Probably the most difficult day since this experiment began. It started so well. I woke up at 5:45am to a beautiful sunrise and blasted through a 3.1 mile run through the streets of Greenpoint in 21mins flat, for a pace of 6:55. I even saw someone who I had worked with at the Marathon water station yesterday, although I think I was still half asleep as I only realised it was her about 5 seconds after she ran past. I hope she doesn't think I was being rude.
From the moment I got to work I knew it was going to be 'one of those days'. I don't intend to talk about work on this blog as...
a) I don't think it's relevant.
b) I don't want this to become my journal. The focus is on running and abstaining from alcohol and I don't want it to deviate too far from that.
c) I want this to remain semi-anonymous and I don't want to get fired!
....but as it is relevant to this posting all I will say is that my job satisfaction is characterised by fairly extreme highs and lows. I'm sure this isn't unique, work is a part of life, and life has it's ups and downs. However, today was a low day. A very low, low day. The reasons why are not important, but by the end of the day I was in an extremely dark mood. I was finding it difficult to talk to anyone and, rather than stay late to get some stuff done as I had planned, decided to leave on time at 5:30. As I emerged from the subway back in Brooklyn, every instinct was imploring me to head to the bar and have a couple of beers to unwind. The scowl on my face could not be removed, and the anger that had built up over the course of the day was eating away at me. A short and fast run may have helped, but I had run already today and am conscious of over training and injuring myself so that was not an option. We all know the caricature of the stressed out office worker drinking away the stresses of the day, and this is a mold that I fit with some regularity. On occasions such as this, common sense has no place in the decision making process. In the same way that an obese man eats a Big Mac knowing that is what is making him fat, the logical side of my brain is totally aware that this course of action usually makes the situation worse, but it never seems to make any difference. I have done this so many times before that it's almost automatic. To be clear, I'm not talking about getting wasted or staying out all night, but I'm talking about the 3-4 beers and maybe a shot that will be enough to tilt the week into a downward trajectory of bad sleep, bad food, tiredness, and self anger (I lingered over the term 'self loathing' for a while there, but I feel that could be overstating it). I feel that I'm pretty committed to this experiment and it has only been 8 days so far, so at no point did I genuinely think that I'd cave in and go for a beer, but it was tough to have to deal with a day like this without my usual.....usual......my usual what? I'm trying to think of how I would describe 'it' and all I can think of is the word 'companion'. Dealing with a bad day without my usual companion. It sounds odd to put it that way, but it seems the most apt to me.The parallels that can be drawn between 'it' and an actual human relationship are something that I have been thinking about a lot recently and intend on writing about soon, once I have figured out what I am trying to say.
In the event, I went to a coffee shop just so I could be somewhere busy. Much to my disgust, like one of those annoyingly pretentious people that I cannot stand, I found myself opening my laptop and starting to type. What have I become? Sitting in a coffee shop in Greenpoint, blogging, listening to the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and occasionally checking Twitter! I just need to grow a beard now for the image to be complete.
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