Finished, but never satisfied.

For the past week, I’ve felt like a grocery cart that looks like all the rest, but has one wheel that is off-kilter and, as such, requires Popeye-size biceps to steer.

In other words, from the outside, everything looks fine. I’m rolling and I’m moving and I’m holding the cilantro and the flour and the yogurt just fine.

It’s just that it’s taking a lot of work to do the job.

Let me back up. We finished Train Like a Mother on last Monday–Labor Day, to put a fine point on it–and I was weary but very satisfied, kind of like how you feel after you finish a race you’ve been focusing on for months on end. You get to the finish line, you look back and think how in the h-e-double-hockey-sticks did I do that? Your confidence soars, you keep reliving certain parts of the race–or in this case, sentences that made me laugh–and you think you’ll never fall off the cloud you’ve landed on.

And then you wake up the morning or two after the race, and you don’t have a run you have to do. Or a chapter you have to write. And that structure that felt so restricting, that plan you couldn’t wait to be done with, that thing that consumed your thoughts and body and emotions for months suddenly feels as comforting as a hug from your mom. You need it back. You plummet to the ground, and wonder where that badass, bold woman from yesterday went.

We always say to have plans, post-big-race, so that those blues don’t grip you by the neck. Set up time with friends you haven’t seen, start on the projects you’ve been putting off, spend Saturday mornings making pancakes–not racking up miles–in the double digits. A date with the linen closet isn’t exactly the same as nailing a PR, but you’re filling your time and remembering that there’s more to life than that race, that training, that book.

Taking my own advice, I thought about how I was going to fill my time, post-TLAM. My first order of business: treating myself to a pedicure, my first of the (almost-over) summer.

Orange tootsies because I needed bold. Only later did I realize they matched the cover.

Next up: organizing the space around my dining room table so that it doesn’t always look like this:

Homework station, my second office, boardgame central and general dumping ground.

After I had that all tidied up–would probably require a trip to the Container Store (fun!)–I’d be warmed-up and ready for bigger projects, like this monstrosity:

Bubble gum kit, potato masher and treats for just me, hidden somewhere in there.

But neither project happened; I took both those pictures tonight. Instead of embracing all the free time I thought I was going to just love, love, love, my virtual grocery cart wheel went askew.

As hard as it is for me to admit, I am not o.k. with downtime. I have a hard time embracing the space, when it appears, in my life. I feel most alive when I’m striving, feeling stressed, under the gun and needing to produce. Give me fourteen things to do, and 24 hours to do them in, and I might complain or become just a little bit of a martyr, but I’ll get them all done–and feel jubilant that I did. Give me a random, quiet Wednesday, when I can just chill, maybe read, and not answer 40 e-mails and maybe just be fine with that? Don’t feel so alive–or even very good, if I’m being honest.

To make another analogy, I feel like I’m stuck in one of those like those really awkward, hard poses in yoga, when a lithe, beautiful instructor tells me to just “breathe into” the places that are tight. As far as I can tell, I have never been able to direct my breath to my tight hamstrings, my aching back, or some ligament I never knew I had until I pretzel’ed myself up. I just pant as deeply as I can, and I hang there and hang there and pretend like I don’t feel like I’m about to snap in half, until finally, I release from the pose. No wonder yoga never feels easier to me.

So after a week of fighting the quiet, avoiding the mundane chores, feeling unstressed and terribly unmoored, I breathed into the stillness as best I could. I made my standby pumpkin muffins, which haven’t been baked in months around here:

Ahhh, mini-chocolate chips coated in pumpkin batter: I’ve missed you.

Then I pulled out the old Moosewood Cooking For Health, since I’m still eating like I’m under deadline and can’t.be.bothered.to.actually.make.food, and cooked up some portobellos with peppers, tomatoes, spices and onions. And, of course, twice the amount of Monterey Jack cheese recommended.

As I said in our most recent podcast, I’m not a good cooker. But this tasted quite delish, even in a chipped dish.

Then I sat down with my husband at our cluttered table–I just shoved everything, minus some kindergarten artwork, to the other end– and I slowed down some more.

Two beers, two bowls of good food, one husband. Definitely enough to sit and savor.

Tonight, I’m aiming for over eight hours of sleep–another thing I’ve been lacking–and then I’ll be up at 5:20, so I can run four easy miles with some pals.

I’ll check in with the sticky wheel after that. My guess is that it might need a few more breaths–or at least a start on the bubble-gum-kit closet situation.