Exercise and escape, stories from the holler

When I was a kid, I used to ride my bike, climb trees, walk in the woods, even go running. I didn't exercise for exercise's sake though. I did it to escape. Outside was somewhere most of my family didn't go.

When I needed to get away, going to another room didn't help. My house was cramped as a kid, three bedrooms, six kids kind of cramped. In order to get away in the rural towns where I lived didn't mean I could go to the Y', or to a coffee house. Those things didn't exist where I lived. No, if I wanted to truly escape, go somewhere my siblings were unlikely to go, I went to the library.

In the small town of Jellico, the library was seven miles away from my home on newcomb pike (at the mouth of brickplant hollow (pronounced "hol-lar")). That meant that I had to ride my POS, single speed bike fourteen miles a day to go to the library and back (over some pretty serious hills I might add). And, this is something I did every day but sunday during the summers I lived there. I literally went through most of that library until we inevitably moved away.

That experience, of pretty extreme exercise without intention sticks with me to this day. I tend toward endurance sports, biking, running (my mountain bike is a piece of sh*t, specialized hotrock version of the one in the background of this blog, even the red and white color). I need to go miles and miles to feel I've gone anywhere at all.

Strangely though, I think my childhood left me sort of addicted to exercise. My work tends to require me to spend most of the hours of the day sitting still, my neck in one position, only moving my hands, barely breathing. Hours of cerebral work at the expense of the body. In addtion, the weather where I live is really pretty crappy most of the time, so it tends to discourage outdoor activities as well (although I can tolerate high heat and humidity pretty well, so summer doesn't bother me too much). This leaves me feeling like crap in about three months of inactivity. I start to get achy, sore, tired. I pull muscles easily, as they seem to sort of deteriorate like recyclable bags left outside for a while. my mind gets fuzzy, groggy, cranky. But, occassionally, work requires me to be more than normally active; long, long hours, running through airports, carrying equipment half my bodyweight for miles, standing on my feet for hours, talking for days, not sleeping, hardly eating. And then, instead of wearing out, I start to feel great. I can handle more and more without noticeable impact, clearer of mind, happier of spirits, lighter of heart.

Why?

Why do I require so much stimulus? Is it because of my childhood? If I had been more sendentary then, could I be more sedentary now? Is it genetic? Why?

Or is it because I equate exhaustion with escape? Could it be I somehow, in the murky way children can, crossed some wires and associate physical exertion with going somewhere, doing something, satisfying? I am not satisfied staying still, working in the same room. I am horrible when I have to be a cubicle person. I need to be exhausted by the end of the day, I need to have given my all. Otherwise I feel a bit uncertain, like part of me is not sure we've arrived satisfactorily. Like it wants to ask, "Are we there yet?"

I find myself dreading the down time between projects. Part of me looks forward to being lazy, to sitting around watching TV, but most of me is already depressed before I get home. I hate the resume circuit, interviews, dead leads, rejection (of course, who actually loves rejection?). I hate, hate, hate the inactivity. I find myself falling into the trap of turning something I am not being paid for into a job. One of the worst, most addictive activity I indulge in is animal rescue stuff. Especially horses. I love going to barns. they are so different from the world in which I live, that no matter how close by there are in drive time, I feel like I've travelled a long way to get there. It is, in effect, a different world. being a kid who moved a lot, I like the contrast of living in two worlds in one day-- high tech, sterile, urban steel, concrete, and broadband, then low tech, leather and sweat, grass, mud, and grain. Flies in my face, bees in the field, birds in the rafters. The ebb and flow of the wind, the smell of contented horses, and the satisfaction of a clean stall before dinner time. I like to see them thrive, to overcome the traumas of the time before they met me. I like the serious physical and emotional labor of rehabilitation these animals before sending them off into the world. I also like the fact that I am a cog in a wheel there. Just one of the volunteers, not certified in anything useful, not a decisionmaker per se. It's hard, it's rewarding, and unfortunately, it's free. I make no money at it, and if I let it, that life could consume me. No pay, no getting ahead, just shovelling shit and hanging out until I starved to death.

Understandably, I think, I tend to avoid the barn now, now that I realize why I am going there. I need to see my weaknesses to overcome them right? So, I try to only allow myself that sort of thing as a reward. Get a certification, go horseback riding. Finish building a slide deck, go visit a barn, maybe shovel out a stall, walk a horse, brush it down. Then back to doing what I have to do.

What I need to do is find a job that is permanent and local, that lets me be, well, me. Lets me do physically and mentally challenging work. That makes me tired after a long hard day. Something I could possibly look forward to, at least from time to time. And most of all, paid me a wage that would make it possible to do that job exclusively for years. That includes conference fees, updating certifications, and home testing equipment for beta testing new products and learning new things. Even, egads, the occassional vacation.

Of course, that won't happen. I have been trying for almost ten years to find a decent job where I live. It doesn't exist. That's why I have grown to dread coming home. I only have work when I leave this place, and I am only happy when I am working. Thus I associate home with downtime, boredom, and misery. I begin, as any thinking human is apt to do, to anticipate the unhappiness before I even get on the plane home. It is a self fulfilling prophesy in that way. Because I am depressed it is hard to find work, but I am depressed before I even get home.

To compensate, when I am home, I go through a phase of depression, where I sleep way too much and can't seem to even unpack my stuff, never mind try to find another job. Then I begin to do small things around the house, then I clear off a space to do some exercising, then I become obsessed with working out, then I start creating lists, then I start making plans, then I start checking out job boards and talking to people, then I start doing research and learning new products, then I get a job offer that is out of state. Then I go through the stress of travelling out or doing conference calls through several interviews. then I get the job, then I go through orientation, then I am on the road again, exhausted and stressed but loving it.

The catch is, if I don't workout during that down time, yoga, treadmill, biking, then I never get to the planning stage. I just become more and more tired, more depressed, and fold into myself. The exercising phase is critical to my recovering from this cyclical process of productivity and depression. I don't know why, but it is.

Maybe it harkens back to my childhood. That the only way to change things was to escape. And maybe that feeling of tiredness, that physical exhaustion is the only way I can be sure that I am okay. That everything is fine. That I did it myself. That I am free. When I was sad, inside that house, with those people, I could leave of my own free will. Run, race, disappear and make my own space, do my own thing, be useful, productive and tired. It's exhausting, this life thing. And I think, if I am not exhausted enough, then I must not be doing it right.

-callahan