Rejuvenated.

It's official.  I'm back to writing my blog.  This time it isn't for school though; it's for myself.  Writing has always been a hobby of mine and recently I've been feeling like something has been missing in my life.  It became clear one evening in a Panera Bread that the only way to fill this missing gap was to start writing again...so here I am at 1 a.m. writing my blog instead of writing my Spanish essay like I should be doing...what can I say?  I've been inspired.
(Work needs to be done on the formatting but I'm more concerned with writing at this time of day.)
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I've been having one of those stressful days, you know, the ones where you're so stressed out that you can't get yourself to do your homework and just stress yourself out more because you're falling even farther behind.  It all started when the monsoon hit Champaign earlier this afternoon, wiping away the 75 degree temperatures that were short-lived.  I was so stressed out today that I felt sick after eating a light dinner of broccoli and mac and cheese.  I sat down at my desk after coming back from dinner just to struggle through writing a paragraph of a Spanish essay and was about ready to call it a night when I realized there was still a chance the day could be saved.


Running.  It's my passion, it's my life, and it's my go-to activity to relieve stress.  So at 10:30 I decided to trek over to the ARC (our school's workout facility) to run.  When I entered the ARC, I was so surprised at how many people were working out so late and how happy the atmosphere was.  What did they know that I didn't?  I would soon find out that I was in for more than a work-out, but also a valuable lesson.  I found a treadmill on the first floor of the ARC and just started to run.  5 miles later I was done, and feeling much better about myself.  I had burned almost 500 calories on my run, what wasn't there to be happy about?


However, looking around at the people around me, I realized that many of the people who go to the ARC at 10:30 at night aren't going to burn calories, they're going to burn stress.  They go to melt the stress away.  As gross as it is I thought about sweat and how it was like the stress being melted out of my system.  People go to work-out late at night because it's therapeutic, and as college students, they need a chance to get away from all of the homework and other time consuming activities.  


Maybe this is why the ARC is such a happy place.  It's a place to leave all of your stress and forget about everything that's going on in your life temporarily.  Oh and the endorphins aren't that bad either :P