Data Whore

Ever the dedicated social scientist, I've found that one of the most rewarding parts of running is the sweet, sweet data it produces. I have a fancy-pants sports watch that lets me keep track of my pace and my time and my time for each mile, and more than once I have managed to work up the motivation to get out the door and run simply by thinking about the satisfaction I'd feel when I got home and entered the data into my spreadsheet.

It's OK, I'll wait while you chuckle at my insanity. Is my spreadsheet any less ridiculous if I say that I only keep track of the ones that are over 5 miles? No? Alright then.

This is the kind of illness that could hypothetically lead someone to make an Excel spreadsheet to track how they're spending their time at work, in order to determine how guilty they ought to feel about their shameless internet addiction. (The answer, hypothetically? Very guilty.) (Also, if someone has a problem with procrastination at work, maybe their first response shouldn't be to make a completely un-work-related spreadsheet. But I digress.)

My compulsion to analyze everything for patterns and meaning extends to just about everything, to the extent that I often find myself mentally composing poetic meditations on the similarities between autumn leaves and adolescence, or whatever. Sometimes the "meaning" behind things is obvious to the point of being cliche, while on the other hand sometimes a thing just is what it is. But what really drives me crazy is when something seems like it must hold a deeper meaning that I just can't put into words.

For instance. I've been running off and on for a long time, and usually when I start back up again I get really bad blood blisters, which are gross and I'm sorry I brought it up. But blisters, when left alone, heal up and turn into calluses over time, and eventually my feet don't hurt nearly as much because they're protected by the calluses. Of course, after awhile the calluses start to wear away and then eventually I'm back down to unblemished, unprotected, youthful skin. And generally the cycle starts again. Since today was the day that I reached that point - the clean skin starting-over point - and I was scheduled to run 5 miles, I thought about this blister-callus-recovery cycle all day long. I really feel like it must be a metaphor for something, but I can't figure out what, and it's driving me a little crazy, like a word on the tip of my tongue, or a familiar fact abruptly forgotten. And then this afternoon, a new wrinkle: I finished my run and I gingerly removed my socks to find... no new blisters. Skin that was sore and red, and a little blistery in places, but not nearly the disaster I expected.

So I just don't know. I feel like I should be able to spin this pattern into a great metaphor for some aspect of life, but it's not coming to me. Either I'm losing my touch, or sometimes a foot is just a foot, even for an analytical Excel wizard.