And then there are days like today, when I go two miles and get cramps in three different spots. My right knee, the bad one, started aching, and the arch of my foot was not happy. Maybe my body likes sprinting and long distance and nothing in between. In any case, I feel better for having run. My boss came in this morning and reported that his wife has the flu, at which point I started to feel flushed and stuffy. Probably all in my head, but I wanted to squeeze the run in today in case I feel terrible tomorrow. Look at me, planning ahead.

I've started training to run a half marathon in May. I have never been a good distance runner. I'm slow, I'm sort of lazy, and I never want to go far.

And then today I set out for a run with my running buddy. Last week I set a personal record of 5.45 miles. This week I decided to set my goal at 6 miles. Before this point, the farthest I had ever run in one go was five miles, and that was one time when I was 21. Today I ran a little over 7.

It's remarkable what a body can do when you treat it decently and allow it to surprise you.

I didn't sleep very well last night, and today I feel like tenderized meat.

 I'm reading Erik Larson's In the Garden of Beasts. The books covers the story of Ambassador Dodd, a Chicago history professor who was assigned, through a series of misadventures, the post of Ambassador to Germany in 1933. It's a beautifully written and exhaustively researched book. Larson balances the homework he did with a fluid and engaged writing style. I have attempted this blend in shorter bursts, and every time I took a piece into workshop all of my classmates hated it. What I'm saying is that it's a difficult line to walk, and Larson does it well.

Reading this book has me thinking about the modern style of murder mystery, which is no the longer the whodunnit. More common now is to open with the tragedy, either the act or the aftermath, and either the real or suspected culprit. This builds a different kind of suspense than the traditional formula. It's a cymbal crash that recedes into a low, erie hum, one that sustains (if well written) for the length of the book.

The idea here is that what you know is coming can be more terrible than what you can imagine. It's chilling now to read about Martha Dodd's lunchtime meeting with Hitler, an attempt on the part of her Nazi officer friend to set the two up, because we know how it ends. (Martha, thank goodness, wasn't to Hitler's taste and never started dating him.) We all like to think we'd know evil, that we would recognize it and be brave enough to stand against it. We like to imagine ourselves better than we are.

To end with a fun anecdote: I was reading this book right before bed last night. Then I was ruminating on something else that upset me yesterday, and had trouble falling asleep. It got bad enough that at one point I actually said to myself, "Stop thinking about this, and just think about the Nazis." Guess what? It didn't help.

On a more cheerful note, here are some totally mind-blowing color photographs of Paris in the early part of the 20th century.

I found this saved as a draft from August, and most of it still rings true five months later:

Yesterday I helped Gina move. By that I mean I showed up when one big load had already gone, and when she had help more coordinated and enthusiastic than I was, so I ended up carrying a few things and then wandering through the emptying rooms of her apartment.

I've been thinking about endings, as one tends to do during periods of transition. I take endings seriously. I mourn them, even if the thing ending is one I'm happy to put in the past. Ending grad school has been a particularly difficult one for me. From the beginning, I looked at grad school as something I was fortunate enough to do, an extended vacation from the responsible, reasonable parts of my life. I was granted two years in which to read and write and bum around bars with my friends talking about what we'd recently read and written. Even on the most stressful days, I felt so lucky to be doing that instead of anything else in the world.

And now it's over. It's done, and so much sooner than I thought it would be. It didn't feel real over this summer. Only now, only with everyone starting to move and finding jobs and progressing with their lives, can I feel the reverberation of ending. I feel like an empty apartment, one that still echoes with the parties and the late nights and the snow days and the long talks.

The future is an exciting place, certainly. An exciting, uncertain, totally unmapped place in which my friends, who have structured and sustained all of my days here, are scattered.

The Dayman Cometh

Things I need in my life right now.

Always Sunny Beer

I'm not much for New Year's resolutions. I come from the sort of New England whose Puritan roots still show, and that coupled with a tendency for personal accountability forged in me the belief that resolutions shouldn't be saved for some holiday but rather striven toward every day. I cannot reasonably hold that the change of a calendar year will wash slates clean or suddenly imbue me or anyone else with good habits we didn't have before. Self discipline cannot be manifested out of the blue. It's a process, a slow and often painful process that must be attempted every day, even if it's not always successful.

Now, some background that will become relevant soon. Several months ago my gym decided to cancel most of its scheduled yoga and Pilates classes. I had been going to Pilates at least once a week for about a year, something I enjoyed because it absolutely kicked my ass every time. It never got easier, but I did get stronger. Other evenings I went to yoga. Outside of the gym I ran a couple of times a week, and tried to get to a ballet class. It was a good balance.

Then Pilates and yoga were canceled, in the fall as the light started to fade. It became more and more difficult to motivate myself to run, and my energy and mood sank as winter set in. I know that I need exercise, not only for physical health but also mental and emotional. When I don't exercise, I get restless, cranky, and weird. For most of December I couldn't talk myself into working out more than once a week. (I don't count my regular walks; though I usually walk for a few miles, it doesn't get my heart rate up and doesn't sate the itch in my muscles.)

So it was that last night, restless and cranky and weird, I decided to try out a new class at my gym. It had some aggressive, trademarked name, and I thought it might be a weight-lifting class. I steeled myself to be embarrassed, as one usually is during the first attempt at something, and instead had a lot of fun.

What I remembered, as I tried to scout out enough floor space to avoid hitting anyone in the face during jumping jacks, was that it was January 3rd. I don't know what the normal attendance of that class is, but I'm sure it was at least doubled yesterday by women who are entering this new year determined to get thin. Truly, I support any reasonable plan that promotes health and happiness. Exercise is good, and everyone should do it. Realistically, as a long-time gym member, I know that most of this newly motivated flood will dissipate by February. For part of the class, I wished I had some sort of sign I could wear that would say, "I'm not just here for a week, I promise."

I realized, by the end, that my timing couldn't be helped. I had shown up in the beginning of January to run around an exercise studio with a bunch of frighteningly intense, thin women in compression capris. The choice I have now is to keep going, to not be one of the vanishing faces whose resolve fades as the holidays slide away. It's my choice to make resolve an every day decision, not only for special occasions.