Losing My Guts

This week I lost my journal. It was somewhere and then it went missing and I looked and forgot about it and am now wondering what was inside the cover. If it was in my hands I would never bother to look through its tattered pages, but now I feel lost, like I have a dream that is vanishing before my eyes. It tends to have unfiltered emotions, real guts working through through my intestines or liver and hopefully exiting my brain, never to return.

I am heading to a writing Conference tomorrow and keep thinking things like,
Can I get runs in?
Will I know anyone or choose to be social? Will my interactions be real or fake?
Do I have to network and who would I even target?
Am I a serious writer? Do I have a story to tell and any work to share?
How can I go to every talk and not miss the best of what is there?
Would I be better served in a cabin in the woods for three days with my notebook and pen?
How can I leave my kids and what do people think of me for doing it?
Will my kids resent or forget me (will I lose them?)?

So I doubt my ability to choose to fight, over my instinct to curl up and hide. On Sunday I started my 10K in the pouring rain. In the pain of running the first 100 yards, do I kept trying to decide if I should shut down or push harder. And for what? For myself to know I can run fast? For others to say, wow, she is fast or slow? I  really want silence. I want a moment to run without all the effort to avoid judgement. A moment with the guts of my lost journal, where I can run any pace, scribble gibberish and enjoy myself.