Amy Lu's View

Every run has its challenges (or at least irritations) but today was the first time my run was interrupted by a fire alarm. 

Yes, this was an indoor run on the track at the gym we go to (LifeTime Fitness), and I was only about 10 minutes in, when the fire alarm went off. 

Damn. 

I had just gotten my motivation up enough to make the (short) journey from church to the gym, and went through the rigamarole of going to the locker room and changing, and finally got my ass on the track and running…and now I was supposed to stop?

So I didn’t–other people kept working out, too, and no one seemed too distressed, and I saw no signs of fire. Maybe it was clearly a false alarm–an electrical issue or something–that would be over soon? So I kept running, and I was able to get about another three minutes in before a staff person made an announcement that yes, indeed, they DID need us to leave.

Sigh. I went downstairs and grabbed my clothes from the locker and just put my real clothes on over my workout clothes–not ideal, but I knew I would need to finish my workout in some way and not having to completely change clothes again would facilitate that. 

Now it was decision time. Did I just wait for the fire alarm situation to be resolved? Give up on the gym entirely and go home and ride our stationary bike? Try to be efficient and go to Target?–but I needed some groceries and it wouldn’t be good to have those sitting in the car when I went back to the gym. 

I really hate having my plans interrupted, even, especially, the inconsequential ones, and I hate feeling like I’m wasting time. But, feelings acknowledged, frowny face noted, I had to make a decision. 

I ended up going to Walgreens (I was considering a hair dye run anyway AND I found the rather uncommon shade I was looking for), went back to the gym (luckily there wasn’t actually a fire and  I could go back), finished running (and hey, the track was pretty empty after the fire drill although one person still managed to be running the wrong way), and went to Target and got groceries. #SuccessForAmy

Yay, I ended up accomplishing my goals for today, but what is the point of this post? I could tie today’s fire alarm experience with last night’s dining debacle, another anecdote about how one of my plans went awry and I had to make a decision and got extremely stressed. (Synopsis: We had reservations at a local restaurant before a theater show we were going to, but they were so busy that they didn’t even come by to take our dinner order until after 45 minutes so I didn’t think they could possibly get us our order in time for the show so I decided we should leave and we got appetizers but we didn’t get supper, just pretzels–and wine–at the theater. Obviously, we didn’t starve, but I was wracked with anxiety and trying to make the “right” decision and I had been thinking about having their gnocchi for weeks!). 

Or, I could reminisce about past fire alarms…mostly I remember how I heard about middle of the night fire alarms being a thing I would have to contend with when I went to college and lived in the dorms and having lots of anxiety. Would I ever even be able to sleep at college and would fire alarms constantly interrupt what little sleep I got? Would I be able to find decent clothes and make my way out of the dorm in time? Would I have to stand outside in my pajamas for hours? Turns out I only had to deal with one or two fire alarms as a dorm dweller. 

Or I could reflect on how lucky I was that fire alarms were NOT a thing that I ever had to deal with as a library building manager, and something I NEVER have to contend with as someone who gets to work at home. 

(Hey, I guess I did just write about all those things!)

Is there a through line to any of this? A takeaway, a theme, much less a “moral” (I prefer “insight”). I’m afraid this is yet another blog installment of “Things Amy needlessly freaks out about” and/or “Amy delusionally expects life to conform to her trivial wishes” which wasn’t really what I was hoping my blog would be. 

But this is my blog, so it is going to be about what I feel and think and experience, especially those things that are trivial and repetitive. Of course I’m going to keep having the same silly anxieties and keep learning the same lessons over and over. I’m not going to magically change, but I do think I am at least a little more self-aware (“Here I go again”) and I can laugh at myself at least a bit and pivot and/or reframe a little more quickly. 

I can accept that my anxieties  (and therefore my blog posts) are repetitive–but in the immediate future, how can I come up with fresh and exciting illustrations and photos to capture them?