It is with great relief that I say the semester is over. Finals finished. Trek home completed. While I wish I could say this semester has been easy, it's been anything but easy, what with a fairly demanding course schedule, marathon training, being heavily involved at BC. For as stressed and as exhausted as I might have been at times, I'd say that it was worth it all. Worth the long runs on some struggles of Sundays and the paper edits at midnight and the longest life talks with roommates and the existential crises induced by an abundance of work and a scarcity of time.
It might have been the late and hectic (looking at you, Black Friday) Thanksgiving and the significant amount of work and the insufficient sleep finally catching up with me, but by last weekend I could feel the burnout. Only for so long can I write and edit and study without feeling spent. By the end of it all I was sick of words. Editing some fifty pages of writing and dissecting a lease word-by-word had done me in. When I ran after the weekend snowstorm I was more anxious about falling in the Res from the unplowed, icy path and not being able to turn in my final papers and sign our lease. While I'm satisfied with my work and stoked to have a home for next year, it's difficult to convey the immense relief I felt after turning in my final papers and signing our lease on Monday. Out of words. Over words.
Don't get me wrong. Words are everything good. As a human, reader, writer (and English major?) words are all I have. A semester of battling with language, struggling with syntax, fixing poorly translated French, inspecting leases, editing emails, and establishing meaning had left me wordless. They're imperfect, but they're all we have. Sometimes it's exhausting to work with words -- to define ideas, to communicate clearly to make meaning. Ask my roommates how many times in a state of desperation I have questioned "What is is?" "What is what?" That might just be all the modernist and postmodernist works I've read over the past semester, but sometimes words just don't seem to be enough -- they struggle to mean. But that's what I love about working with words, written or spoken, scholarly or personal, to create something meaningful.
It's exhausting though. For all the things I had to write and edit during finals, I needed that time away from the words and the analysis and the meaning-making. Often people seem to forgo exercise when the work and the stress accumulates, but running is exactly what I need when I find myself overwhelmed with work and words.
Running is the only time where I just be. Often I lace up with the intention of thinking things through or planning a paper, but nothing ever happens. For a few strides thoughts can start forming, plans can be made. It all dissolves into motion though. Running alone on pavement or trails, my mind doesn't wander. It's my body that wanders. Empty of thoughts, merely a body in motion. Hours of over-thinking exchanged for an hour or two of pure being. Maybe it's endorphins or something else biological, but it feels right to run. It's not about thinking, about defining yourself. It's ambiguous, I guess. And while ambiguity is problematic when working with words, that state of being running can reach is relief. Over-thinking limits, it separates. When running I become part of everything. No thoughts to limit or to stress. Pure motion, empty of thoughts, simplicity of being. A body breathing, moving, being. Out of the head, into being. Don't get me wrong though, racing and training require one to get in one's head. The sport's as psychological as it physical. But you can still get lost in the workout, in the race. Where pace calculations stop and the pain diminishes and it becomes simply about moving, about being.
Words are inadequate to describe the state. Running is singularly being in a way that I usually can't. With all the work and the stress that comes with college and life right now, running is what enables me to do things that I love. It's worth it all. When running I'm out of my head, out of words, over over-thinking. Simply moving. Being.
For now though, I'm stoked just to be at home. Ready to recharge for next semester and to start the training cycle for Boston. No more books to read or papers to write right now, just some much needed reconnection, family and friend time, and holiday traditions.
Hope everyone is finishing finals or enjoying their break and holiday season.
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