I think I might be a terrible person.

Lately I’ve been running a lot – which is good. It’s a great way to stay in shape, clear your head, get outside, listen to some music… the list goes on.

But when I run, my mind doesn’t exactly clear. Instead, I tend to fixate on these tiny, little, insignificant things until they become the sole focus of all my brainpower. And not in a good way.

It’s like, if my sister texts me a picture of her new haircut and I don’t particularly like it, it’s kind of no big deal when I’m just going about my life. After all, why should I care what her hair looks like? She doesn’t even live in the same city as me, so it’s not like I have to look at it on a regular basis. But then, when I head out for a run and settle into my pace, I just become weirdly consumed by this furious hatred for what can only be described as a lop job on her head.

Or, another time, I was taking the metro into Rosslyn to meet up with a coworker and I was running late. Not the end of the world. But, when I arrived at the station, an obnoxious group of tourists got on the escalator just ahead of me and blocked anyone from getting past. At the time, I just resigned myself to the fact that I would be another minute or two late, and that was the end of it. I waited patiently on the escalator behind the mass of bodies and eventually made it to the top.

But, later that afternoon on my run, I couldn’t stop thinking about the fat tourists with their stupid white sneakers blocking my way on the escalator. It was like all this inner rage that I ignored at the time came bubbling up to the surface during exercise.

So, clearly, this is a pretty odd personality tic. I’m not sure if it means I’m some hateful, spiteful person who manages to bury those feelings under an outwardly sweet disposition, or if I’m a nice person who just gets weird flashes of anger when I’m running.

Maybe this really means I just hate running?