Swimming and the Good Wife

I've recently become a bit obsessed with The Good Wife, the lawyer show about the wife of a disgraced politician. That's seriously oversimplifying everything, but you can Google everything and spoil it for yourself.

Now, when I say obsessed, I mean it's a little bit overboard on the amount of time I spend thinking about this show. Primarily, I try to identify with the main character of the show, Alicia Florrick.

I like to identify Alicia as an independently strong woman. She sticks up for herself, doesn't take crap, knows when it's OK to have a few too many glasses of wine, and make fun of herself. A little strangely, I relate in a lot of ways, because I'm obviously a Chicagoan housewife turned kick-ass lawyer due to a public indiscretion with my husband. WE'RE JUST THE SAME, OK.

Well, mostly I've tried to emulate Good Wife status when I'm down in the dumps. Good Wife spent a good chunk of her life putting her lawyer-ness on hold to raise her children. While she definitely never regretted setting aside the law for her family, it seemed like there was something missing from her life. Then due to unexpected circumstances, she found that missing piece and her life was then just a show about how great being a lawyer is and how she only wins her cases and she never gets wrinkles. HA, if only (except for the part about the winkles). 

Good Wife finds that once thrust back into being a lawyer, her life is hard in a completely new way. She has to juggle home and work life, maintain great hair and outfits. and be confronted with moral dilemmas on a daily basis. While her name implies that she is nothing but good, Good Wife also finds herself in sticky situations because she occasionally decides to be--NOT SO GOOD. 

But that's what I like about her. While I want to heroine-ize her*, I see her being a person. Good wife messes up. I mess up. Good wife overcomes obstacles. I overcome obstacles. I think you guys might have missed it, but we are basically the same.

I recently found myself in a bit of a rut. I filled this rut with countless hours of The Good Wife, pizza, and trying on my entire closet at late hours of the night. Everything was feeling a little sluggish, so I decided to take mental inventory of my life. I was exercising, working, seeing the people I cared about, so what was the issue? What would Good Wife do?

While it was easy for me to look into Alicia's life as to what she should do (Run for the State's Attorney's-ship, duh!) because I'm the omnipotent one in this situation, it was a little more difficult to look at myself. In fact, it was damn frustrating.

I was doing all the things I deemed correct on my checklist:

Working: Check
Eating: Check
Personal Fulfillment: ...Crap

I wasn't exactly sure what that even meant to myself at this point, which was a strange feeling. I wasn't unhappy, but I wasn't exactly sure how to fix the feeling that lingering feeling. What would Good Wife do? So, I took my power stance, put on my metaphorical power suit, and stepped out the metaphorical door and into my metaphorical courtroom. For me, I determined I needed to start swimming again.


Swimming for me had always been a release. It was really the first (and only) sport that I excelled at and taught me the meaning of discipline and hard work, not to mention that weird friend bond you have with your teammates. So I took my power stance, put on my literal swimming suit, stepped out the locker room door and into my real life swimming pool.

I AM GOOD WIFE, HEAR ME SWIM.

First thoughts upon jumping in:

"Fuck, it's cold."

"Why did I used to enjoy this?"

"If I suck in more water, I can clear out my sinuses."

"If I suck in more water, I won't have sinuses."

"What is Michael Phelps?! A wizard?!"

"I'm going to pretend to go my normal speed, but I'm actually racing you, the guy next to me."

"OK, I still enjoy this."

I told myself I was Alicia at this point. While still being pretty rusty, I just needed to get my feet off the ground and jump into the deep end (literally, two points for puns). This wasn't going to be easy, but giving up would be more disappointing to myself than getting the engine going again. Not to mention the giant wave of nostalgia that I was getting. The general feeling of weightlessness, the taste of chlorine (yes, it tastes strangely good, OK?), and the tightness of your lungs until you get that breath of fresh air; it was intoxicating.

The day my cap broke was the end of an era for past Ryan. Poor cappie had been around for years and seen me through quite a lot, but it was time for something new...to squeeze the life out of my head.

So I've continued this for a bit. Keeping my swim gear in my car in case of emergency (the great flood, you know?!) and actually utilizing my gym's amenities. Although the routine doesn't change a lot, it's been weirdly relieving to add this to my days.

Now I'm one step closer to Good Wife status...but substitute an advanced law degree with a Bachelor's from Southern Utah University.

*That means I want to shoot her into my veins.