Thoughts on running & senior year

As I went for a 3 mile run this afternoon I kept coming back to the same thought: no one knows how far I've gone or how much I have left. All they know is I'm running. Running outside makes people self-conscious sometimes, me included. It's not like everyone or even anyone out and about is paying attention to the runners. No one else cares that I walked for a while. No one else cares that I'm breathing hard after only a short distance. For all they know I'm on mile 10 or 15 of my run.

I've yet to genuinely enjoy running but today I think I almost got to that point. Last night as I was walking home from a birthday party (more on that later) I stopped and talked w/ one of my new friends. We've lived across the street from each other since last fall but probably only talked twice in a year's time. In the last week or so we've been getting to know each other quite a bit. So this kid, Kyle, was just walking around and cooling off after his night run. He and I have talked about running a few times since he knows I'm doing 150 miles in this semester. He described his night run as basically something he needed to do, not because he's necessarily trying to be fit or healthy, though both those things are advantages of running, but because it just feels nice to go for a run at night. I really am trying to get to the point where running is just a thing I do because it's, well, nice.

Kyle and I talked about a lot of other things besides running too, things like peanut butter, dinner parties we're going to have and stealing apples.

So as far as senior year is concerned, these first three weeks of school have been fantastic. I'm getting all my homework done and I'm not overwhelmed whatsoever; I'm having fun in my classes, whether that be learning how to do HTML or talking about writing; I'm hanging out with all sorts of awesome people nearly every night and making plans for crazy trips; I'm enjoying my job.

Take last night for example: I got done with class at 6:30. I then went to a pizza party with tons of homemade thin crust pizza. After that I did some homework until a boy came over to say we were bringing the birthday cake Becca had made to Ryan, whose birthday it was, on campus since he had tons of homework to do. There were ten of us that got into two cars and drove to campus. We subsequently walked around, like, three or four floors of this building where Ryan was supposed to be. Turns out he actually went home and we just missed him, though he had no idea we had a cake for him. So back to the Lava Lounge we went to surprise Ryan with his cake. We sang, we danced, we ate cake, we laughed, we hugged.

Besides the cake-eating, the singing, dancing, laughing and hugging have happened nearly every night since last Friday, possibly even the Friday before that. And those things won't stop anytime soon either. Tomorrow night we're going on a little camping trip, though a very unorthodox one I'll be sure to blog about. And then in October there's a little trip to Boise planned, a trip I'm not totally sold on yet but the Lava Lounge kids are working pretty hard to convince me to go along. I said in my last post that life was perfect just in ways I never expected and that seems to be truer every day.

All in all, Shaytember is going fantastically. I haven't missed a day of writing 10 things that made me happy, I've run 3 miles once and, well, the making a video every week has been pretty lame. I've filmed stuff and it's partially edited, I just need to finish . . . Oh, and my fourth goal, the secret one, is my favorite of them all thus far.

Basically, being a senior is quality.

Last YouTube video I watched: Birthday Party Battle Plan