Running in the Dark

I have been up here in New England now for over seven years (wow!) and that's been long enough to get used to a lot of this region's quirks, but one thing I struggle with every year is November. As a life-long decidedly-not-a-morning-person, I used to always look forward to the time change in the fall. It always fell the weekend before Halloween, and in college that meant an extra hour of revelry at the Cedar Springs block party in Dallas - an extra hour of cocktails and an extra hour of drag queens gliding down the middle of an urban street in the most fabulous frocks you could possibly imagine. And the extra hour of sleep! For years I have been capable of convincing myself that it really felt an hour later for days, if not weeks, after the time change.

New England changed all of that.

Thanksgiving has always been my favorite holiday, but the three years while I was in law school were entirely different. In those years November descended on me like black veil. By that time each fall semester I had slogged through a few months of classes, but in the great law school tradition there had not, at that point, been any measures of my progress. They don't believe in quizzes or assignments in law school - it's all or nothing come finals time. So, by November (particularly in my first year), the uncertainty and stress would always begin to weigh heavily. Each year, the hammer truly descended on Thanksgiving weekend. For those three years, what had been my favorite holiday became a dreadful gateway to a month-long carnival of horrors that was cramming for finals. I hated law school for ruining that for me.

Law school ended, of course, and Thanksgiving was returned to me. What I have learned since then and what I didn't recognize back then, was that as long as I live in New England that November will be hard for me. I have (for the most part) gotten used to the snow and the many months of cold, but with that fall time change the darkness descends far too early for me. Sitting in my office at 3:30 and watching the day turn dusky out my window fills me with no end of glumness.

I have resolved that this year will be different. I have been training all summer and have made enormous strides in learning to love training and the energy it gives me. Nonetheless, I am still very capable of spending an entire day at my desk talking myself out of going out on my run at the end of the day and driving home with the headlights on is possibly the least helpful thing I can imagine for the cause. So, today I left work and headed straight for the running store - $35 for a reflective vest and a blinky snap band. Directly home, right into the running clothes, vest, blinky, and headlamp on, and out the door (the dogs were not happy). And I ran intervals in the dark. And it was great. Running there in my own little pool of light, the darkness makes everything seem quieter. I could tune in to the sound of my breath and focus on making my footfall quiet and quick. I returned home feeling better than I had felt all day.

Maybe I'll get November back yet.

Don't Blog for a Year and a Half and Look What Happens!

Probably no one is reading this blog anymore, so it seems like the perfect time to give it another stab. Since I last wrote I have left the public defender office and gone into private practice. I continue to represent the indigent accused, and still love that work, but it's nice too to branch out.

So too with the blog. I'll continue to write about work, no doubt, but I expect I'll be musing about my theater things and my newer endeavors in training - running, biking, and something resembling swimming. So, stay tuned folks - anyone foolish enough to be checking this blog still may yet be rewarded and if I stick with it perhaps I'll step up the horn-tooting.