The Dumb Datum

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Joy in the grind

I did a solo long run of 20 miles today, and I had all those 3 hours of running time to think about how my relationship with running has been changing. I started running mainly because I wanted to gain the respect of my friends and coworkers. I was out of shape, had unhealthy food habits, and it impacted my self-esteem. Somehow, I was able to productively use that basic human need for external validation, and managed to get to the point where I can run respectable 5Ks and 10Ks. It earned me people’s validation to some extent. After a while, my non-running life started becoming heavy. Being an immigrant in United States is not a fun ride, and a painful breakup only made it worse. I now needed something deeper than external validation, and that’s when I discovered the concept of internal validation - the one where I set goals that seem very out of reach, and drown myself in training for them, just to have this false sense of progress; that I am doing something to keep the needle moving. ...

Inadequacy

There are days like today when my brain makes up this narrative that I have fallen behind in life. The proof it shows is how my friends and colleagues are getting married, starting families, buying houses, and doing all those things that organized adults who have their lives together do. I admit it generates irrational emotions like jealousy and inadequacy in me. On the other hand, I am also genuinely happy for these people. I am aware of the difficulties involved in taking these adult steps. I got a wedding invitation from one of my friends recently, and I told him honestly what was on my mind when I heard that news – that it’s wonderful he not only built a loving relationship with another person, but also managed to convince them to make this major life transition with him. But everyone has their unique journey and milestones. Maybe my milestones aren’t going to be the exact same as others. I don’t know how my milestones look like, but I do know a few other things. For example, I k...

Miles 1320 - 1330

1. I started to like the German word ‘Zeitgeber’. Zeit means time and geber means giver, so it just means time-giver. Zeitgeber sounds like a cool protagonist in a sci-fi novel with the power to extend people’s lives. I should go back to writing plotlines for stories like I used to do in high school. Or maybe I should just write the whole novel, I have enough time and if it turns out bad, I can always tell people AI wrote it. 2. I see a Condom Zone shop on my running route every day. But today for the first time, I paid attention to the logo on that shop’s sign board. I initially thought it looked like a chicken strip placed inside a taco, but upon further thinking, I might be wrong. 3. I attempted nasal breathing intentionally during the morning run today. I was able to maintain it during easy miles. But once I started running hard and fast, I was sucking in oxygen with my mouth open fully, like I am ...

Eat and Run

I think I nailed down a good and easy recipe for lunch taco today. It requires a wheat tortilla, hummus, shredded chicken, salsa and parmesan cheese. It was delicious. But I didn’t stop my eating there. I also mixed some yogurt, bananas, berries, granola and honey, it was okayish. I should have stopped here, but I didn’t. I also ate butter popcorn and two kit kat ice creams. And this was all just in a span of 3 hours during afternoon. I still need to cook dinner and eat. I wish I could stop eating this much, but I have been very exhausted and hungry lately due to running. I ran 8 miles this morning and tomorrow I have another 10 miles to run, which also involves hitting my target marathon pace in the intermediate miles. And after that run, I would still have 37 more miles left to run for this week. So, I guess this is it; life of a runner training for marathons is just eating and running, and random napping on couch.

A Stunted Plant

The philosopher in me tells me that life is all about thinking rationally and moving through time in a just and kind manner. The runner in me tells me that life is all about setting goals and tolerating all the wear and tear of training required to reach those goals. The curious person in me tells me that life is all about asking interesting questions and working out the answers to them from the first principles. Most days, one of these three personalities help me see the big picture and keep moving. But I think they may have reached their limit today. I feel like I am lying on the ground because I am actually stuck. It’s an annoying feeling, because while I like to believe that I am moving in a straight path, the path seems to be circular in reality. All this reminds me of a story my father used to tell me from his own life, when he was a single young man living away from his family to make a buck. It is a story from mid 1990s. My father often used to eat breakfast at a diner n...

Light of God

I have always been fascinated by light. It started with all the Hindu Mythological media I used to consume as a kid. God always had a bright halo of light behind him, and that enabled this idea in my head that light is a sacred thing. And later on, since I was a curious kid, I used to stare intensely at bright street lights while clutching on to my father’s shirt, sitting on the back of his motor cycle. In my head it was a stare down contest with God, but it probably was just the precursor needed to trigger my hidden superpower of double vision (or Astigmatism, as it is called in the scientific terms, which resigned me to wearing eye glasses with high power for rest of my life). Now as a fully grown adult, I am grateful that my contests with God are limited to relevance of religion and purpose of human life, both of which don’t require staring into the street light from my balcony. But roughly six months ago, a friend asked me if I know the reason why sunsets are red. I told him I ...

Pigeon's Nest

I have been running a lot lately. I ran 300 miles within last 7 weeks, and my running mileage for this year is now at 1312 miles. But stats are misleading as they don’t always give the full picture. The reality is that these 300 miles have come at the expense of a few other things. I am always exhausted, I haven’t been eating very well and I lately developed sore throat which is messing with the quality of my sleep. I noticed some of these early signs two weeks ago, so I had come up with this genius idea of stocking up on delicious ready to eat stuff, like microwavable butter popcorn and basil pesto sauce I can just mix with cooked rice and eat. But I have also been dealing with this classic case of zombie brain due to all the exhaustion. I managed to burn the popcorn in my microwave yesterday because for some reason I put it at high setting for 4 minutes. Now my entire home smells like burnt butter popcorn, which makes me lose my appetite for popcorn. And don’t even ask me about t...