the last email i sent you was on may 26th. five days later my life took a turn.
i woke up that sunday morning manic and mildly hungover, itching for a change. the day was hot, but i wasn’t gonna let a lil’ sunshine fuck up my day.
after kissing instagram good morning, my health app needed some attention: there’s been a change in your average daily step count, she said, 3,000 and some change.
pathetic. my day was officially fucked.
there’s a walking pad in my closet covered in 2 years worth of dust. i bought it when i thought averaging 5,000 daily steps was bad and i’ve used it no more than 6 times. walking while working does serious damage to my aura, but i digress.
that may morning, my health app helped me connect a few dots: the 30 extra pounds i was carrying, the aches and pains covering my body, and the mental fog clouding my days were all connected to my lack of movement.
i have a demanding day job, a serious relationship, a few hobbies, and a handful of friends i love dearly but often leave on read way longer than they deserve. where was i going to find the 90 minutes for the remaining 7,000 steps?
a sick idea popped into my head.
to this day, i’m convinced what i did was the rational and right thing to do, and yet something tells me i might have lost my mind.
i started running.
i hopped in my car, went to best buy, and bought a fancy watch. then i hit my local running store, got my feet scanned, and grabbed a pair of shoes. $500 later, i downloaded a free 5k training program to my garmin, laced up my new balances, and gave my baseline run — a single mile — everything i had. it was 10 minutes of hell. by the end of it, i could taste blood in my lungs but i had no breath left to complain.
that was 3 months ago. 3 months since i last wrote to you. 3 months since i started running.
a lot can happen in 3 months.
my idea of what consistency is has shifted. or, put more accurately, i’m finally learning what consistency is not. i thought consistency meant showing up perfectly, but consistency means showing up reliably — again and again, imperfectly.
i’m a perfectionist. i raise the stakes of everything i do to unreachable heights. it’s the perfect hiding spot for my fears because if the expectations are impossible to meet, quitting, or worse, never starting, becomes not only acceptable, but guaranteed. perfectionism is pretentious procrastination.
there’s no “perfect” in running. no perfect form or distance or pace. there’s only you — gasping for air, in pain, imperfect. when i run, there’s no hiding. pushing beyond my individual limits leaves me with nowhere to go but towards a more honest version of me.
but running is more than pushing limits. you also need to know when to pull back. i learned that the hard way. i got overly excited my first month and went a bit crazy with my weekly mileage, and at my weight — 250 lbs — jumping to 10-15 miles a week after averaging 3,000 steps a day, i’ve come to learn, is a very silly thing to do, especially when you don’t know how to run yet. i picked up a calf injury almost immediately, and between the injury and some travel, i was forced to take some time off running.
when i finally laced up again last week, all the gains i had made were gone. it was extremely discouraging. i’ve always been fascinated by the psychological aspect of injuries. and although this injury wasn’t “serious,” it was serious enough to set me back a few steps and make the perfectionist in me want to quit.
so i’m changing how i approach this new obsession. in year one, my main focus is on learning to run, learning to stay healthy, and learning to see in years. in the past, i’ve always gone balls to the wall in everything i’ve done and though it’s gotten me to where i am today, that approach isn’t gonna get me to where i’m going next. i don’t want the fastest, most efficient route to my destination anymore. i want the scenic route. i’m not obsessing over pace. i’m only obsessing over high-quality consistency over a long-enough timeline.
it still blows my mind that i’m now running between 15-20 miles a week. it’s not a crazy number — some homies are clocking in 50+ weekly miles — but for a civilian who grew up detesting running, it’s pretty damn good. and i’m so proud of myself for finally finding an addiction that enhances my life.
running used to be punishment for what my body couldn't do. now, it’s a celebration of what it can.
running’s taught me that perfect is an illusion we manufacture to avoid the dirty work. that it doesn’t matter how you start, where you start, or when you start — as long as you start and you keep going.
one foot in front of the other.
i wasn’t sure if this email would see the light of day. i had a weekly streak going for almost 2 years, and when it started to break, the perfectionist in me decided that showing up late was worse than not showing up at all. so i disappeared from your inbox. but i started this, so i’m keeping it going.
what have you been up to?
i missed you.
<3 santi