Giving and Finding Motivation

Finals week... It technically starts tomorrow, right? Hoo boy.

I'm feeling quite a bit better than I was yesterday. My head was killing me, and I was exhausted, but now I've got some more spunk in me. Which means I actually things today to talk about.

Last night I went to a concert on the quad of the local college which was fun! Strangely enough, I ended up seeing more people from my high school there than the graduation parties I attended. Granted, it was like six people, but still. Always a weird experience.

One of the weird things that's been happening lately is that people have been asking me for motivation lately. My sister asked me to help motivate her to eat healthier this summer. Yesterday one of her friends said she wished to talk to me about helping her get motivated to run a half marathon. The odd thing about this has been I've actually been feeling the complete opposite of what one would consider "motivational" for awhile. My last three runs haven't been the greatest, I'm gaining weight, and I've just been feeling gross all around. Motivational? Not in the picture.
Still, as I thought about it, it seemed cool that I could inspire others. Yes, I did run that distance. Yeah, I am training for an even longer race. It's just something I never expected to be.

Motivating others made me think of what motivates me. I know as I said before that I'm not feeling the greatest lately. Still, there are a lot of things that push me to be motivated. First of all, I know that I'm definitely motivated by being signed up for the marathon. One part of that is due to the fact that I threw down $145 for the thing. I'm not wasting that money. Another part of signing up for the race gave me an actual goal that I could work towards. It's a lot easier to have motivation to run if you have a race to work towards. The same idea works for something like a big test. You want to do well in the test, so you make sure you practice and study for it.

There are people who motivate me too. My friend Aaron started running this year, never really running before this to my knowledge. Now he runs 10 or 20 mile runs. It's wild. I feel like I don't want to disappoint him, you know? Also, hearing how people are proud of me when I run makes me want to run more.

I don't know how I can motivate my sister to make better choices. Since she's older, she's intimidating. The motivator can't be intimidated, it just doesn't work like that. Augh.

What motivates you?