Overfed, under pressure

Somewhere in the middle of a European history lesson, my seventh grade teacher pronounced, “the definition of insanity is repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.” I believe this quote is most often, but unreliably, credited to Albert Einstein, among other significant historical figures. The point is, I can’t tell you much about the Enlightenment, or the French Revolution, or the dates of anything really significant in European history for that matter, but this sentiment—the defining of insane behavior through consistent, repeated action—somehow lodged in my mind, permanently. And now, I’m actively living out that which I have been warned against, moving through each day in a repetitive cycle that aspires to a change that continually fails to materialize. I complete rigorous coursework to collect collegiate degrees in the liberal arts without benefit of employment, I email resumes and cover letters into a virtual abyss without positive response, and I exercise with a regimented, persistent, and absolutely ridiculous fervor without altering my body in any visually significant way. Still, I repeat, and, by definition, the cyclical consistency of these unfulfilled actions means that I am now, indeed, twenty-five years old and teetering at the edge of a particular form of insanity.

I haul my body from bed at 5am every morning, I put on something moderately spandexy in the dark of my room (apparently there is an unspoken fashion code at most modern exercise facilities), and shuffle the six blocks to the gym. I get on the treadmill and begin, running reliably for an hour four days a week, most mornings sprinting past five full miles in fifty minutes. But then, I wonder, what have I really accomplished? I’ve heard claims of a runner’s high, but I’m just flailing, it seems, and ungracefully so, towards an undefined finish line. All calories burned will be replenished, inevitably, when my cooking instructor for the day asks the class to taste test the blueberry and pumpkin pies simultaneously along with the almond tart and mushroom quiche. I put fork to plate, enjoying the culinary lesson but knowing full well that I’ll be right back here the next morning, pounding the proverbial pavement on a never ending rubber belt, and praying hard for gustatory relief.

Sometimes, I have enough energy to ponder something other than my asthmatic, labored breath as I exercise, and so I look to the left where the woman next to me seems to be jogging at the same cadence on her treadmill but with half the effort, and half the body weight bobbing along with each foot stroke too. The treadmill is a simultaneously genius and moronic invention—eureka! A means of sprinting forever without every running out of space. Or, a way to run forever without ever gaining any ground—a mad dash to nowhere. It’s too early in my day when, each morning, I begin to wonder if I’m running towards or away from something, and then if it even matters as long as the raspberry tart I’ll make in class later eventually slides off my thighs where the rest of the test-tasted baked goods have set up camp for the semester. Sometimes I realize I’ve been running with my mouth open like a Labrador retriever, and I slap it shut quickly, attempting to breath less audibly through my nose, and plow ahead, jogging straight at Bobby Flay who is stuffing ground-up sausage into a chicken on national television. I wonder what kind of minced meat I will stuff up the rump of another animal carcass in class today, and then consume it in the name of learning, and then get up too early the next morning to try to negate such gluttonous, carnivorous, calories by running mindless circles in a never ending loop.

Today I cycled twenty-five miles on the stationary bike during an insanely early Spin class. What sort of accomplishment is such a chunk of distanceless miles? “We’re nearly at the top of this long hill,” the Spin instructor says, and I’m huffing and puffing, sweating shamefully, and wishing so hard for the extra culinary class calories to evaporate that I’m actually willing to participate in this little scenery charade. “The next hill’s even bigger,” she belabors, “but we’ll make it, ladies!” Considering the bike I’m pedaling is bolted to the floor, I’m betting that indeed, yes, we will, but then again that’s not really the issue. The point is that I’m cycling pretty hard at a fictional trajectory—working fervently and going nowhere, and doing so on a daily basis.

Roughly two years ago I was hit by a car while biking to work. I struggled for months with what I can only describe as indistinct, posttraumatic insanity. By definition, if repeating the same action will conjure the same results, then it seemed that the only way to evade repeated disaster was to alter certain behaviors, even those that seemed insignificant. I curled my hair the morning of the crash, so I left it straight each morning after that. I had toast before I left on bike accident day; I started eating morning yogurt. I couldn’t reason on the ratio of toast filled days that hadn’t resulted in a near death collision, only the one, scary, day seemed to matter, and I would do whatever possible not to repeat it. So I replaced all of my insignificant morning rituals with altered actions. I got dressed in a different pattern, praying that my boyfriend at the time wouldn’t wake up to see me suiting up for work, sneakers first. Yes, I felt like an idiot standing in front of the closet mirror in a bra and underwear with tennis shoes already laced onto my feet, but I also remembered a specific day in which I’d put on clothes before socks and the results had been life shaking. Still, had I been caught, I would have been without reasonable explanation—how do you explain, rationally, to the person that you love, that if you put on your pants before your shoes, you’ll probably die?

Food and science are the exceptions to the insanity rule. Experiments are repeated again and again to prove that the results are consistent. This action of repetition with the expectation of sameness is considered sound, scientific practice. Yet, many times, the end results are distinct. One rat was miraculously cured of disease, but the next one kicked the bucket. The test must be repeated before any conclusive theories can be proposed. The same principle holds for cooking. I can repeat a recipe using the same ingredients, measurements, and methods, and still the second batch of risotto doesn’t match the first. I currently have two loaves of pumpkin bread stuffed into the freezer, both made with identical proportions, and in what I thought were identical environmental conditions. While neither is ideally the fluffy texture one might hope for in toast, the first loaf is merely a little extra dense while the other is collapsed so tightly onto itself that it more likely resembles a weapon of assault than breakfast bread. This constant inconsistency is why my actual recipes have become so few and far between on this blog—consecutive tests have proved distinctly inconclusive, and I lack the free time to continually retest.

I’m amazed by the contradiction of this dense bread—if insanity is repeating the same behavior and anticipating different results, then what is repeating the same behavior and expecting identical outcomes? Sound judgment seems like a reasonable answer given the equation at hand. So I’m adding the yeast, and kneading the dough furiously, and staring at two identical loaves that are rising at drastically different paces. Then I realize that I’m spending the majority of my single day off from work and school quite literally watching the varying fermentation rates of yeast. And I’m wishing so hard that the loaves will somehow, eventually, rise to my standards.

Illustration by Caitlin Sundby.