Sometimes those days occur where life is sort of muted—both audibly and visually, and maybe even sensually—and the sun is stuck behind a bank of clouds, and if you can even motivate to get off the floor you struggle outside to walk to the store and a car drives by and you have to inhale its acrid fumes and it splashes freezing slush onto your shoes and jeans and now you’re just stumping along with soggy socks and contaminated lungs and before you even get where you’re going it starts raining/sleeting and, of course, you didn’t bring a rain jacket or an umbrella (who carries an umbrella, anyway?) and generally the whole situation just sucks and you mostly feel like either A) punching someone/something in the face, or B) retreating back to your little cave of an apartment/room for some more self-indulgent moping. Well, if I have gone for a run first thing that morning—even if it was through puddles of freezing slush with a hurricane wind blowing snow in my face the whole way—then that type of day simply doesn’t happen, almost no matter what. The morning’s run has an effect such that it seemingly rewires the circuitry in my motherboard in a way that virtually disallows the formation of those stupid, pointless, defeating emotions and thoughts. And that’s a powerful thing—being able to control the negativity and self-pity in one’s internal brain-voice—and one that if I didn’t have I’d probably be a whole lot less positive in my perception of my general well-being.
Anton Krupicka
