Fat is Normal

My caveman ancestor, Krog, was not a disciplined man. He wasn't thin of frame because he had the perfect diet nailed down, or because he was moderate in his eating habits. No, most likely it was because he was frickin' starving all the time.

And he didn't run to build strength or endurance. He did it to catch animals and look for water and - if he was lucky - an occasional bit of edible vegetation. Otherwise he preferred to just relax, paint some walls, throw some bones, push his friends into porcupines, that sort of thing. Krog was a big fan of laziness.

That's how we evolved. We're awesome at conserving energy. And if for some reason we're lucky enough to eat a few extra calories, it's immediately stored as fat for later use. That makes good sense! Having a bit of extra belly was a sign of prosperity! Good times were clearly being had!

Krog having a good time. I imagine he would
look a lot like my brother Alex.

We don't have to chase after our food anymore. We don't have to dig through the dirt and pray that the fungus we find is edible. We can just walk a couple of blocks and order literally a million calories of food if we wanted to. I mean, it would take them all day to make that many burgers and fries, but they could flippin' do it. They have the stock.

It's actually a miracle that we all don't explode from overeating. Food these days is blasted full of salt, sugar, and fat. All of it. Even your "healthy" breakfast cereal has sugar, salt and fat. These things were rare to Krog. So our bodies find them extra delicious. That's why you never get full from potato chips or ice cream. You could eat those for hours nonstop and still want more.

So if you take Krog and suddenly dump him into the modern age with access to all the food he wants.... He would eat it! And he wouldn't run around. He would sit on a soft fluffy thing and stare at the box with the magic sounds and colors and eat food all day. And it would be amazing!

The only reason the rest of us don't do this is because at some point our parents told us, "you can't do that."

"But why mommy? Why can't I just eat and watch TV?" You asked plaintively.

"Just... you can't. That's why."

"But why not?"

"Because I said so! Go outside you little snot!"

"But moooommy, I'll freeze to death!"

And televisions weren't addictive enough. You could at least get out of earshot of a TV. So they created devices that are literally on our persons 24 hours a day. They call them "phones", pretending that you had to carry it for, like, emergencies. And eating potatoes wasn't addictive enough, so they chopped them into bits and deep friend them and drenched them with salt. So soooo tasty.

And then it's your fault that you don't go outside and interact with real people anymore. And it's your fault that you're fat.

This is normal. You still have Krog's genes. You're just behaving the way your body was designed. All that stimulus and constant access to exceedingly addictive things.... How can you possible resist that?

By being not normal.

Exercising is not normal. That's why when a normal fat person sees an abnormal person running, they give them the stink eye. Eating broccoli when doughnuts are available is not normal. That's why there's lots of doughnut drive-thrus and zero broccoli drive-thrus. Nobody wants to be able to get raw crunchy broccoli at any time of day.

Except for not normal people.

The day I decided to stop being fat and to start eating less food and exercising more is the day my mind snapped. This wasn't a sane decision. Up until that point my body had been very happy being stuffed with addictive substances all the time. The only reason I had was vanity. Seriously. I wanted to look like.... less of me.

I'm glad I'm not normal.

"That's great and all but I can't survive on grapefruit."

Or at least that I wasn't at the time. But I've been at this for long enough now that I feel normal. And the other people like me seem normal too. And the people who don't exercise every day and who don't prefer broccoli over doughnuts are suddenly the weird ones for me. I mean, those people still outnumber us by a long shot, but we can outrun them!

Mostly now I can hang out with people who are crazy like me. And maybe Krog would be disappointed at me. But then again maybe he would enjoy us hunting a furry beast together.

---

That was supposed to be the last paragraph. You can tell because it has a satisfying conclusion about chasing tasty fur covered meat balls. But I wrote it yesterday and now I feel like writing more. But if your eyes are tired you can just close your browser window. And your browser. And your computer. And go outside for a run.

Just kidding. Eat a pie instead.

It's easy to blame "evil corporations" for smashing us with horrible but very cheap and delicious food. And it's easy to blame them for turning children into mindless automatons addicted to likes and thumbs-ups.

But it doesn't do you any good. It just makes you angry. They want your money. They're evil geniuses at making your spit that money up in slimy wads. Just accept it and deal with it. Thankfully you have a prefrontal cortex that says, "maybe don't eat all of the cake."

Sure, it can be an uphill battle. But you can manipulate your own mushy brain as well as Oreo ads can. I've convinced myself that I have to exercise every day or I will die a terrible death. Tomorrow. And I don't let myself eat until I've earned it. And I still loooove food.

Not all food though. I won't eat anything with hydrogenated oil because I want to live past 40. That automatically knocks out a huge number of snacks. I won't eat boxed cereal, because 7am is too early to eat candy that's pretending to be nutritious. And so on. High fructose corn syrup. Oh sure there's all sorts of studies that are saying, "no, it's like, totally fine." But who knows who's paying for those. And just assuming that it's a deadly poison makes it easy for me to avoid another huge heap of empty calories.

"Screw you deadly poisons!"

But accept the fact that you're human. You want to relax and creep on your "friends" on social media. You want to eat a whole box of cookies. That's normal and doesn't mean you're evil or weak. Don't let guilt be the thing that drives you to action. It'll fail. And then you'll feel more guilty. And fall into an endless pit of despair. Ask me how I know.

Just decide to be insane. However that's defined in your book. Break your own brain. Make crazy things into normal things. You have to fake it for a while, but eventually it will feel normal. And normal will suddenly look crazy to you.

I know. It's super weird. But it works. It really does.

[Something about chasing furry animals into the sunset.]

I ran a marathon at 12:01am, Jan 1

I blew up the social media with my announcement at about 4:20 this morning, so people are probably tired of hearing about it by now. "Oh look at you. You ran a marathon at midnight New Years. Shut up and eat a cake."

I can't help it. It was an extra crazy thing. Even for me.

I first got the idea when the LUNAR group created an event to run a virtual race in January to promote VHL research. Von Hippel-Lindau is what LUNAR's founder, Shawn, has been battling. He is a powerful inspiration and the group he created has motivated hundreds of people to run more. It is only fair for us to give back!

The event was to run a half-marathon (or shorter). The entry fee was a $1 donation for each mile you wanted to run. I put in 26, because it was a good cause. And then I thought, "well, ok, I guess that means I have to run a marathon?" And because I'm a jerk, I figured I should be the first person to complete the race.

So, I'm generous, but also I'm an a$$hole. Sounds about right.

I went to a New Year's Eve party at a friend's house that's about 18 miles from my house. I figured if I threw in a few extra miles, that would work out pretty great. So I was that crazy guy who brought running clothes to a party. There's always someone like that at every party. AmIright?

The same guy who puts on nipple tape at parties.
Photo cr. Alex

My friend who threw the party (and also the same friend who gave me Haiko, my awesome kokeshi running companion!) made me a ton of coffee. She thought I was insane, but you can't talk down an insane person. Just drench them with caffeine I guess. Before long everyone wanted to know about this ridiculous run, even though I just wanted to sit on the couch and stare at the clock!

Haiko's smiles conceals her judgment when I don't run...

I changed into my clothes at about 11:30, kilt included. And at 12:01, while my sister was singing Old Lang Syne, I shouted "Happy New Years!" and ran out the door. I tried to avoid breaking my legs on the steep stairs, because that would've been embarrassing. Then I was running in the middle of street, aglow with my headlamp and Geoffrey's running vest.

The roads were clear. The weather was perfect. And even though it was New Year's, the few drivers I encountered gave me a wide berth. Maybe they thought hitting me would infect them with the same insanity I apparently suffer from.

I hadn't tapered for this run at all. I had been off work all week. For most people that means eating lots of chicken and pie. For me it means exercising three times as much. Just a few hours previously I had swam and bicycled. The two days prior I ran a total of 18 intense miles. So no, I was not fresh.

Before pic. Cr. Alex

The run was glorious. There's something about running in the middle of the night that's... visceral. I felt like an animal. An animal covered in blinking lights. I just ran and ran, winding up the miles.

I'd tried not to think too much about the run beforehand, because thinking always screws me up. When I hit about 10 miles, I remembered that marathons were, like, hard. And I didn't have any food, water, fellow runners, or cheering spectators. Just me, all by myself, alternately sweating and freezing. I was sore and tired, but I didn't have anything else to do other than keep running.

Usually I manage to keep my mind occupied on long runs, but I was too tired to think. I felt every long mile. Every 5 miles I took off my glove and txted a few people to let them know I was alive. My brother stayed up and replied with encouraging comments. Meghan woke up every time her phone dinged. My best friend D passed out after mile 5. My Russian translator, Maddie, slept blissfully through the whole thing.

Mostly it was just me in the dark, running for a very long time. I thought about why I was doing it. There's really no reason to! I can just eat donuts and drive everywhere like the vast majority of people. And they get by fine. They have health insurance and alcohol. It's fine. There's no reason to torture yourself.

Finally, after a very long time, I saw the brightly lit Lowe's in my home town. I've never been that happy to see it. I'd already run for about 23 miles. I'd like to say I sprinted the rest, but I was exhausted. And I overshot the distance, so I ended up with 27 miles. I stopped in the middle of Main St., the drunken New Year's Eve party-goers had long since gone home to sleep off their hangovers.

Well there was one guy out at 4am, appearing confused as to why everyone else was gone.

My brother Alex was sitting on the couch, waiting for me to get home. The one guy at the finish line cheering me on. It was pretty awesome. Really awesome really. I can't do what I do without the amazing people in my life constantly motivating and encouraging me.

After pic. Cr. Alex

I climbed into my car that Alex had driven back for me, shivering violently as I blasted heat on myself. My body hurt. It took me about 20 minutes before I could drive home. Plenty of time to annoy the world via social media.

I barely slept.

I love adventure. Life can be boring. It can very easily be boring. And I get why people like boring. It's comfortable. It's easy. It's reasonably pain free. And there's plenty of drugs to make us feel good so we don't notice the boring. TV, smart phones, booze, food, whatever. But.... I just can't do that. There's always a moment, when you look up from staring at your phone while driving. That moment when you accidentally glance at yourself in the mirror.

That one moment is all I need to remind myself why I seek the adventure. And the many hours outside in the dark gives me plenty of time to think, "yeah, I'm f@#king doing this." It's quite exhilarating. I. Am. LIVING.

NBD

2016 Retrospect

I have a bad memory, so even one day seems like a long time to me. In order to look back at this past year, I have to "cheat" and look at photos, and my fitness apps, and what not. This is a bit weird, because all of us are guilty of only posting the best to social media, and of course my fitness graphs make me look like a lunatic, even though I often whine about being a huge slacker.

My memory works well enough though that I know 2016 was hard for me. Just prior to the beginning of the year I was living with Pixie, and I thought I had everything more or less figured out. An awesome girlfriend who works at a brewery (!), lots of cats and dogs, running, but reasonably so. I felt good.

By January 1 of 2016 I was living in Geoffrey's house. I was truly blessed that he let me move in on such short notice. And I'm still here! I stuck it out with Pixie until about April. I'm not going to go into the details about why I left. Even though I felt at the time (and still do) that it was the best decision for both me and her, I still felt immensely guilty. And regardless of whether I was justified or not, the fact is I hurt her.

Since then I've pushed almost everyone out of my life, because I felt that I was a trash human being who only hurts others.

A trash human hanging out with his only friend.

I saw Pixie last night. We were at that brewery together. It was a very nice night for both of us. But we didn't talk to one another at all. I wanted to. I wanted to apologize. Whatever happened in the past doesn't matter. I just wanted to say, for my part, that I was sorry. But I wasn't able to. I didn't want to ruin her night. I finally gave up and left.

There's plenty of people I've hurt, and plenty of people who hate me. I for one don't want to hate anyone in return. It's an awful feeling and only poisons me. A big thing I've learned is the power forgiveness. Forgiving others and forgiving myself. Because of all of the things that brought me joy in 2016, love was by far the biggest.

Regardless of how she feels about me, and even though we're not a good fit together, I will always love Pixie. She helped shape me into who I am.

Because of my self-hatred, I pushed myself over the summer. Too hard. I had a decent marathon at Run for the Red in April (shaved 3 seconds off my PR with a finishing time under 3:15). But that was about my last good race. After that they got worse and worse. And I kept feeling worse and worse about myself, and pushed myself even harder.

It spiraled out of control and I got a really bad case of Overtraining Syndrome at the end of the summer. I had 4 marathons and a ton of other races in the fall and they were all very slow. I didn't take a break though. I just kept on training through it.

Then Wineglass happened. I spent a truly amazing weekend with a bunch of extremely positive and amazing LUNARs. I ran that race and Baltimore with Brian, a man who simply refused to give up no matter how terrible a hand fate dealt him. I won't lie, I've been a bad friend to him lately. Largely because I just have no clue what I can do for him anymore, and that frustrates me. I don't want to project my guilt and resentment on him, although distancing myself has arguably been just as bad.

"Just slow down my man. Don't be in such a rush!"

I'm ready for a change now. I had a really wonderful holiday with friends and family. It's rekindled something in me. It's reminded me how powerful and important it is to me to be with people I love. To eliminate anger, judgment, self-recrimination, and all that crap. Loving others, and being loved in return, is the absolute best thing life has to offer.

I'm going to stop exercising as a form of punishment. Well, maybe a little bit. I need to be somewhat crazy to maintain my level of volume. But I'm going to try really hard to avoid sinking to the depths of despair I felt over the past few months. I've learned a lot, and those lessons have been extremely valuable.

I jokingly say that I'm selfish. But I need to be. I can't be a good friend if I don't like myself. I need to take honest stock of myself, without lenses of anger. I've thought a lot about what will make me happier in the future. And by becoming happier, I will have a lot more love to share with the people I care about.

Because no matter how much I hated on myself, the size of my family just kept on growing! I didn't know what these people saw in me. I still don't. But you know what? It doesn't matter! I'm truly blessed by the amount of inspiration, support, and love in my life, and I have to stop squandering that.

Originally I was going to talk a little bit more about my fitness over the course of the year, as this is a blog about CRUSHING PAVEMENT (pumps fist). But, frankly the above is more important to me. In the charts below you'll see the spike in the summer, the dip in the fall, and then a steady climb again. 2017 will see me focusing more on training for next year's Ironman. Which is really exciting! I still hate swimming, but hopefully I can get (slightly) better at that.

There's a lot of people who deserve individual mentions and individual thanks. But that list is just too huge now, and I know I would forget too many. But know that I love you and appreciate everything you've done for me. Even the anonymous readers: You give me a reason to keep writing. And this has been an amazing catharsis for me. Thank-you.

That swimming line is really smooshed down. But I got up to 10 miles in December!

For all of my obsessing over my weight, I've managed to keep it pretty steady. It jumped up around October due to too much ice cream, but I quit that, and it's been dropping since then.

Boilermaker was awesome!

Haven't chatted with Arch-nemesis in a while, but running with new people is always great!

Tromptown almost killed me!

Wineglass was absolutely one of the highlights of 2016. Wow!! And all of you LUNARs, who are too many to name individually, you are beautiful and incomparably inspirational people!

Baltimore was another incredible experience. And the medal is to die for! And this pic has three very special people in it. Geoffrey, my dearest friend; Meghan; who has brought so much love into my life; and Brian, who has taught me more about myself than I would have expected.

I've been training and teaching karate for over 20 years, and it continues to be a source of strength, community, and grounding for me.

This man is truly a brother. Thank-you Geoffrey... for more things than I could ever list.

And of course my flesh and blood brother. Every year I love my family more and more. If it wasn't for them I would have never started on the path of self-discovery.

This man! After my Ironman, Dan and I are going to do some serious ultra trail running. Just you watch!

This will likely be the last time I mention Pixie. I doubt she reads my blog anymore. If you do Pixie... I'm sorry. And thank-you.

Have an amazing 2017 everyone! From me and Haiko, my ever vigilant running companion.

I love all of you. You bring my life real meaning.

Awkward High School Dances

I've always been weird. I never "got" people, and I still don't. They all flit about, delighting in one another's company. And I'm just like, "what are they even talking about? Football, shopping, yard work?" Are those things?

I was home-schooled until the 5th grade, so I missed the entire window when most kids learn to socialize. We moved around quite a bit too, so I made approximately zero friends. Towards the end of high school, I had about half a dozen dudes that I would roleplay with: Dungeons and Dragons, Rifts, Vampire: The Masquerade, that sort of thing. Usually those devolved into putting soda cans into socks and hitting each other until we got tired (but, like, in a fun way?).

You're thinking, "weird kids always grow up to be the coolest! I bet you blossomed in college!"

I did not.

I made exactly zero friends in college. I would go home on the weekends and hang out with my friends who threw dice and books at me, and hid pepperoni under the cheese of my "totally meat-free pizza." And we would pee in each other's bottles of Mountain Dew.

Truly, we were enlightened.

Like this, but with yellow soda instead of booze.

When I was 23 I did a google search for how to be normal. I don't know why I'm lying. I did a Google search for how to meet women, because I was tired of being sad and antisocial. About the same time I started drinking.

It took me about 6 months to turn into a party animal. But whatever romantic comedy starring Vince Vaughn or Dane Cook is dancing through your head right now, throw it out. I had a ton of hilarious adventures, but it didn't end in me living happily ever after, having learned a valuable lesson.

Oh I definitely learned some lessons. Like, driving drunk and hitting things is not ideal. Throwing an epic party and then being hung over for several days is super great for one day and super not great for several days after. Selfishly using people for your own enjoyment is fun but also leaves you feeling totally awful inside forever. That sort of thing.

When I was in middle school, before I learned the "3 second rule" or how to "spot IOI's" or any of that crap, I went to the school dances. Do schools still have dances? Did social media ruin that too? Anyway, I'd go because there was pizza, and my family was poor. I loved pirogis with sour cream as much as the next kid, but sometimes I just wanted some flippin' pizza.

I would loiter mostly. Sit on the bleachers. And make frequent trips for more soda and pizza. I can't really remember, but I suspect I was pretty bloated at these things. It's probably a good thing I wasn't more popular. Or any amount of popular. I couldn't imagine holding in that much gas for that long. I still can't!

I had a crush on a girl. I think it was the 8th grade, or 9th, or some number. I'd look at her and feel warm and fuzzy. That was about the extent of it. I didn't know what to say or do beyond that.

"Do I talk to her? What do I say?! What if she doesn't like me!"

At one of the dances, terrified, I asked her to dance. She said no. I'm not sure if I was heartbroken, but one thing I'm sure of, I was relieved! I'm always relieved when someone I like says no, even to this day. But then she felt bad and approached me later that evening. Aaaah crap, I knew my bravery was going to bite me in the a$$.

Nope, noooo romatic comedy here either. It was awkward. Really very painfully awkward. This is the first time I'm mentioning it at all. I've kept it bottled up.... what, almost 25 years now? Hahahaha, that's how awkward it was. But writing it... it's like taking this thing that's been wadded up inside of me, pulling it out, and blowing it out of my hands and having it sprinkle into the wind like dandelion seeds.

Because really, who cares. To literally everyone it's just a funny story. It only holds power over me if I give it any.

Back to the now. I got tired of hurting people. Really tired. It's all I was doing. Hurting myself - and more importantly - hurting others. The fun times I had were ephemeral. They didn't stick around forever. I liked staying up late and drinking half naked with ridiculous people, but that's not something that made me proud. I wasn't looking at myself and thinking, "man, I really accomplished something last night, with that whiskey and broken furniture. Suuuure did."

So I've come around full circle. Back to not getting people. Back to a totally solitary existence. Back to the awkward kid at the high school dance. I just run. Partly it's an escape. An escape from others and an escape from myself. Partly it's to punish myself for all the idiotic mistakes I made and all the people I hurt. Actually, this part is a big part: It's why I enjoy pain and punishment so much. And then part of it is to shape myself into somebody better. Because I can't hold on to that anguish forever.

"I'm sure this is somehow good for me."

It's stupid. I know it is. I'm very conscious of that. Beating myself up all the time is not sustainable. But I feel like I'm on a track now. A track that's going.... somewhere. I'm not sure where to yet, and it's a bit bumpy, but I'm definitely moving. And that's exciting, and it makes me feel good about my future.

A future of fitness. A future of pride in myself. A future of love with people who support me that I support right back. People who are all on the same track, spiraling upwards towards ever billowing joy and success. I've had tastes of it, and unlike those long ago nights of 40's of malt liquor and passing out in parks, these moments linger. I still remember the party with the amazing LUNARs I had after the Wineglass marathon.

Shared passion, shared craziness, shared love. I think I'm finally starting to get it.

"Life isn't as complicated as you think.
Just be majestic, like me."

Everyone's Miserable and That's OK

There's a lot of things that can make someone miserable. Work. Family. Health or fitness. Money. The person you're with. Or the fact that you're bitterly alone. Or maybe that time is flying by at warp speed and you feel like you haven't accomplished any of the things you wanted to.

That's a lot of possible reasons, and I'd wager that at least one of them applies to you. I don't know you, but I'm reasonably certain that something makes you unhappy.

And that's OK.

Feeling bad isn't OK. It kind of sucks. But misery pretty much defines being human. And you're not the only one who experiences it. Trust me, you really really aren't. So when I say it's OK, what I mean is that you're not the only person who fails at life sometimes (or a lot of times).

Social media is bull$hit. 100% of what people post on there is a lie. I'm not even going to say 99%. Because then you'd be like, "oh, so there's a 1% chance that Susie with her perfect family and trips to Italy really is that happy." No. She's not. It's f@&king false.

"It's all true! I'm amazing!"

I can go up to someone - a friend, acquaintance, anyone - and have this conversation.

"How's the thing?" I ask, where the thing is their job, or loved one, or new puppy, or literally anything.

"Eh," they reply with a forced smile.

"That bad, huh?" I say.

"Oh no, it's fine," they lie. "Just, you know...."

"It kind of sort of makes you miserable."

And then there's that moment, where they feel like they should lie, keep up the social ruse. But then there's that other part of them that desperately wants someone to know how much the thing really sucks. I've had a puppy, and yes, they really suck that much. F@&king obnoxious little a$$holes.

I wasn't going to post this. I was like, what is this bull$hit? I'm not even cranky right now. I was a couple days ago. I had a headache, which translated into, "my life is awful right now. And will be forever. Unless I start drinking again." It was a bizarre thought process. And then I forced myself to get out of bed and run 8 miles. Which did nothing for my headache, but at least helped me scatter my thoughts.

But as my mouse pointer hovered over the delete button (it didn't really; I'm being metaphorical), I saw a post come up on Facebook (which would be impossible, since it's in another tab; what I really mean is I was staring at Facebook the whole time like the useless sack of poop that I am). Also, parenthesis? Whatever.

Anyway, a friend of mine posted, "What's your biggest concern in life right now? (No jokes, please)". It's been up for one hour - one - and it's up to forty serious replies. Money. Loneliness. Depression. Angst. The future. I'm being vague on purpose, but you get the point. And this friend is a comedian. Like, a stand-up comedian. So this isn't a bunch of people who circle-jerk each other with sadness all the time. These are folks who are normally expecting humor, but had absolutely no problem answering a question about why their life sucks right now.

And I see plenty of stuff like this all the time from folks who are normally positive and cheerful. I mean, we typically use Facebook to post the best stuff, because we want our friends to be jealous and sad about themselves. But sometimes we just feel so down that we puke it all over the digital world.

How is this supposed to cheer you up? I'm saying don't get stressed. Or more specifically, don't get stressed about being stressed. I know, that sounds like the stupidest thing anyone has ever written. But you're going to feel inadequate, insecure, and unhappy, and that's just a thing that's going to happen. There's no solution.

I'm in the best shape I've ever been in my life. All the various pieces of my life are generally getting better every year. I make more money and spend less than I make. I don't drink anymore. I have a lot of awesome people in my life who make me feel loved.

I'm also more miserable than I've ever been before. Because I'm stuck in my own stupid head too much. The more I think, the less happy I feel. And that's because all of the life stuff, it's irrelevant. I mean, being too poor to feed your kids matters, yeah. But whatever is going on, you get used to it. You deal with it. We humans are awesome at that.

Plus we humans have coping mechanisms

It's only when we stop and think, that we're like, "ugh, this is all super terrible." When we compare ourselves to others. Or look back on our own lives and compare the things we've experienced with the list of things we wish we'd experienced.

It's all in your head.

If you can fix something, great, otherwise just move on. Dwelling on something that can't be changed just makes you sick in the inside parts of you.

Obviously, it's not that easy. That's why I exercise so stupidly much. Anytime I'm out beating pavement with my feet, or beating iron with my hands, I'm not in my own head. I'm doing something. Something that makes me feel good. And that's the best you can hope for.

Fill your life with as many things that make you feel good as possible. The more of these things you have, the less time you have left to feel bad. Because no matter how many good things you have, you will always want more. That's just another fact of being human. It doesn't matter if you have a thousand or only one. It's enough.

And if you're in a funk that you simply cannot escape.... that's OK. That's totally fine. Be in a funk. Lie in the dark. Stare at the ceiling. Churn in anguish. It's totally 100% OK. You're not doing anything wrong. You're being perfectly human. Doing what humans do.

And that's cool.

Good job.

"Huh. I guess I am being perfectly human..."