Thursday, May 21, 2009

Jogging

Welcome, beautiful traveler. I greet you a bit damp with sweat and in need of a shower.

I jogged tonight, instead of walking. That's because I got some crummy cholesterol results today -- my "good" cholesterol, the kind that's raised by exercise, was in the toilet, and my triglycerides had shot through the roof. So apparently just going out for a walk every night wasn't exercise enough.

I found it strangely harder to think while jogging than while walking. Maybe all the blood was going to my muscles and my heart instead of my brain. But that ended up being a good thing. Sometimes I think too much and it doesn't do me a lick of good, but when I back off and just zone out, things seem to settle into place.

The fact that I bothered to jog, and the jogging itself, and the zoning out while jogging, may have helped a little with my attitude, which has lately been unpleasantly fatalistic. I've been in a major "what's the point" mode for a while now, and although I've kept up with many of my activities, it's been a chore to do so and much less fulfilling that I would hope. 

But I jogged anyway. I jogged because, even if there seems to be little point at the moment, it would really suck to hit 50 or 55 and rediscover my zest for living and then keel over from a heart attack. Even worse would be having one of those heart attacks that leaves you disabled, from a blood clot or other complication. I jogged because I want the chance to enjoy life, even if there are big chunks of my life that I'm not enjoying right now.

I'd like to tell you that I came home feeling great -- riding a wave of revelation, ready to take on the world tomorrow. But I actually just came home feeling okay. And then I sat down and wrote out some notes on the next thing I need to do in my book, which had been eluding me for some time, and I felt okay about that too.

Now I've written a nice big post here for the first time in a long time, and I'm feeling okay about that as well.

And while "okay" may not be great, it does beat the heck out of "what's the point?"

Thank you, goddess of love, for a working heart and for small victories over nihilism.

Lovingly yours,
 
A devotee