Sometimes boredom is a good thing

I'm lucky, I live very close to a large park where I can run around a lake and in (carefully maintained, totally artificial) forests, I also have a treadmill which was being sold on craigslist by someone in my neighborhood who'd barely used it.

I get a better workout on the treadmill.

Frequently I hear people say they can't run on a treadmill, it is too boring, and at times I've thought so too.. but consistently I found I could run further and longer on the treadmill and I always put the treadmill at an incline to compensate but still keep running longer and faster.

Finally this weekend, as I was walking along the lake halfway through my run, I figured it out. The monotonous boredom thing is actually useful to me. My best runs are when running becomes meditative, its just me and the motion. When outdoors I'm constantly distracted, constantly finding reasons to stop and smell the flowers, and I have a great time but hardly a run. Outdoors I find I have to constantly remind myself to keep moving, its a forceful effort. Indoors on the treadmill its stopping that requires a more conscious thought because I have to reach out and press stop before I can let my legs halt. When I don't have to think "keep running, keep running, don't stop" through my head to move each step its easier for me to just revel in the movements themselves.

This does not mean I'm giving up on running outside, its great for my mood so long as I don't beat myself up afterward about walking half of it and spending 5 minutes staring at a dog or the 5 couples getting married or a flock of geese. Instead I'll continue to put on my running gear on the rare occasion that I have daylight to run in and run as I feel like and walk as I wish.

2 years to change

I'm 2 years to 30
I make under 50k
I owe 1/4 of my income in credit card debt
I have very little savings, and keep dipping into it
I'm over 10 pounds overweight, I've lost more before but this I gained back
I have a history of depression
and the self-confidence that goes with all the above

These are the things I want to change.

Well not the age thing, I can't help that but by the time I'm 30 I want the others to be in check. These are all things that I know how to control, I've been in good standing before though I won't make excuses for how I got into this mess, simply, its time to get out of it.

The things I don't want to change:
I live in a big expensive city
I have my own small apartment in an area I like
I have a fairly social party-driven life
I'm probably working on an art project for next year that may cost me some $ to pull off

The things I wouldn't mind changing:
I'm single and have been for some time
I'd like to be a better friend, daughter and sister
I have a fairly low impact on the environment for someone of my stats but want it lower

I'd like to hit my 30s running and I want to do it while still enjoying these next 2 years. I think I can be green, frugal, fit, confident and social

This post was written a year ago and saved as draft. While some of it is out of date the point stands, and to be honest with myself not that much has really changed:


If there is one secret, one secret at all to personal change, to becoming a better person, to becoming a healthier person, to living more 'fully' in the world, if there was one diet secret, money making secret, exercise secret...

It isn't visualizing success, it isn't eating more or less of some macronutrient or quitting your job and starting over again. That secret would be that you can't do it until you really truly start, until your mind is fully in it, and that no one, no matter what they say knows exactly what your trigger for change will be.

I can think I'm there over and over again, starting and restarting changes - and in a way that can be the second secret to success: persistence (or hard-headedness)- but when I really truly hit that trigger, that is when I change my world and those triggers are different each time. I've never been able to force one to appear but when they do, well best to grab on and ride it for all its might and make it last long enough to make the change a habit.


Right now I desperately need that drive, that trigger. I'm coming to a point where my difficulty making change has been really affecting my mood. Its not that I lack for good ideas or for reasons, its that I've lacked a trigger something to take everything from contemplation to action, from stuttering starts to a blast.

Still I can not let this go on: With my body particularly I am unhappy, with the way I am eating and the lack of exercise. I have been refusing to buy new clothes because I don't want to waste money and because when I lost weight a couple years ago I swore I would not let this slide upwards happen, that I would never again buy that size of clothes (also I seem to have found myself at an odd size, my smaller 8s and below unwearable, my 8s and 10s unattractively tight and uncomfortable and the 12s amazingly baggy - I forgot that over size 10 the differences between each size is bigger). This feeling of unattractiveness is making me less willing to go out. It is actually affecting my life and sure, that may be vanity, but its also honest.

And restarting again

I am going to restart this, perhaps it will help. Sadly little has changed since I first wrote a post for myself here. I am still holding onto that extra 20some pounds, I am doing a little better financially and a little worse as far as my environmental, political and social consciousness. I do now live in an apartment I like.

Looking at this blog the last post I wrote, but saved into draft is just the right post to restart with, so I'll post that now and get back to goals and motivations later.