gaining perspective

I`m going to start running today. I swear.
I`ve been putting it off long enough. I signed up for that half-marathon in October. A procrastinator should not sign up for things so far in advance. I feel like I just have a sea of time stretched out before me. I can take my time and linger, stop and look at things along the way. But I just realized that it`s already July 1, and I`ve only gone running twice. Both times for less than 20 minutes.

I was never the exercising type--PE was my personal Hell as a child--but I really want to change that. I started running March of last year around the time that Zack went to Japan and I was stuck in America for three months. I had gained weight. I don`t really gain weight typically. You notice even 5 pounds when you`re 4`11` (still can`t make quotation marks), and I had gained 11.

I think I was a hummingbird in a past life. I love sweets more than anything and my metabolism is crazy fast. Er, was crazy fast. I never had to do much to be skinny. Just kind of flit through life. But it took running to get the weight off last year. I ran 4 or 5 days a week up until I left for Japan at the end of last June, and I felt great. My skin was clearer. My pants fit the way they did when I started college.

Erica sent me a package full of Easter candy. I just got it two days ago. I forgot how sweet American candy is, in all its brightly-colored, HFCS-laced glory. I can eat it, but in much smaller increments than I used to. Something at the back of my mind tells me to slow down and put the hot pink Peeps and bag of jelly beans away. I`m bordering 25. I guess I`m finally starting to accept the fact that I am a grownup and that my body is changing. My body now wants to savor sweet things instead of consume as much sugar as it can hold in one sitting. It wants me to exercise to stimulate my metabolism instead of just expecting it to be automatically stimulated.

Don`t worry. I`m not that worried about my weight. I`m not going to starve myself or go on a crash diet. But it just occurred to me that I`ve been saying my whole life that one day I will be in shape, like good-lines-in-my-stomach kind of shape, and I`m still not. If I don`t start getting into these good habits now, while running is still easy, then I might never do it. That`s why I signed up for the stupid half-marathon in the first place.

So, now that I`m finally starting to accomplish what I want with writing (completing stories and submitting them for publication), I figure that I might as well keep on with my checking off of life goals.

The thought of wearing a bikini in Bali at the end of July is also pretty good motivation.