11/3/2022: 6.97 Miles
Wow, it’s a lot harder to be motivated to do this when I’m actually tired. Who would’ve thought?
I had a very low energy day, so I had to rally myself quite a bit to get the club. But I knew that I’d regret missing it if I did. It was a slightly tougher night for me to find someone to talk to, just by virtue of my mentality today in addition to ending up around a less talkative part of the group at the start of the run. I’m still so stubborn about socializing sometimes, like I get so petty about wanting other people to start the conversation when I’m literally at this club to socialize!
Regardless, I eventually put my stinginess aside and started up another conversation with a stranger. It turned out that he ran for Norwood in high school, which was another team we competed against. There wasn’t any overlap in our years- he graduated the year before I entered high school- but it was still fun to reminisce about those old cross country courses with him, among other things. Sadly, I had to book it out of the club as soon as we finished our run to meet with some neighbors that I’ll be catsitting for this weekend, but I felt content to leave it there for tonight.
It’s still daunting to go to a club full of strangers every week; it’s a very different atmosphere from being on a team. Not in a bad way, though. Hard to put it into words. Still, I’m proud of myself for going back every week, because I’m finding more and more that the hard, unfamiliar and scary things in life are, more and often than not, the healthiest things to pursue. Not hard in a dangerous way, but hard like drastically changing your life in one scary way or another; moving away from home or shaking up your routine will give you stress and fear at first, but as long as you survive it and find a way to live with those changes, you’ll find so much more appreciation and joy in so many different aspects of your life.
Apologies, my fatigue makes me ramble about life advice sometimes. More life advice for me than anyone else, but advice nonetheless. As I inch off to sleep, I want to assure you that Tim’s still running.