photograph: Pinterest

Dear Reader, 

It all started with “adult hobbies.” You have to put in effort to do things separate from work and school. These things aren’t handed to you and you have to scour your surrounding area to find something you see fit. 

If you find a hobby that isn’t related to physical fitness, then you also have to find the time to squeeze that in. You have to find the gym that fits your needs, buy the outfits to wear, and figure out what the hell you do once you get there. 

You should also be enriching your mind, and pursuing something separate from your studies. Read ten pages before bed, watch a TED talk, pretend you’re really into documentaries. 

Ever since moving away from home and becoming an “adult,” I’ve struggled to put energy into the part of my life that isn’t a student or a minimum wage worker. People constantly remind me how important it is to have a separate life from work and school, and this pressure sucks the fun of it for me. I can’t justify spending money on running clothes, but then I don’t want to run because the shorts I have make me chafe. I’ll kill two birds with one stone and listen to a non-fiction audiobook while I knit, but then I lose my spot knitting and have to restart or retain nothing from the book.  

To kick this habit, I registered for a half marathon. This will be the second year I’m doing it, and I mostly do it just to say it’s been done. I use an app that tells me when I have to run, how long it’ll take, and how fast I should go. Not a thought of mine goes beyond opening my phone. My favorite part about running being my hobby is that it takes away the need for other hobbies. I say it’s good for my mental health, my physical health, and my creativity because all I do when I’m running is talk to myself and come up with strange ideas. 

I’ve always been an “athlete,” not because I was passionate about a sport, but because it was so easy to join and took the need for thinking away from my free time. I picked sports that took a lot of time, gymnastics and swimming. With these there was no need to think about when I do my homework, I only had two hours available a day. I never had to think about when to eat, I was hungry all the time so it didn’t matter. I never had to think about what to do on weekends, I had a meet. 

Being an adult and an “athlete” is slightly different because I have to be an “athlete” of my own volition. I have to wake up, put my shoes on, and go outside. Despite feeling like that’s too much at 7 AM on a Tuesday, the reality is it’s worth brushing my teeth with my eyes closed. I hate to admit that I see a difference in myself when I put, although little, energy into my personal life. I want to say that it doesn’t matter and sleeping all day has the same effect, but it doesn’t and I learned that the hard way. I still prefer sleeping to running but maybe one day I’ll be an ultra marathoner who runs for 48 hours straight. That sounds like a good chunk of thinking taken care of for me.

Love,

Isabella