It’s six in the morning, and my feet are pounding wet dark tarmac of Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow. It’s autumn and the sun is not up yet, but orange sodium lamps provide enough light to delineate the wet branches of the trees around me in grey and orange, and glint off the puddles on the path. The air feels cold and humid. I have slight headache, a pinched feeling behind my eyeballs. I had a bit too much wine last night at dinner. I’m living the expat life, and it’s cheaper for me to eat out with my colleagues and expense it than to cook for myself.

Working hard and playing hard has been my life for a couple of months, between working as a consultant in dull bank offices right outside the city and going out at night and drinking too much. Since it is my first job, I have no idea if this is normal or not, I just follow my senior colleagues assuming they know best.

We have recently moved into some nice flats next to Kelvingrove Park after staying at the Hilton for a few months, and being in a more accessible environment gives me the opportunity to start running again - albeit early in the morning. It is a slice of silence and alone time I didn’t know I needed. It’s also an opportunity to explore a city that is on the verge of waking up.

It’s a first iteration of a repeating pattern. Over the next 15 I’ll move a few times - Durham, Brussels, Berlin, London, Cambridge, Bath. I enjoy traveling, seeing new places, meeting different people. Perhaps the opportunity to reinvent myself draws me on, the ‘greener on the other side of the fence’ feeling, I don’t articulate it very well at the time. I just enjoy the novelty and the difference.

Every time I move or travel, running becomes a way to explore my new environment. I put my trainers on, and run for a while, choosing directions at random. I am probably lucky never to live anywhere very dangerous. I guess Glasgow might have been the riskiest place, if I had run at any other time - but I think at six AM the night life has gone to bed, and I am safe. It’s fun to look at houses and streets, and find new places, or connect bits of the mental map you had no idea touched each other. To turn a corner and the view opens up.

Again, running is also getting away, having the space to think through some stuff, to daydream or just to focus on the moment. Running as both exploration and escape - exercise, while useful, becomes almost secondary.