The original post by Natalie the Singingfool can be found at Monday, I Will Smack You
To beat an over-used expression to death, I am having a serious case of the Mondays. Scratch that – I have had a case of the Mondays for the past week or two. Would that make it a case of Periodic Blech Syndrome? I know I swore I would only be posting “quality content” on here, but screw it – not everything’s gonna be an award-winner. I’ve gotta let loose and be silly sometimes or my brain will self-destruct and possibly detonate and destroy civilization…
A Case of the Mondays. I know, I know, my blog is heavy on the Office Space imagery. I can’t help it, I work in an office. It is our social rally cry.
So this weekend I had a mini-meltdown. No, it’s okay, it’s just my usual monthly panic over where my life is going, will I ever get the green-light from God and the universe to travel, will life ever have any adventures again, etc. This is all Natalie-101; who knows if it’s a symptom of being a neurotic alcoholic or having too much ambition, whatevs, no biggie, it always goes away after I exercise or journal or watch some type of Brad Pitt movie.
But anyway, I had a panic attack and had to GET OUT of the urban sprawl, get out RIGHT NOW. So I fled.
I didn’t go far, only to a State Park about a half-hour south of us. I didn’t even know it was there until my coworkers told me about it, because it’s hidden in the Laguna Hills and I don’t really ever spend time in the Laguna Hills. I’m more of a forest lover than a chaparral kind of person, but in the Southern California absence of big trees any kind of nature will suffice. I just needed to get away, because the city and my head were closing in on me. It’s probably just some mild form of claustrophobia or contagious mental illness.
So I set out on my hike with nothing but a backpack filled with water bottles, Kleenex (I always have Kleenex), and a pocket knife (in case I ran into dangerous bush people five miles from the Orange County suburbs). Each step had joyful purpose, and my body felt alive, which is what I guess I’d been missing during my panic attack – the need to feel alive. This feeling gets lost in the day-to-daying of it all; work, chores, bills, commitments, which is mostly a slog. The farther I walked, the more I left myself and my issues behind.
On a side note, do you know what’s annoying? When you’re hiking, and someone is right on your tail and you have to listen to them cackle and talk when all you want is peace and quiet. Running into this quandary once or twice on this little excursion, I tried to pick up my pace and not stop for water breaks as frequently as my lazy self would have liked, and as soon as I ducked off the main trail onto a narrower one that cut across the valley, I finally found that solitude I had craved.
And I kept walking. Up torturous hills, down steep-ish inclines, marching stolidly across the flat portions. I kept walking.
For over eight miles. That’s almost four hours of hiking, for someone who spends her days hunched over a computer. It felt sort of cleansing, in a painful, self-destructive kind of way.
Toward the end, my feet were tingly and in severe blistery pain. My legs hurt. My butt hurt. I was glad I brought so little, because otherwise my back would’ve hurt. But man, I felt good, like I could conquer the world and do it all by myself. I needed that little boost, that reminder that I am capable of much more than my life demands of me.
However, today, I am sore. SORE with a capital SORE. I ache in places I didn’t even know could ache (how does one overtax the tendon behind the knee, I ask you?). I am also very sleepy, because I don’t usually get so much physical activity in such a concentrated portion of time, and I didn’t get the twelve hours of sleep my body obviously craves. I wanted to drop kick the alarm this morning and curl back into the fetal position for another two hours. Plus, after so much rejuvenation yesterday, it’s hard to find contentment in my cubicle. I keep looking wistfully out the window.
So tonight? I’m wrapping up my day with The Walking Dead and possibly The Bachelor (go ahead and make fun of my choices, I certainly would were our positions reversed). I need wipe this case of the Mondays off the board, and I plan to do so through televised therapy. Yes, that’s legitimate therapy – I almost went to briefly considered going to medical school, so I know what I’m talking about.
This post is part of a blog hop posted by Mod Mom Beyond IndieDom. Check it out!
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