Raising the Bar (Anxiety)

The Illinois bar is in exactly one week. Yes, this is my second bar. Yes, I voluntarily signed up for this one (but only sitting for one day? priceless), and yes, this time it's different. As I sat in the library of my former law school this weekend-all weekend- I looked around and wanted to tell everyone that it was going to be alright. It's not such a big deal. Everything will work out. But then, I realized that I would be lying. And then I started to freak out a bit myself as I alternated between moments of thinking that I knew all this stuff and all the hours and hours and hours that I put in last summer and actually practicing this year would pay off and thinking that I couldn't possibly work fast enough to get all this stuff to the front of my brain again.

Then, yesterday, when I learned what a terrible combination tar, dog paws and hardwood floors are and spent extremely valuable time washing the dog's paws with vegetable oil (it works! good one, B!)and scrubbing the floors with a toothbrush to get said tar out, I felt the panic and the exasperation creep in and start to take hold, I did the only thing I could think of to make it stop: I went for a run. Sure, it was still 87 degrees at 10pm with about 85% humidity, but it was one of the best runs I've had in a long time. No watch, no manadatory mile target to hit for training. In fact, it was a nonrunning day on the calendar, which made the whole thing almost better because it reminded me that I really have drunk the kool-aid now: I wholeheartedly love running. The miles flew by as I thought about how, even a few months ago, this route would have been a bit of a challenge and how I've gotten stronger, both physically and mentally (5am mornings in the cold and rain do that for ya) through the process. When I got home? I kicked some ass at the studying...because I knew I could and for a little while the wheels stopped spinning and just worked as efficiently as they could in the time there was. Good thing I went for that run.