Dealing with Curveballs and Anything Unexpected

I think it was just last week when I was on here talking about some new running goals that I was getting excited about, and starting to plan out how I'm going to get ready for a couple of races coming up before too long... There was mention of meeting some weekly training volume goals and getting into a consistent rhythm again.Things were going well up until the weekend -- I managed to eke out a couple of good pace runs and my legs and lungs were feeling strong...

Lower Johnson Street -- Eerily Quiet

...and then it started snowing. And snowing. And snowing.... And we don't usually get much, or any, snow. Our close neighbour, Vancouver, has a greater metropolitan population in the order of 2.5Million people... They get a bit more snow than us usually, and they only have 50 snowplows for the entire City (Toronto has 600). Greater Victoria is approximately 300k+ people, and we're even less prepared for snow. It was 2 years ago we go a skiff of snow, and I remember reading a story that the City's annual snow-removal budget was obliterated in about 3hours -- We don't usually get snow, so we don't really plan on how to deal with it.

My usual running route

So how does one deal with a curveball getting thrown right at the heart of the plans that you just laid out? I was just getting fired up to increase my training -- and then WHAM. Snowfall warnings all the time. The city shuts down, pretty much. I live downtown, and I've never seen it so quiet. It was pretty nice, to be honest. I had resolved to just not run outside until it melts off (sidewalks are mostly clear at this point -- with more snowfall warnings in place). Brought my running gear to the office earlier this week in an attempt to go to the gym at lunchtime for a run on the treadmills -- but nobody could commute downtown to operate the gym -- so it was closed. Frowny face :(

Starts to melt.. then it freezes... making running treacherous

So when life throws a curveball at your face, what do you do? Step one -- move your face. Step two -- realize that plans aren't gospel -- they're just plans. Adjust and move on. Thankfully, I've managed to get into a decent routine of practicing a little bit of yoga at home. That has certainly helped me shake off a little bit of energy that's been building up from not being able to run. I've also changed gears a little bit and done a little bit of art with @caitycat. We decided to do a random art prompt challenge. We got random suggestions for a character, a situation and a setting (or something like that). We ended up selecting:

• Character -- A luminous mermaid;
• Setting -- A city burning -- the night sky on fire;
• Situation -- The superhero sidekick finally snaps;

Typical of myself, I go with what I find to be the most comical solution. Naturally, this ended up being a reverse mermaid character, and their super-hero sidekick was a snapping turtle that had never managed to snap before -- UNTIL NOW! Also typical -- I didn't finish my illustration. I never got around to adding the burning city, and I got distracted by something else then moved on.

I've also been playing around with setting up a new Django app to integrate Steem Keychain into my @exhaust project. Was starting to make some decent progress. I've essentially got it set up and working, but I just need to figure out the way to send an encrypted message to Keychain, so a user can decrypt it -- which is a methodology of verifying ones identity.

Images of webpages, in a webpage. What will you think of next, self...

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I guess, at the end of the day, it's important to realize that -- life is about more than whatever plans you decided to lay out for yourself. Life is a soup of variables, and you'll almost certainly not be able to plan everything perfectly. Roll with the punches, play it by ear, and do what you can when you can. Also -- Reverse mermaids are dope.