hurrying up and waiting

a playlist for big changes that take a long time

This isn’t my monthly playlist! Just a quick little bonus.

I started running again a couple weeks ago. Because I finally quit smoking after 12 years. I had come to hate it, to hate how I felt, hate what it had done to people in my life. But as much as I hated it I knew I had to replace it with something. My friend reminded me that she had quit by signing up for a trail race, and seven years later she’s not smoking and she’s still running. So I signed up for one. My friend made me a training schedule. I started making playlists.

I used to run. A very long time ago, when I was deeply in an eating disorder and used running on an empty stomach to tamp down my emotions. I smeared physical pain on top of feelings in an effort to camouflage them from myself, and it worked for a while. For about two years. After I went through recovery I was able to feel the full spectrum of my emotions again, much to my chagrin, and I committed to the slow work of growing into a person I could be proud of.

Ah, but linear growth! It’s nearly impossible. So much growth is halting, barely perceptible to the outside eye, frustratingly slow. So much of it is boring — slow motion rather than montage. And I love immediate gratification. It’s why I was such a good smoker. It’s why I’m perceived as unafraid of change, when at my core I am terrified of it. I can do big, sweeping change. Change that happens to me rather than change that I orchestrate. It’s so much scarier to set a goal for yourself that takes time, that you could possibly not meet. It’s so hard to bet on yourself when you’re the one who lives with yourself every day and you’ve seen how this guy operates and, I mean, bud, it’s not the safest bet.

But that’s what I’m doing now. One painfully obvious allegorical step at a time. Every time I hit “record” on my Strava app, I breathe deep and get ready to experience that full spectrum in excruciating slowness.

I’ve started choosing songs that bring me there. As I learn to find my pace on the roads and the trails, I’m learning to find my pace inside myself. I love running to songs that evoke a feeling that I’ve been having a hard time with. If I feel frozen in a process, the combo shot of a song and the blood pounding in my ears seems to thaw me out.

The same thing I did to escape myself 15 years ago is bringing me back into myself now. And this is the first playlist, full of tracks that have brought me back into my dumb, healing body. I’ve learned I like a slow burn over a banger. I like moments of quiet in between the crescendos. I like to feel it all in real time.

Change takes so long, sometimes it’s ok to pretend you’re in a montage.