Feeling alive

My body has this dull aching pain all over from muscle fatigue and improper sleep (I really shouldn't have gone to bed so late last night.) But I realized that I don't find this particular feeling uncomfortable... in fact it makes me feel more alive than ever. I associate this feeling with the idea that I have been working long and hard, I associate this pain with something that make me feel productive... therefore it makes me feel good to say that I have a dull ache all over my body.

At the same time, it's funny because it is probably the last summer that I'll be feeling this kind of dull ache consistently throughout - as I'll likely be behind a desk for the next few years of my life including in the summer time... or hunched over a computer. And then it will be necessary to induce this kind of feeling by jogging/going to the gym/ etc.

For some reason, I find this incredibly interesting. Usually people will shy away from most forms of physical pain - those that don't are generally labelled masochists and shunned as weirdos and outcasts. And usually people are right - pain is often a message that your nerves are sending to your brain that something bad is happening or something worse is about to happen that could cause severe bodily harm. And maybe the dull ache in a person's body after heavy exertion is a similar sort of warning message. But there's something about the associated feeling of having done something productive that just makes one feel good about oneself.

I juxtapose this particular ache and the associated thought processes with this past Monday when I was not able to go to work because there was no work... so I stayed home all day and played Starcraft and slept. My body felt more tired even though I didn't do anything... or perhaps precisely because I didn't do anything useful or active that day.

A strange contradiction... when you don't do anything, your mind goes sluggish - but when you put in a good days work and your body feels tired, you're mind feels much more alert than when you were lazy all day. Is this the body's way of telling me that I wasn't meant to sit around and be a couch potato all day? I suppose it's another reason to get out of bed and keep active other than the fact that lying in bed and playing computer games all day is just a seminal waste of my life.