I'm back from the beach, and while it rained about 75% of the time it was great - actually I kinda think it made it easier for me to chill out while it was raining because we were practically chained indoors as it bucketed down something torrential, so I just sat around, listened to some scales and watched The Brady Bunch wrapped up in a woollen blanket, looking outside at the ocean every now and again just happy that it was there and I was there close to it.
I did a lotta reading too, annihilating a book in the first day (The Fault In Our Stars by John Green, emotionally indulgent but deliciously good, not quite as good as Looking for Alaska but still, good good) and taking my Nanna to the two bookshops in the little beach town we call second-home. My Nanna doesn't walk around much anymore because of continuing back and knee issues and needs someone to help her around, especially around people and stairs and stuff like that. Helping her get around this weekend made me feel especially lucky and blessed to have a functioning body, one that can run, dance, jump, and do all manner of things that I probably shouldn't force it to do. Goodness knows I'm not really a very good example of a well adjusted teen with healthy body image; I spend a lotta time criticising my body for being too fat here, or weirdly muscly there, or too freckly here or not bony enough there. But at the end of the day, I have a heart and lungs and legs that can keep up with me when I run for an hour along the beach and I don't need someone to hold my hand just to get up a few steps. I am very lucky.
Speaking of running, I pride myself on my 'running' playlist that I listen to when I'm, well, running. It consists of 122 songs spanning a wide variety of genres, and it has the perfect ratio of EMOTIONAL running songs versus JOYFUL running songs. Let me explain.
Songs like THIS:
make you want to run because they make you sad/angry/nostalgic and you want to run until your little heart overloads with feeling and exertion. Great for sprints, moments like let's see how fast this thing can go-o in Delilah by The Dresden Dolls (first song above) is perfect for crying and running at the same time. If you have extreme feelings like me, use them to your fitness advantage. Seriously.
Whereas songs like THIS:
make you want to run because they are upbeat and make you so happy you could run forever and ever. These are the kind of songs that make you feel good about yourself and you can turn them up really loud and forget about all the ways your body jiggles when you run and just run and be joyful and thankful because you CAN run and you feel strong and powerful!
I do not run fast by anyone's standards, in fact watching me jog, puffy and sweaty, must be one of the great comedic instances in this world. But I do run for an hour or so most days, or go to the gym, and I owe a fair bit of my ability to do that to this carefully-selected music that persuades me to go. Plus, having headphones on during a workout means that no one talks to me and I don't have to talk to anyone and that's good because usually I'm too red and too out of breath and seeing too many stars to deal with social interaction during a run.
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