How do you deal with life??

I’m going to make this short and sweet.

It is 4:49 a.m. and I just bounced out of bed to write a blog post.

???

It occurred to me that perhaps the reason I’ve gone from blogging almost daily to hardly at all over the last couple of months is that writing was my outlet…until I started running again.

I fell in love with distance running about ten years ago and since then have run six half-marathons and completed the training for two full marathons. (A half marathon is 13.1 miles; a full is 26.2.)

I say “completed the training for two full marathons” because I have yet to run the race itself; the first time I was severely injured during the “taper” phase two weeks before the race, and the second time I came down with pneumonia three days before the day of the race.

DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED.

Anyway.

I haven’t run much the last couple of years and was inspired to start again after Thanksgiving. I’ve now got a pretty good foundation again and am starting to increase my mileage in preparation for a half-marathon at the end of April.

I love distance running because I can just lace up my shoes and go. I can let my mind wander while I put one foot in front of the other…sometimes for hours on end depending on how many miles I plan to get in that day. It’s always been my best thinking time, and really, my best outlet when I am frustrated, mad, sad, having a bad day, have information I need to process, a problem to solve, or an issue to address.

It occurred to me as I was tossing and turning in bed with insomnia and a boat load of stuff on my mind that maybe running has taken the place of writing for me lately?

And then I started thinking.

Everyone must have an outlet of some sort…a way to cope and sort things out when needed; you know, to deal with LIFE.

If running and writing are mine, what are other peoples’ outlets?

I’m seriously curious; what are yours?

How do you people deal with life??