Better Than Nothing

Today I had wishfully planned to get up, eat breakfast, and leave the house at 8:30am with a view to running for about 4 hours. But when I got up, I really didn’t want to do that, I wanted to stay in bed. Even when I managed to summon the energy to consume some jam and toast at around 8, the idea of going out into the cold didn’t seem appealing in the slightest. At around 9 it began to be gloriously sunny and my brain was feeling unenjoyably foggy and I thought to myself that the meteorological situation inside my mind might be improved by a run, even if it was only a short one. I knew that I wouldn’t regret going running, and that once I got going, I’d actually quite enjoy it. Still, I didn’t manage to actually leave the flat until 10:30am, and ran for 45 minutes.

It’s strange to think about what happened in between the time I woke up and the time I went running. Three and a half hours is a long time to spend being paralysed by your own thoughts, torn between a desperate desire to not do the thing you’ve told yourself you will and the guilt you know you’ll feel if you don’t do it. Maybe the whole thing is a good reflection on where my mind is at in general at the moment - it was impossible to find any stillness, any peace, any clairty, and instead all I had was an overwhelming cacophany.

But at least I did manage to go running. It wasn’t even that bad in the end.