David Gao, Period 1,10/1/21

 At this current point in time, what specific goal do you have for yourself? Why?

Although there are arguably more important things that I should focus on in my life right now, the goal that I have for myself is to run. Not from anything, though it could be said that I am running from my past self in a sense, but four times a week I go down to my basement where the laundry machine and the washing machine is, where the treadmill stands tall and I run. I know that I should be preparing more for college and studying more for tests and whatnot but it feels like I'm doing those things for the people around me. Even though I can get decent grades I don’t feel as proud of it as when I’m running, maybe because when I run, I run for myself and not for the approval of my mother, maybe because when I run it feels like I’m running for that boy that spent hours wasting away doing nothing. As his back slowly slouches down further and further as he clicks on the umpteenth youtube video, as he pretends to study while playing games, as he neglects his own health because it would be too much work. Well it was too much work and it hasn’t felt like it was worth it yet but what I do know is that there’s a moment of joy everytime I run and it gets easier, everytime that I stretch and I can reach further than I could before, everytime I get home from school and think to myself that I’ll work harder today than yesterday and I do. And I guess that's my real goal, to care more about myself and like me just a little bit more.

How do you demonstrate resilience towards achieving this goal? 

When I first began to run I thought to myself that there was no way that anybody could enjoy the suffering that was running, much less me, someone who hadn’t ran in years. I actually used to be in the running club in middle school but it felt like I never improved, so I despised going. Though I would never miss a day, I was always counting down the time to when it would be over, and it did eventually end in 2018 after I graduated. I was glad to never have to run again, though of course there was the pacer test but I didn’t care much and only ran enough to put me in the healthy fitness gram range. Fast forward to the summer of 2021, coming pathetically slow off the heels of an entire year of virtual classes I realized I had nothing to do for the summer. Yeah I had SYEP but it just meant that I woke up early and would be back home at 1 pm everyday leaving 10 hours of nothing but mindless wandering on the vast internet. And I suppose at some point I had become tired of that lifestyle. At some point I decided that I needed to change and so I began to run. At first my memories of those middle school years came back to me, the kid that was not so different from me a couple months ago told me to just quit it, told me that I didn’t actually have to or want to run tomorrow, told me that it wouldn’t be worth it, and I don’t really remember what motivated me to continue despite all the pain and the soreness but day after day I would run and stretch, tell myself that I’m going to stop and then get back to running again the next day. 

How does the world around you affect your perception of this goal? 

The world is full of athletic and fit people, and I don’t consider myself exactly fit or athletic so I suppose that I was jealous. Everywhere I looked I would be constantly reminded by myself that in some physical way I was worth less than the people around me because I wasn’t fit and that drove me a little. But it’s like I mentioned before, it’s not as if I want people to come up to me and go “Wow man you look great”. 

No.  

Words like that would be appreciated but I’m not doing this for anyone else because the one doing the work is me, so even though I was motivated to be more like the people that you see on TV with their perfect bodies, I know that it’s not the most realistic thing in the world, so I’m not aiming for that, I’m aiming for self confidence and the ability to walk up to someone and not feel like they think less of me even if they don’t, I’m aiming for the ability to carry myself like I care about me and that’s really it.