Week 8, Day 6: "I flayed your flesh with my thoughts"

After yesterday's shittiness, I got back out there and ran again today.


I always look very serious after a run, perhaps because I am hating myself.

I really HATE running. I keep thinking it's eventually going to become fun, and it even seems like it might be "good" and "invigorating" right before I get out there, but by about three minutes in I realize it's only going to be torture and I will pray and beg myself for the moment that it is all over.

Even harder still is doing it by myself. I've never "been able to" run by myself, as when I was a runner in the past, it was through cross-country; since then, i've only "started running again" when nearby friends have wanted to start together. For various reasons though, that too has never worked out either. The one exception to this all was the last semester of my senior year in college, when I took a one credit "self-guided fitness class" so that I could graduate. There I always worked out alone, either by running outside or working on the bike, but looking back I feel like my efforts weren't very strong.

I don't abhor the concept of physical activity, at all--I love playing competitive team sports like basketball, softball, or even badminton/croquet/rounders--but I do just feel completely unable to get behind exercise for the sake of exercise. I was talking about it this week and related how there are plenty of boring/unenjoyable tasks I can get into without much bother, like washing the dishes or scrubbing the bathtub, but I just can't seem to imbue running or gym-ing with the droning take-me-away repetition necessary. Instead my mind spends every minute reminding me how much I hate what I'm doing, how out-of-shape I am, how much I desperately wish I was anywhere else but there, on the road, running. Bleh.

Above all, the pain I endure while running is uncomfortable to me because it seems to epitomize most strongly the peculiar basis of most every "let-down failure" of my life: something I should (eg "have the skills to") be good at, brought down by not quite enough intrinsic motivation, terrible self-discipline to will success, and flaky stamina/focus (the lack of self-discipline contributing to this weakness of course). Every time I get out there I think about the day I quit running cross-country and the strange journey I've taken ever since. I hope that someday things will not be the same.

For running I had no hiphop today. "Rock for Winter" mix instead. A Certain Ratio (Eno reference) doing "Do the Du" (dancer....?):

I've decided to extend this week's Hyperliving into next week, because I really need to keep making myself do this and I'm not ready to stop.