Today on an eight mile walk with my aunt, we talked about a lot of things. Among those many topics of conversation, was mon raison d'être. When I ran my first marathon eight years ago, I kept running and running and running, because I really wanted to run in Olympic Trials for the marathon. All of the running I have done from 17 to 26 in the marathon has been motivated by my desire to run Olympic Trials for the marathon. However, as I have matured as a marathon runner through the years, I feel as though when I am 29 when Olympic Trials for the marathon comes around again that I will be very satisfied with my 12 year career of the marathon distance. By the time I am 29, I really hope that I am overjoyed or extremely happy with times I have run NYC, Boston and Berlin. My goal is to feel good about all the races I will be running before 2024 so that my entire purpose of running the marathon is much less running solely for running in Olympic Trials, rather achieving a different standard of racing or PR or being the best athlete I can possibly be. As an athlete, I am feeling motivated to compete for my dream times this year as well as next year, in hopes of exceeding my expectations; reap the benefits of starting at 17 and being 10 year into the marathon career. This is the first four year cycle that I have a goal above qualifying for Olympic Trials in the marathon, which is a very big deal to me. Running each marathon with the purpose or intent of running my optimal time as a well seasoned marathon runner will make me feel very satisfied and hopefully enable my runner body to achieve a new standard for myself. So, I am very hopeful that I will race better this year than ever and feel like I have accomplished everything on my list well ahead of 2024. My level of focus during my next marathon is going to be the highest level of intense, hopefully I finish the entire race.

Hopefully god has a plan for all of us marathon runners. God is good all the time.

This is going to be that year I run all of my marathons extremely well, do my violin check list, and have my in person lectures for my grad math or physics classes. Everything is going to fall into place, and covid will be in the past.

I am going to feel so much better when all I have to worry about is my phd and running my world major marathons, instead of worrying about covid. Drinking expresso and building on my career instead of having a heart attack over a pandemic.

The other thing that is nice is not having to worry about my grandmother because she is in assisted living, so I can drive over to her after school instead of always worrying about her health or taking her to the doctor/ having a six year sleepover with them. I will be so happy with enjoying my grandmother on special occasions like lunch, racing and finally having the time to finish grad school.

To finally be making my violin recordings is another luxury to come this year. It is not like I have a sprint to have my life back, like it takes a year to have a documentary plus record my albums, a semester is a semester on a calendar, and my world major races are twice a year. It is sad doing my recordings was always put off, it was supposed to be my graduation present after undergrad, and I thought that I could do orchestra whilst working on grad school once upon a time. I never seemed to find the time, even as a graduation thing that was after being postponed after being away in Maine for school or watching gramma in Florida. All in all, it needs to happen. Now I have the time, and it is actually a good thing, because after a few more years of running marathons I can switch to violin on weekends gradually outside of church. However, I suppose settling on recordings this year, doing here and there performances will work for me presently. I really think recording my pieces, doing the Four Seasons Video will make me feel valid in violin, play Tchaikovsky for Lauren to dance to again by next summer. Opening doors for performing next year. You never know! Slowly and then all at once, it is so nice to finally be placed into the bigger races, have time for grad mathematics, date, hone my violining skills. I really did make a lot of sacrifices from 19 to 25 to watch my grandmother the way that I did, and I can only hope someone will like me because of it, and yeah all my things in life are still there for me now which is fantastic. I am happy I was with her instead of a stranger. Knowing what I want to do is helpful in seeing beyond corona virus.

With my life being back to normal, will be meeting athletes and interviewing them of course.

It is just good to know that I will have my life back to my standard of living in happiness. I think I fell harder this year than the year I almost died in highschool, but as long as I have it all back within this year I am going to be able to move on and experience things that will make me not care about 2019 or 2020. Nevertheless there is always a reason to be strong, and I am so confident there is a way to bounce back fast.

Today, I had a really nice picnic with my family and also made a lasagna. For all my noodles, I threw 7 cups of flour, 8 eggs, one cup of olive oil, a tablespoon of truffle oil, and salt into the Kitchen Aid and added more olive oil as needed. Then, I used the Kitchen Aid attachment to roll out all my palm sized balls into noodles on the 6th setting of thin. It turned out awesome.

<<Je crois que vous pouvez choisir une vie avec quelqu'un qui vous aime vraiment et je sais ce que c'est que d'aimer et d'être aimé et de mélanger tout le sérieux; cela ne ressemble pas à la mort.>>

My sister asked me when would I want to meet with my music instructor I have had since I was five or my aunt to look at my violining, and my answer was after I sight read and play a piece well and think I am performance ready. Or if I have a question about how to count something. Taking private lessons every week from five to eighteen was my version of going to college and getting a music degree, and I am lucky that gave me time for all my grad math classes and business classes. So the reason that I wait until I think that I am performance ready is, that is the most constructive time to have a professional critique your playing and tell you everything to touch up or change. Then, I can practice with corrections and actually become performance ready. So before I record certain pieces this upcoming year, I might meet with someone in my professional circle and have them critique me to improve on something. A time that could happen is when I am using my aunt’s fancy violin and with her anyway, which is pretty cool. I would never want to have an appointment with someone that I do not know already, because it would be a step in the wrong direction for me as well as most others. My first professional recording was when I was 12 and there was so much legality tied to it because of being a minor at the time, it is funny to look back on, but now as an adult I am going to have a really good time with this upcoming year. Everyone is in a league of their own performing, and I think that everyone needs to take that step back and say ‘Whatever I just played sounded fine’. I am still unsure if I just want to keep it all in the family or make a YouTube page of my recordings and videos this year, we shall see, but I am predominantly doing this for my family to have all our hard work over the years documented. For instance, I would record Tchaikovsky just for my little cousin to dance to, and arrange things the way she wanted for her dance. I do not know what I’ll post online or just like have for my family. Then there is always, what do I want done in the studio versus my laptop… Four Seasons is definitely a studio thing, but I might do the Christmas songs on my laptop. With the studio selections, what would be the best way to make the video of me playing it? As in should I record separately or have a special thing with the camera? So much to think about. However, no one wants to sync a recording with a separate video, because that would take forever. And then there is that debate about recording downstate or upstate, I would want to do it up here, but since I want to use my aunts’ violin I don’t know where we are going. Just a matter of semantics, nevertheless I am looking forward to opera fudge upon finishing my recordings this year.

Today is rainy and thundering so I have to resort to the treadmill! Let’s see how long I can last on the treadmill, will I break 1:20?

On my ten mile run tonight, I really focused on my positive affirmations to make it through the workout. Sometimes, I need to tell my legs that they can do it, or repeat ‘You’re strong and fast and making it to the next mile’ or look to my watch and look to my legs and say ‘ You have thirty seconds to make it to this landmark’. Having an affirmation or quote to think about, or even a prayer, can help your running incredibly.

Today, upon running my five mile loop, I went to Oliver’s Produce and purchased some honey for my tea as well as several pretty flowers. One of the flowers is a sunflower, and the three colorful flowers are something I am not familiar with, nevertheless they made me very happy to admire and walk a mile holding. I love having cream with honey in my black or chamomile tea every day. I put my flowers next to my moon flowers of the day.

Earlier this morning, I sight read through some old pieces and I am pleasantly surprised with what I remember. It takes me a few months to go from sight reading to playing an entire chunk of anything new as performance ready. When I am using my other violin, it will be so much easier after playing on my harder violin for such a long time. It’s like running in different pairs of sneakers, playing on different violins. Whether it is giving lessons or being home and playing the violin at your parent’s house, you feel the difference between playing an instrument versus an instrument luxuriously playing for you which makes me giggle. For practicing, I do not use vibrato all he time because it hurts my wrist, another thing in practice I do to save myself is break my perfect posture sitting at the end of my chair and lean back for back support. It is very strenuous to play violin which is something that a lot of people do not think about, so there is a vast difference between practice and performing (depending on the person). Sometimes, it actually is easier for me to play violin standing up, everyone finds those little ways to save energy practicing, I don’t know after my back surgery I could not play my violin for two months. You would think this was the year for me to have extra time for running and violin, yet I needed a break from all of it. Last summer I took a break from running just to do my grad math work, I never really had a break before since I was about 18 unless it was 4 weeks off for an injury. Just to make the assimilation with using difficulty to make your norm more easy later on, I have a variation of the ‘cheater sneaker’ which ironically make running more difficult, so when I put on my race sneakers I run much faster as the result of running in the difficult sneakers so much. Welcoming the difficult on a welcome mat, makes it easier for me to adjust to change as well as accelerate later into a process. I try not to take myself too seriously, like I am sure whatever my project turns out to be it will be fine!

Basically, my highlights today were running and violining.

If you told me eight years ago that I would still be running marathons trying to reach my all time time goal, I would have cried. I feel ambivalent about my time goal, and weird about it not happening already or by a certain age, because I really thought that 25 was the age I would run my best marathon time and then after that all I would need to do is my PhD. Luckily, it works with my long lasting routine to be a marathon runner and have another side to life as well, so I am comfortable with putting myself out there at this stage of life. When you devote so much of your life to something, it needs to happen. I am a firm believer that when you stride towards perfection, you will fall pretty close. In the marathon, it went from being the longest distance that I have ever run, to an event that I am capable of running very well. Always having been a strong runner, I thought that the marathon would feel like a race as the 5k felt during the cross-country years. My first time, the marathon felt like a race until twenty miles in when I felt like I was in the deep end. After becoming comfortable with longer distances over years and years, I still feel like anyone could feel in the deep end in a marathon, but I am more comfortable racing or risk taking knowing what to expect. Running a marathon well really does take years of hard work, I feel like I was just as good of a runner eight yeas ago yet I am in a higher place tackling my favorite event now than back then. If the question is, Do you feel comfortable running a marathon? My answer is no one feels comfortable running a marathon, but at the same time I probably am as comfortable or confident in running the marathon as someone can possibly be.

Taking a break from racing this year, gave me fresh legs to have a plan for the next year and a half of racing. Where as before, I never really took a break for a very long time in years and my body was so worn out. I could have raced very injured, and I am sure that last Spring would have been my last season. Perhaps I wanted last Spring to be my last season and should have just run injured. At the same time, I foresee myself really getting it within this next year, so maybe the unexpected break will equip me with the tenacity to run even faster than I have ever dreamed of. Marathon running sure does build character if nothing else of the career. You do not know what healthy feels like until you feel healthy again. God is good all the time, and hopefully has a wonderful plan for my running in this season back because I am already committed. Everything is happening at once after years of hard work, running my world majors and recording all my violin pieces in addition to filming them professionally, next summer I will feel on top of the world. You know, this really is not how I always envisioned those goals working out if you will, however at least they are working out just because they can. Sometimes, just being able to do something is enough, flow through the motions.

By next summer, I will have my favorite Vivaldi and Tchaikovsky and Christmas music recorded with some kind of corresponding videos. How fun is that?! I really should do it all, just for my mom and instructor after all those years of driving around or practicing forever and ever. All my playing will be on the record, plus I can play dress up too. All of those classical pieces that I learned really are like running a marathon, that mindset to do very long things came in handy. I also want to try making shorts of my favorite sections of pieces that my friends who are not into classical music would enjoy listening to on my back deck if I insist and give them enough to drink first. After we record all of my things this next 365 days, we are going to have a party with balloons and confetti. I am such a lucky girl to have these long term goals to look forward to all year after this year being the worst especially. Whenever I see my aunt whom is an orchestra conductor/ instructor/ violinist in the big apple aka NYC, I always tell her to tell her elite instrumental students to record the special pieces that they play just because they can, not everyone can do it so playing is very cool. Even the other day whilst enjoying my favorite Finger Lake Winery, I could not take my eyes off of the string bass player par ce que I love strings so much, you can use instruments to meet people which is very funny. My aunt’s violin prodigy going off to college will probably find their first girlfriend serenading her with Salut d’Amour or something. I just fixed up a baby violin so I can take on a student this year and have a prodigy in ten to fifteen years from now too, with like expensive strings and everything snobby on the market. I think that Gold Flex rosin is worth the twenty dollars, because it really does improve tone quality on cheaper instruments immensely.

The next time I see my little cousin/sister Lauren, I will play some nice classical Tchaikovsky on my violin whilst she dances her classical ballet with whirls & twirls & leaps, she can do so much more than plié, relevé and curtsy which is very impressive; another reason we were always besties. We will rehearse again, again, and all over again together avec a piano accompaniment too. Playing the Waltz of Sleeping Beauty on violin, makes me think of nothing other than beautiful Lauren dancing in her ballet studio in Kodiak, or in front of the majestic mountains and ocean; leap, plié, and whirl. You become mesmerized watching Lauren dance, dancing is her life. J’y pense que elle va use her MBA to open up her own ballet studio, just because she can especially if she settles on Alaska of all places. I remember how happy Lauren was to finally have as many pairs of pointe shoes as she wanted instead of just one pair, that was such a big deal to go from one pair a season to one pair a week with three alternatives just in case. When we went to NYC together, instead of finding Balto that time, we found ballet dancers and actually purchased a biographical book signed by the author on the steps of some profound building; she was so cute & little & hopeful & happy (afterwards we had crêpes with strawberries somewhere fancy which is why we had to make them with Bailey back in Kodiak later on, I wish Bailey were the only friend allowed on all our trips hahah). NYC & Disney World are mine and Lauren’s happy places de temps en temps, and nothing is ever going to ruin that for us girls, nor having coffee walking down 5th Ave upon the opportunity presenting itself. Mon fée princesse ballerine, and star of the Alaska Ballet Theatre, I think she was the star dancing in Disney World too. We could probably make a really gorgeous stunning video together by next summer with my violining her Chanel make-up, Gaynor Mindens, and custom leo.

It will feel nice to be the way I actually am again after covid, in a daily routine to reach my goals and dating on weekends. Today, whilst practicing on a violin I have at my parent’s house I thought about my much more expensive one and the immense difference in sound quality. Nevertheless, it is all fine for practice or nobody walking by would really know what I am playing or anything about the tone quality of the instrument so long as it is basically in tune. There is getting into marathoner shape and then there is getting into violinist shape. I really appreciate the times I have been in both of those shapes sounding or looking fluid while being eloquent and confident, fluidity in the stride or bowing technique. I am planning on doing my marathon and recording of Autumn in October/ November. It is very possible I will wear a different red dress for every season, because I keep loving the reds. Dresses. having my hair and make-up done, playing these beautiful violin pieces will all make me bounce back from covid and feel happiness, the videography half of the project will probably make me laugh. I would like to record Winter at the same time as Autumn, but I feel like it will probably turn into two separate occasions, being that this is a year long project there is not really a rush. Perhaps my Christmas song compilation will be a stocking stuffer for everyone this year too, now that I am in a recording artist/ videography mood. Ten years ago I could record pieces, but I would never really think to make it into a video or something cool, so this is a very exciting project for me. Maybe it means more ten years later in life. I think about how I was really good at running ten years ago too, but not yet an elite marathon runner. That idea can equate to me being able to play though a lot of violin pieces then too, yet I may be even better now in some kind of way. You just never know. Running and violin are both lifelong passions that figuratively have a lot in common. Even when I am done with my PhD, I think I will still run and play my violin.

So, this morning I went on a ten mile run just after sunrise before the heat swept in which was very nice.