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June 1, 2003
[Maybe one of them souped
[Maybe one of them souped up muscle cars]
there is this guy i work with that is so random. random in that truly random way. random in that way that floats just outside my understanding. first, he has taken to wearing shorts. it is not that warm here. liz tells me it was 99 in houston on friday. dude. i bet it didn't even get to 55 here on friday. or yesterday. just a juxtaposition. not to complain about the cold again, but dude. this is now ridiculous. it is june 1. (btw how is it june 1?) (another question - am i going to spend the rest of my list marveled at how fast time passes?) (cuz that's kinda lame).
anyways, back to keith. he runs. a lot. he runs a lot. he runs these ultramarathons in which he runs for more than 8 hours. i asked him what he thinks about. he shrugged. "stuff." some research, of course, he added. and no music. i can't work out for an hour without music without going crazy.
and that isn't even my favorite thing about him. my favorite thing is that he hiked the Appalachian Trail. all. of. it. it took him 5.5 months. oh, and i didn't mention that he did it alone. alone that is amazing. needless to say that i am impressed with him.
so it got me thinking. i actually found this out a while back in the fall. but he just put up the webpage and it made me think about it again. would i be about to do that? to be alone with only the occasional stranger's company - for a week, not to mention 5 months.
inherently i am an introvert. i have to have alone time - or at least down time. at some points in my life i would say that i was an extrovert. i think it is what you are just to. like last summer in atlanta - i spent every evening with someone. and i love it. but i guess usually i came home to my bed alone. and i worked alone usually. okay, so i take it back, i was just as far from an introvert that i ever had been. but that said, i don't think i could go a week without human contact. without a real conversation about how someone was feeling or how i was feeling. i can't remember i time in my life that i wasn't social in some ways. like when i first moved here. i craved that random conversation at school with my classmates. even though i spent a lot of time on the phone (which is a conservative estimate), it did not replace that in person human contact - even if it was trivial. i wonder what that craving is. i wonder if it is the fact that it makes you feel a little more alive to been seen and responded to nonverbally. maybe that is - when i had most of my conversation on the phone, i missed all the nonverbal stuff you pick up subconsciously. not that i don't enjoy my phone conversations. it is just different. i can't just have phone. therefore i can't hike the AT by myself (even if i had a cell phone and a solar powered recharger).
this not so small tangent is brought to you by the avoidance of "A review of crack closure, fatigue crack threshold and related phenomena". send it a thank you note. i am sure it will appreciate it becuase it isn't getting any attention from me. it is feeling llllooonnnneeellllyyyy.
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Posted by christina at June 1, 2003 8:54 PM