Photo by _neona_.
People talk about fitness like it’s one indivisible action–that you’re “getting into shape.” But when you first start working out, you quickly discover that fitness is three separate things:
Body fitness (“Will my muscles let me do this?”)
Heart fitness (“Can I do this and still breathe?”)
Brain fitness (“Can I mentally will myself to do [...]
Photo by Perfecto Insecto.
Running the mile was my most dreaded gym class activity ever. Every time. My mom still reminds me of the day in second or third grade when I came home and announced to her, “I can’t run!”–not meaning that I wasn’t good at it, but that I physically was incapable of it, [...]
(Photo by chefranden.)
I.
I don’t trust the iPod’s shuffle algorithm. Every time I charge my iPod, Islands’ “Jogging Gorgeous Summer” is the first song up. I don’t complain because it’s the perfect song to get my ass up and out the door on sunny days. I play imaginary steel drums while I run across the park [...]
Our Temporary House is on the very outskirts of Portland, right before it dissolves into suburbs and outlying towns with names like “Happy Valley” and “Boring.” (Yes, seriously.) Our neighborhood has three kinds of houses. There are old farmhouses with fenced-in, fading lawns that replaced the farms when the city gradually began to swell and [...]
