addicted?

i think, that as a grad student, it's almost inevitable you become addicted to something. even though i fear accusations of attempting to organize my world into neat and tidy binaries, i'm going to suggest that those addictions take one of two forms: healthy or unhealthy. it's really easy for a healthy addiction to slip into the realm of the unhealthy, or i suppose another way of thinking of it is that suddenly what you thought was an addiction that "wasn't so bad" can be revealed to be more bad than you supposed. i'm not sure if grad student addictions (GSAs -- the acronym looks and sounds like something that 'ideologue and wife-murderer' althusser would think up) in and of themselves have an inherent health or 'unhealth'. i think it's more along the lines of how one would answer a question such as: "does it help or hurt you?" i've got a few GSAs, which as a whole are pretty mundane, nay, even nerdy: coffee, obsessively checking my e-mail, eating french fries ... you get the idea -- anything that helps you cope. this summer, however, i developed a new addiction: racing.

following our crew's performance at henley, that infamous race of the 'row 'n barf' variety, i had the most amazing feeling of calm. in the build up to henley, many things in my non-rowing life came crashing down around my ears and there were times i was wondering if i was going to make it through it all. at the end of that first 1000m in the A4+, as our boat sat in the finish area, it was as though the world had readjusted itself and all of the tension, anxiety, dread and sadness that had plagued me for weeks suddenly left. it was cathartic. racing at the worlds had a similar effect, as did racing at rideau, and trent. it's been two weeks since we blazed through the finish line at HoT, and though i've tried to recreate that feeling that follows a race by going on long runs and attempting marathon erging sessions at the gym, i haven't come close. i want it though -- i really want that feeling again. isn't that what keeps addicts coming back? despite my lack of success, i may have found a solution.

once a week i get together with a friend and we erg at the campus gym. S didn't compete this year, though he did train over the summer and we've decided that this term, it will be our goal to get our erg splits as low as possible. one night, during some procrastinatory googling (another of my GSAs), i discovered the website for the national indoor erging championships which will be taking place in the atrium of the CBC building in TO in february of 2007. there is a category for masters women of my age and the winning split from last year is only around 5-6 seconds better than mine is at the moment. i've found myself another race. so with S's erging help (strangely, at the moment he is more convinced that i can do this than i am ...), i'm going to put in a semester's worth of gym time in hopes of answering the siren call of my new addiction. there's no telling if the catharsis will be the same on an erg as it is on the water, but there's only one way to find out.