I had to stop jogging. My legs felt as if they were rapidly turning into stone. It had been two weeks since I exercised. I had let myself wallow in depression after a lost friendship, if it was even that. Now, as I stopped my momentum to walk, I was surprised my face didn’t kiss the concrete ground. The dopamine started to kick in. As I let out a hard breath, a beautiful shirtless guy jogged past me from behind. With angular shoulders atop a well-sculpted body he moved with grace and efficiency, his hair flowing at the sides. Suddenly life seemed beautiful again. My legs felt weightless and I flew forward.

The Plutchik Model of Emotions
(I’m not going into the psychology of emotions right now but wanted to share the link for information. I am, however, a bit perturbed that purple embodies disgust.)

Today, after a meeting at work, I was told by a colleague that I was intense and scary. He told me that as I was speaking his knees were literally shaking. I was scary. The first thing that popped out of my mouth was, “You haven’t met my mother.” While I found it funny because I’ve never seen myself as an intense person, and I could think of others who I find intense and never able to relax around them, I started to seriously think outside myself.

What do I do now? Do I start to become a meeker person than I truly am so I become “normal” and more acceptable to people? True, I am passionate about things or people I believe in and will follow that road to a point, not necessarily to the end, as I inadvertently lose interest or become distracted by another passion. I am at odds because some people think I’m too quiet and meek already, so where is this “intensity” coming from?

Maybe I should just go live in the jungle among the trees and monkeys where I belong, eating bananas and swinging on vines.

How to Waste Time When You’ve Got Things To Do To Jump-Start Your Life

1. Take a nap.
2. Go on Facebook and read meaningless chitchat and stare at photos of narcissistic people.
3. While on Facebook, post meaningless status updates and irrelevant videos.
4. Decide to exercise while watching TV, specifically Hawaii Five-O and wish you were in Hawaii.
5. An hour later, exercise to Pussycat Dolls music and wish you looked as hot as Nicole.
6. Decide that exercise is boring and start dancing instead, like a slut on a club dance floor. (I need a stripper pole.)
7. Remind yourself that you need new music, and that you hate that time of the month when you are reminded you are absolutely female.
8. Go on your blog site and blog about wasting time.

He runs down the hill, always in a hurry, running to an unknown destination, his dark waist-length hair flying behind his ponytail.  He is not a jogger; he wears jeans and T-shirt, carrying a backpack.  You would think that he has managed his time by now so that he doesn’t need to run every morning.  Yet as I walk up the hill to work, there he is flying by again. 

Today he looks at me with curiosity.  Does he know?  Does he know that I want to trip him as speeds by me?  Does he know that I want to pull his ponytail back so that his head pops back in surprise?  Does he know that I want to laugh at his expense?  Someday we’ll both find out.