A fair portion of my youtube viewing goes to folks I might describe as “good internet weirdos”. The world is full of weirdos, good and bad. The weirdest of the weird, at least in my estimation, are those that are absolutely insistent that they are normal, so normal, in fact, that it frustrates their every waking moment that other people aren’t living exactly the same as they are. I could launch into pages and pages of good vs. bad weird and how the worst, darkest, and most dangerous of the weirdos out there come from the Conservative Dad Class and the, likely much worse, Conservative Dad-Coded but actually Incel goobers. Today is not a post of politically dunking on right wing creeps, but rather I wanted to mention a youtube video and wanted to describe the presenter as weird without giving the impression I think she’s bad. I think she’s good, in fact, but this isn’t actually about her, either.
The host of the video I mentioned above is, in my estimation, the type of person I would deem a “good weirdo”. I’m not saying she looks like a weirdo. In my eyes, there isn’t anything about her that physically that presents as at all weird to me. Granted, my gauge on what is and isn’t weird in appearance may not be a common take, but regardless of whether or not I’ve sported poorly dyed blue hair in my past, I really can’t see anyone looking at her and being like, “What’s up with that weirdo?”. The weird, and mind you “good weird”, that I catch from her is attitude and stuff like that. Watch a video of hers and I’m sure you’ll see it as well. I don’t know why I’m two paragraphs into this concept, the point of today’s post doesn’t have anything to do with that. Oh, the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gxM0Hg1oNI&t=220s
I like the cut of this lady’s jib. I think her channel’s title, “sincere on main”, does a fair amount of working to getting on her level. She very much gives the vibe of the fabled Cool Aunt whom is actually cool and not just try-hard attempting to seem cool. Like you get the feeling you could ask her some shit you can’t ask mom and she wouldn’t shy away or demur, but rather give you the straight dope without it feeling weird. And now that I’m feeling like I’ve just described a modern parasocial relationship, let’s finally get to the actual topic of today’s post.
In her video linked earlier, she relates some advice on running. At about the 11ish minute mark of her video, she starts talking about the feelings that accompany exercise. You should really watch it for yourself, but to summarize, she really likes lifting, and even gets excited for it, but she doesn’t feel the same way about running. For me, it’s the opposite. I mean, I’m not getting the full on runner’s high, but I have in past sessions, and have again started getting something approaching it. With each new run, I get a little closer to the full thing. As I’m mostly going for long walks that I finish with an interval run, I often enjoy mini-body-highs in the middle of each run-walk cycle. A very enjoyable burst of energy, clashing against the hard-tired setting in behind it, rushing through me and causing a subtle but delightful tingle.
I get more out of the run than that, of course. Yes, there are the results, and those are great. That’s the whole reason I restarted it, and more specifically, I’ve been really happy with my recent results. However, the results themselves don’t work for me as a singular motivation. I don’t know, I guess that even though I completely understand that A leads to B and all that, it just doesn’t get me excited for it, and maybe that part actually doesn’t match up with hers. What does motive me usually comes in the moment, and thankfully stays with me after. The memories of those feelings encourage me to get back out there next time, to the point where if I haven’t hit my daily cardio, the whole day feels a little off.
I said earlier that I’m not motivated by the results, and that’s not actually true. Thinking it through now, I definitely get that special thing, that sort of slow-burn feeling of accomplishment that starts to accompany the mundane rigor of progress. I think that’s why I can relate to how she describes her experience with weight lifting. She makes it sound exciting, actually, and lifting has never once felt that way to me. Granted, she and I have different goals and modes of lifting, so it stands to reason that our feelings would be different. I also haven’t really gotten the any of the physical rewards generally expected from lifting, so it’s hard to feel any sense of accomplishment from it. At best, lifting for me feels like slightly helping myself avoid an early death.
I find our experiences in lifting and running to be opposites, though maybe not mirror perfect. I find lifting to be so boring and so just, “doin’ this for the maintenance”, that I never look forward to a session. But the progressive mundanity of the run is something I do enjoy. But then there’s the parts that I actually love, like the brief escape from the world. When I get to pace, all of my worries and the whole rest of the world just vanishes. The act of running forces my otherwise always overactive brain to shut out all nonessential functions and just focus on the task at hand. Just moving forward feels good, but also challenging myself feels good, moving my big shitty body feels good, breathing that deeply feels good. When I find my stride, I feel nimble. Imagine that, weighing over 250 pounds and feeling nimble for goddamn once. It really does breath life back into my otherwise decaying soul. The focus zeros out the world and completely centers on my most immediate needs, which is a very nice feeling indeed.
Anyway, she also made a video on her lifting experience. I didn’t grab a link to that, but with the link above, it should be pretty easy to find. And you should check that out. I’ve gotta get back to studying.