the street outside of Yoga Jo’s in North Ogden.  I had been taking Jo’s classes since May, my first class nearly bringing me to tears as I struggled to hold the poses.  I felt nervous about tonight, hearing this might be painful, but the light inside the room was the dim, comforting yellow of a bedside lamp.  I folded my clothes neatly and set them on an armchair.

            When Jo knocked on the door a few minutes later, I feebly called, “I’m ready!” from beneath a tucked white sheet and wool blanket.

            Jo opened the door, pausing by her stereo.  “This just isn’t me today,” she said, turning off the soft music and playing Jimmy Buffett instead.  “So tell me more about your New Year’s resolution,” Jo said, rubbing my temples with oil smelling of eucalyptus and tree bark.  “You’re really going to do something new each week?”

“Yes.”

“So if you do two new things in one week, you can rest the next.”

“No, I have to do something new every week—no cheating.”

“You’re really dedicated to this, huh?” she asked.

“If it’s 11:59 on a Saturday night and I haven’t done anything new for the week, I will literally find a bug and eat it.”

“Well, that’s disgusting, good luck with that one.  You should do more crazy races,” she said lifting my right arm and kneading my shoulder, working all the way down to my hand and fingertips.

“I’m not much of a runner—”

“You liar, you just ran a 5K!  I would never willingly do that; I’ve blocked out all the times someone’s forced me to run.”

“I hated it for a while,” I said.  “Ten years ago, I ran in my junior high track team, but by high school, I stopped running and whenever I tried again, I felt miserable.  I felt like I could barely run for thirty seconds before wanting to quit.  Last summer, when I first started classes here, I said, ‘Okay, fine, I’ll just run for thirty seconds.’  There’s a church right behind my parents’ house, and I’d run from one end of the church to the other.  I did it several times a week, and before I knew it I circled the whole church, then circled it twice.”

“So it was a church that got you back into running.  I knew having a Mormon church on every corner was good for something,” Jo said.  Over half of Utahans are Latter-day Saints or LDS, commonly known as Mormons.  I was unsure whether Jo was being sarcastic when she added, “Maybe religion will even creep into your new experiences.”  I had not been to church in years.

Jo’s fingers dug sharply into my right shin.  She told me she straightened and lengthened the muscles, getting out all the knots.  Talking distracted me from the pressure. 

“Running around that church definitely helped me.  I started running farther and farther.  Then there was this one Sunday—I was really sad about that guy I told you about—remember Aaron?  Yeah, I wanted to just cry in bed all morning, but I’ve already been there, done that, so I said, ‘I’m going to my old high school track and running a mile.’  It was my first mile since the track team—my first mile in ten years.

“That whole day, I kept thinking, ‘I could have spent all day in bed crying, but look what I accomplished instead.’  And I just kept running a couple times each week.  I go to the track every Sunday and haven’t missed a week yet.”  Before the mile, I had contemplated going back to something far worse than crying in bed all day; I wondered if in this intimate setting, Jo would figure out what it was.

“So what happened with Aaron that was so bad?”

“Well, I tried to help him through some things and it backfired on me.”  I knew the first time I saw Aaron, a twenty-year-old redhead with baggy jeans and a pronounced jaw, something was bound to backfire.  Yet he was the break in my routine I craved, and continued to crave.

 “You can always use that experience as an art project,” Jo offered.  “There you go, make some new art for your some of your experiences—and check out music you’d never listen to.  And you must skydive.”

“I don’t have any plans yet, but everyone who knows about my goal has lots of ideas for me,” I said.  One idea came from my cheery Mormon coworker, Anna, and it sounded so unlike me, I could not see myself doing it, this year or any year. 

“Time to flip over,” Jo said, and I turned to face my pillow. 

“Ooh, that hurts just a bit,” I yelped as her hands returned to my ankles.

“I’ll ease up; deep tissue massage is not like other massage.  So were you freezing your butt off in the 5K?”  Jo asked.

“You know what’s interesting?  I’ve always felt like I had a low cold tolerance, but ever since I’ve been running, it’s not so bad.  I run on the track even though it’s covered with snow.”

“And why?”

“I figure if I can be a human plow, I won’t let anything stop me from running again.  When I stopped after junior high, it wasn’t on purpose; I just had a little excuse here and a little excuse there, until ten years passed without even realizing I’d quit.”

By the end of the hour, my limbs had melted into the massage table.  “Did you like the massage?”  Jo asked.

            “Yeah, it could be uncomfortable at times but now I feel amazing.”

            Jo smiled.  “I’m glad you ran that crazy 5K.  And I wouldn’t worry about Aaron.  These adventures are gonna lead you to someone new.”