Exercise

Throughout grad school I've made an attempt to do something new every semester. One semester I took up skating, the next running, then it was yoga, and dancing. But having started fieldwork last fall, I slowly gave up everything. I was either out of town at my field site or too tired from the travelling. Fieldwork is hard and what made it harder was not having a fixed schedule. I would just go to my field site, two hours away, whenever time and energy permitted. This made it hard to schedule yoga lessons or running during the week. I even tried to keep up with the running at my field site, but I slowly gave up as my fieldwork sucked away most of my energy.

For the past two months I've taken a lot of time off fieldwork to do some reading and writing and generally to focus my thoughts on my dissertation. This has left me with time to get back into some of the exercise. I've started running more regularly and have taken up racquetball of late. Racquetball is fun but it feels so good to be out there on the sidewalk running, hearing my breath, feeling the ringing in my ears and the pounding of my heart as it tries to keep up with my lungs, watching the world go by in a blur. So far I've refused to listen to music while running because its my one chance to be outdoors with nature, to listen to the sound of the wind in the trees and think. Yes, running is a great way to be alone with my thoughts and I don't want music to intrude. But I've been thinking of buying an ipod lately, and I might give running with music a try. Now if only I could keep up with yoga again.