Tempest

I'm tired.

I'm sore.

This post is spur of the moment. I'm full of fucking emotions that need to come out. Let that be your warning this is a much more informal kind of most. A lot more... raw. Me.

Please, come in, take a load off, read me if you care.

I just spent an entire week averaging at 4 hours of sleep because the heat is really bad. A/C? What's that. I don't have that. It affected my work and my hobbies. I didn't do anything I wanted to do and all my work feels like crap.

I even considered not going out for a run. In this heat? After I nearly gave myself a heat stroke last week?

So I went out at 11 PM. Half-hearted at first. Nearly entirely carried by an old friend's UK Hardcore mix they'd thrown together lovingly all the way back in 2011. In fact, there are no ID3 tags on this file, it's just called 22/05/2011 Antoligy UK Hardcore Mix. I got this file from him and I never let go of it. It's an occasional listen and a bit of a time capsule from my IRC days. (if you read this one day, Antoligy, you're a real one and I never stopped thinking about you.)

The mix is 90 minutes long and it ends with the song above.

By and large, this is the most powerful of the baker's dozen of songs in that mix. It's not a classic track, if you consider anything made after 2004 to no longer be UKHC classics, and it wasn't made by the genre's royalty. It came out in 2009 (YT says April 29) and as far as I know, unless this is the stuff that gets passed around at every club in Birmingham and I never knew about it, the most exposure it had is on YouTube. A couple of uploads, each a few thousands of views, and the Slippery Disco - Topic video on the song. 955 views as of the time of posting.

I might have first heard this around 2011 or 2012 but this song means so much. I ran to it. I cried to it. I sing to it. Sometimes all three at once. Tonight it was running and - well, mouthing the lyrics, it's super hard to sing while peaking at 4.5 mph. But oh my god.

God. The runner's high that hearing those lyrics again gave me. Or, well, the music nerd's high while running. A good playlist is so central to my exercising that my performance now directly depends on two things: how tired I've been before I run and how good the music keeps pushing me.

As the mix progressed, everything looked like I'd stop before my usual two hours and 7-8 miles. Home was in view. I was walking already. Ready to call it quits. Then the song came on. And I decided to run past... just a few more minutes, let the song carry me. Extend that distance a bit.

I hit 7 miles and 90 minutes. Not my best performance. But. I carried on. I pushed on. I let that run feel like the most amazing thing in the world for a couple of minutes and that matters like you wouldn't believe.

I've said it before. But I'll say it again. It doesn't matter how refined or intellectual your tastes in music are — mine most certainly are NOT — but as far as I'm concerned, this is where I get mine.

I end up running in the middle of the night mouthing these lyrics, feet keeping up as best as they can with the BPM, feeling emotional like the dork that everyone says I am, because god but does it feel so good to just let GO for a while.

I think of many people when these lyrics come on.

My partner, hopefully future husband - though I already call him hubby. He lets me be me.
My other side. She lets me be me.
Friends and lovers, of course, but especially those significant people that I realize have just... elevated everything I believe in. Those who helped me build the things I care about. Those who have been supportive at my worst. They let me be me.

It's funny.

I used to be this lazy ass to whom the idea of running and getting sweaty was repulsive. So I did no physical activity. Then I got my first runner's high. I realized I could run to a lot of my favorite songs.

A year and a half ago, I was just starting out. I used to be 273.4 lbs, very exactly, when I started in March 2023. Today, I'm 190 lbs on the dot. Not counting the pasta I treated myself with tonight.

190! Holy shit. I'm 10 lbs away from the weight I wanted. It wasn't that long ago I called it a moonshot. My ideal.

In a year and a half of going through all kinds of emotions. I was still making progress. I was still beating this fucking weight problem that I've had since well before I was a teenager. And even what felt like the worst week in the history of bad weeks Sponsored By Heat Wave and You Got No A/C, I was still pulling 7 miles. To songs like these. Feet following the beat, lyrics in the ears, brain firing on all cylinders.

I've done pot (still do, edibles are fun), I've done LSD (not anymore), and I now do this.

I'm not gonna proselytize about substances, I think everything should be legal, but then again I think every adult being should be responsible, loving, and not a giant piece of shit.

But only one of these choices is directly, intrinsically linked to many other things that I love.
Music, whether Touhou or not. The people that mean something to me. My health.

Even Cohost, to an extent, is the only one I need, and especially lets me be me. This has become a part of my life, even if it isn't my whole life by a country mile and I am happy to have the opportunity to close this site and the only reason I come back is me myself and I. Sometimes you appreciate how good things are much better when you don't use them 24/7. I'd reason most things in life should be like that.

I'm gonna live forever.

But first I'm gonna pass out. Get some sleep.

See you next week, Cohost.

Bonus: I drew the world's most eldritch fucked up cat with my pathway.