Fall Down

Fall (autumn) is that time of year when the coats and boots come out, and the body disappears from public view for a potential five to six months...only to resurface in March, April, not exactly looking how I remembered it. With cold weather out come the puffer jackets and the down coats, a whole array of outwear threatening to substitute inner care.

When everything around me is cold and grey, I struggle with keeping up a routine, be it working out or eating right. When I first moved to America in September 2003, I was excited to experience my first winter… SNOW! (Highly overrated). I quickly discovered that after the first day of fluffy whiteness, winter means less sunshine, less smiling, less moving, more eating, more drinking, more random sadness. My life in this country fluctuates from fun-filled and social, to cold and lonely. Up and down. Though undiagnosed, I’m pretty sure I suffer from seasonal affective disorder (hilariously acronymable to S.A.D)… and that’s pretty much how I feel when the weather changes. When sad, I find I conduct long debates with myself wherein I weigh the pros and cons of actually moving. The cons, the nays, offer really compelling points… such as… “coz no.” Braced with such a valid argument as to why I shouldn’t move, the task of even considering the gym or thinking about a run feels like a tedious chore. So it’s at times like these that I turn to my trusted friends... Nike.

What precisely are the folks at Nike on about with their little mantra… Just Do It! Do what? What is It?!

For me, It’s different every day. Some days, It’s putting on my running shoes, some days It’s entering the gym, some days It’s leaving my house, some days it’s leaving my bed. It’s whatever feels undesirable, impracticable, hard. It’s whatever feels necessary, albeit tedious. It feels challenging when I think about it, doable as I’m doing it, and not bad in the end. On days when I don’t feel up to it, or feel over it before it’s even begun, I channel Nike, get myself to the door, to the road, out of bed, whatever… and just do it. And when I’m down, doing something right, giving my body a workout, always feels good and brings me up, even if only for that little while.