#188: Irish treadmills

I know you're laughing, unless you run on one!  In Boise, my gym has treadmills that have TV's on them.  However, the television is exactly-I mean exactly-at eye level.  Which means that if you do not want to watch TV, you are pretty much, well, too bad.  You are relegated to watching the television frame bounce in sync with your steps.

Here's what the treadmills at NUI Galway look like, and since I am doing speed work on them, I very much appreciate being able to look out the window instead of watching TV!

First, it has a very cool screen. Which is BELOW eye level!

Here's the eye level view. I can see way more when I'm running than this picture shows.

#181: To be known

I went to lunch today at the cafeteria where we go every day here at NUI, the same one I went to every school day last summer as well.  When I got to the register, the woman behind the counter smiled broadly and greeted me heartily, "You're back!  How are you!  You were here last summer, right?"

I was delighted!  I recognized her immediately but never dreamed she would not only recognize me but remember exactly who I was.  Even eleven hours later, the little girl inside of me that wanted so desperately for someone to notice me is still doing a happy dance.  I asked her if it was okay to put her in my blog and she agreed!

All my life I have been convinced that as soon as I was out of anyone's line of sight, I was forgotten.  Though this attitude seemed to protect me from some hurts when I was little, it is not, on the whole, a good way to live.  It sprouted some...unhelpful...behaviors over time.  Among them are a compulsion to remind people I'm still around (even if they just left my sight 20-30 minutes before), a pretty substantial craving for attention.

As I have learned to let go of this fear and accept that people may not ever remember me again after they leave my presence, I am finding that this isn't true at all a lot of the time.  I keep being surprised that people remember who I am!  At silent disco last night I ran into someone in the 3rd year of our program who gave me a hug, though we didn't talk much last year.  An instructor from a different cohort who was also here last year told me, "I know you're Joy," after I introduced myself to her yesterday.

So thank you, Niamh (pronounced Neeve), for fulfilling in me today a most fundamental need: to be known.