Run!

ISSUE #49

I was commissioned to make a running playlist for a 5K this weekend, so I hereby deliver another Earwyrms Essential: The Exercise Playlist.

My own personal exercise preference is running. It's the only arena of my life where I can set goals and actually achieve them, week-in and week-out, without failure. In other aspects—professional, romantic, creative—I'm subject to the fickle winds of fate, the prejudice of the upper class, the exhausting subtleties of getting the right people to like me. Not so with running, where the only extant factor is my own dedication to progress. This and reading are the two ways I can grow entirely on my own volition, fields where nobody can tell me "no" but myself. Our bodies and minds are ours and ours alone.

I also love running because (and I say this in the calmest and least alarming way possible) it feels like the closest I can get to dying without any dire consequences, and with the benefit of actually emerging in even better health. After a day of stagnation, or disappointment, or mundane stress, I can prove to myself that even if I really hurt, or really punish myself, my body and mind can transform any suffering into strength. It's the tiny alchemist in my head, spinning shit into silver. It activates something ancient in me, cracks open a primal cache in my brain and allows the thick yolk of endorphins to seep through my veins. It turns the bad into good. What doesn't kill you and all that. It's all the platitudes in motion.

Even if you don't run, or can't run, or can't exercise at all, I hope this playlist helps put you in the mindset to achieve, to summon what you want out of this world through action and dedication. We all need something external to motivate ourselves sometimes. May this playlist help get you out the door.