By Jonathan Rivett
BENIGN TO FIVE
Once, during a difficult day at work, I decided to go for a jog at lunch. I was working in the Melbourne CBD at the time and thought a 15-minute trot along the river might relieve me of my Tuesday-morning burden. But upon reaching the Botanic Gardens, I could still feel my anxieties pressing down on me. So I kept going.
Jog on, my friends, jog on.Credit: Michael Probst
I ended up in Warrandyte.
It's a riverside country-town-cum-suburb some 30 kilometres from the city. I'd been running along the banks of the Yarra for seven hours. Running from a darkness. From a spectre. From a shadow-truth that I refused to confront: I didn't want to proofread the Annual Report.
What I learned is that, so long as you aren't particularly attached to the skin on the underside of your feet, impromptu marathons are a very fine idea indeed. My lunchtime activity took my mind off my burden and, when I returned to work from hospital three weeks later, I was as fresh as a severely glycogen-depleted daisy.
I now know that when you take routine lunchtime activities and turn it into something grand and heroic, the rejuvenative benefits are potentially limitless.
Deadlift 350 kilograms at the gym. Read a book in the lunchroom, but make it erotic fiction and read the rudest parts out loud. Demand that the ducks feed you by the lake. Do anything you normally would but in a way you wouldn't normally do it.
Today, when someone asks me how they can overcome workplace stress I give them this earnest advice: jog on.
Jonathan Rivett still has shin splints. He blogs at haught.com.au and is a freelance writer for theinkbureau.com.au.