Update on Life

I’m already cheating. OK, maybe not cheating exactly, but let’s just say I started this project with a little cushion in case I miss a day. I wrote the first post on Sunday so that I would always be one day ahead. I’m still technically writing something every day, but if I do happen to miss a day, you won’t even notice!

This is also already proving more difficult than I thought. Yesterday, I was working on one of my perpetually unfinished novels, and suddenly found myself wasting an hour researching Greece. It wasn’t really a waste per se, because I did use that information, but it occurred to me that maybe instead of measuring my writing by number of words I should be measuring how much time I spend working on it. Sometimes I can write several pages in an hour, and sometimes it takes me that long just to eke out a paragraph. And, some days I have more time to devote than others… Listen to me, already making excuses. I will do absolutely anything to soften the blow of failure despite the fact that I haven’t even failed yet.

It never ceases to amaze me how much I try to save myself from feeling anything, while at the same time, I crave emotional experience through safe outlets like books and television and movies. When I finish a show (or ‘project’ as James used to call it when I was living with him and Kathleen) I mourn the loss of the characters as though they were real friends. In fact, I read an article on that very subject. I probably won’t be able to find it again, but the gist of it was that we use the same parts of our brain to engage with fictional characters as we do with real people, and therefore the relationships we share with them are just as ‘real’ as our real life relationships. The article even mentioned that when a show ends we enter a sort of mourning process in which we genuinely miss those characters like we would miss our friends. No wonder people are so nuts over celebrities. We connect to the characters they play and find difficulty in separating the two in our minds.

Anyway, enough melancholy nonsense. Let me tell you what else has been happening in my life. On Sunday, I took the opportunity which good weather and being off work provided by walking around the park. I hadn’t really meant to walk the whole park (which is a 5k run, by the way) but I missed the turn off, and by the time I got to another I figured it was probably just faster to continue around since I would most likely get lost otherwise. I walked again on Monday, though not the whole park this time, but plenty to get my heart rate up and make me wish I had a teleporter. I know for a lot of people exercising can feel wonderful. They reach a certain point and all their endorphins kick in and they get this amazing high and feel like they could go on forever. I’m not one of them. I reach a point where I just wish I was home in bed and why did I come out here in the first place and goodness me my legs are tired. On Tuesday morning (which is yesterday from your perspective because of course I’m writing this a day ahead of when you will see it) I got out of bed and had to do the Frankenstein monster shuffle just to get to the bathroom because I’m so sore. But it seems to be working because I had to eat four times on Monday just to keep up with my jump-started metabolism. I must remember to pick up snacks when I get groceries today. And on Wednesday I am going to take a Kick-boxing class at the YMCA. The same class I’ve wanted to take since I joined the Y a year ago, but this time I’m actually going to do it. Wish me luck.

Julia