Harder Than It Looks

Still swimming. Still biking. Still running. Just in case you thought I had keeled over from all that exertion.

Just not bloggin' about it. Truth is, it's harder than I thought it would be. The exercise and the blogging.

I have always loved writing. Ever since I was a little kid. Creative writing and I got a long great. Math and I? Not so much.

When I was in high school, I had this amazing English teacher. She really saw how much I loved to write, and encouraged me by having me take extra classes, and do extra writing to keep the creative juices flowing. Which was kind of good since they "advised" me not to take any math above trigonometry when I was a junior. Something about calculus being beyond me. Go figure.

My mom had this friend who did career counseling when we lived on Governors Island. When I graduated from the High School of Music and Art, she gave me a "session" as a gift which was really nice of her. She let me come and take all those aptitude tests that point you in the right direction before you start off on your college career.

There were all kinds of sections. Analogies, math patterns, writing, the works. Most of it was pretty enjoyable. Except for probably the math. When I see lots of words together I see descriptive possibilities, spelling patterns, latin roots. When I see numbers I glaze over like a 5'3" donut. And then I completely tune out.

So it was not suprising when the results came back. When asked to identify number patterns I had scored in the 20th percentile. Ouch.

When asked to freeform write about what my favorite movie was, I wrote 10 pages just because. She told me I should do something creative. And when I saw anything involving math, I should run very fast in the opposite direction.

Which actually did come back to haunt me later on in my working life. I was working for an insurance company (how's that for creativity), and was vying for a job in the marketing department. Standard company policy was to have all applicants take an aptitude test. Which was almost all about numbers. Which I bombed. Mostly because I got totally bored in the middle and started drawing on the back of the packet.

When my boss saw the results I think he was a little shocked. I mean, I don't come across as a moron, but I apparently test as though I might be one. So he told the hiring manager that I had done so badly because I forgot to wear my contacts that day. Which I didn't actually wear. And he hired me. For a job that involved absolutely no numbers. **Loved it**

In any case, the exercise is going decently well and the creative inspiration to bore you with the details of that exercise comes and goes.

I am still holding out hope that I can break the 40 minute 5K next weekend in Portland, Maine. After that, I need to get cracking on the details of the triathalon. Buy a spandex outfit to swim/bike/run in. That ought to be interesting. Take a class on how to change a tire on my bike in case I get a flat. That could prove to be even more interesting than the spandex.

Stay tuned and thanks for reading along :)