Saturday, March 29, 2008

Sentimental Heart

I sit for the GRE in about 36 hours. Terrible. My shoulders are locked up six inches above where they normally sit. I ran a 5K this afternoon just to avoid algebraic equations. Yay for the run, boo for the quadratic equation. I'll never need to find inverse angles in an isosoles triangle EVER AGAIN (shit, I can't even spell isosoles!) I took a "real" practice test given by the people who actually administer the GRE this afternoon. I scored higher on the math section. I think in all my worrying about equations and statistics I let my vocabulary completely fade into oblivion. Terrible.

It'll be over soon. Until then I am eating my perfected vegan chocolate chip cookies with wreckless abandon (I did do all that running after all) and listening to Zooey Deschanel's new album, which soothes my aching heart. I am pretty sure my four-months vegan anniversary came and went. I'm pretty proud of myself.

"What can you do with a sentimental heart?" - zooey deschanel, "Sentimental Heart"

Friday, March 21, 2008

Guts and Brains

Thanks to some ironic (or perhaps telling) timing, my greatest intellectual achievements are occurring in tandem with my greatest physical ones. And this forces to me really think about what I’d rather be valued for: my brains or my gut (or lack thereof)? It seems an easy answer, but when you’re getting attention for your physical merits (that you’ve worked very hard to achieve) for the first time in your life, it’s really intoxicating. Having people tell me how great I look and how cool it is that I work so hard (most folks know that I spin, and I run, and I have a personal trainer – and if you don’t know that, now you do) is really amazing and never ceases to feel good (though I am often embarrassed by the “how much weight have you lost” question). My dear cousin even said I should be in People Magazine the other day, which really got me thinking about how far I’ve come. And even though the feminist in me knows that my brain and my heart are what really counts, I’d be lying if I said a smaller waistline wasn’t pretty great as well.

I hope in time I can reconcile the two new versions of myself – the inside and the outside – and figure how to live what seems (on some days) a completely new life. And what I do know is, it’s a better life, a healthier one. For my brain and my body, and I guess that’s what counts.
 
Copyright 2009 eringee