Today I wanted to crush the world. I wanted to imagine everything that bothered me for the last forty-eight hours, and pulverize it underneath feet running at 6:30 min/miles.

If I were to define a central tenet of my own ethos, it would be an unwavering devotion to work; Incomplete never became part of my vocabulary. I either did something, or I didn't. I can't conceive of doing something any less than 100%.

Yet last night, at 8:30PM, after rising before dawn to avoid rush hour traffic for a hearing in District Court, (for work), I realized how exhausted I was. I had been up over 15 hours, run 8 miles, and done homework. It was quarter to nine. I decided to just stop where I was, and go to bed.

Baby's don't sleep this well.

Yet when I woke up, I realized my books were where I left them, my briefs weren't done, my backpack wasn't packed, and I could have slept even longer.

The compound stress fracture of life, work, academics, and running command sleep. I don't believe people when they tell me they function at their peak performance on no more than 5 hours of sleep per night. It's unhealthy, and it's wrong. Period.

So after my inadequacy of human persistence was realized, and my to-do list grew, and my BlackBerry kept buzzing, I decided to say F-it. The world won't implode in my absence.

So I leapt off my front porch, running out of anger. And not stopping until I finished a six mile loop of concrete, broken tricycles, and shrubbery.

I evaded a young girl on a bicycle by jumping into a bush; I saw things that made me depressed, and I ran harder; I saw the inadequacy of human compassion, and I suffered greater. I simply ran, as hard as I could, until I knew it was gone.

Some days, I just want to punish the world. So instead, I punish myself.