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Tuesday, July 27, 2010

I Ran! Also, Some Talk About Success Highs

Hey there, family!
Today was a very good day. After a very long time spent begging and pleading, I finally convinced my mother to let me to go running. It felt great. I have to agree when they say 'victory is sweet.' 'Cause it really, truly is. Actually, it is sweaty with a side of running-shoe-induced blister, but, you know, whatever.
I am on that reinvention high that we all experience once in a while. You know the one. You manage to nail that concerto you've been practicing, or make the souffle without f*** it up completely, or you finally get your butt out of the house and into a pair of running shoes - and you feel like you could do anything. You tell yourself: "Hey, if I managed this, then hell, I can manage anything! Come on, Life, whaddaya got? I can handle it all!"
Now, I don't know if this is true, but it makes sense in a strange sort of way. I mean, if you can get the momentum going and start to feel really good about your accomplishments, you'll start to get addicted to them. You'll want to keep riding on the high of your successes, and if you kept that up long enough, you could technically turn your whole life around.
The obvious problem is that you can't just keep being succesful, all the time. Eventually, you will have to have a failure. And then what? The easiest thing to do is crash and burn and stay that way, until you can pick up the pieces and start looking for that high again. But is that really healthy? I think what it all boils down to is illusion, and specifically the illusions we create ourselves. When we ride on these "success highs", we tend to believe that we can continue building our new selves until we become some kind of perfect, immortal being. Someone without flaws. Someone no one can ever be. We delude ourselves into thinking we can be, must be, that person. Eventually, we ride ourselves into the ground. Crash and burn, yet again.
I think the answer is a happy medium (as it is with most things). It is good (obviously) to be happy about your successes and let them motivate you on to new successes. But we must be careful not to let ourselves set goals that are too high, or try to overcome the impossible. Our optimism about ourselves and our futures must be balanced out with a healthy dose of realism.
What does all this mean? I'm going to keep running every day, monitor my weight and eat as healthily as I can with the goal of becoming a fitter, healthier (and hopefully skinnier) person. But I'm never going to be a 100-pound supermodel.
Not that it's such a great career choice for me, anyways. I am a very clumsy walker in heels.

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