On Avoidance and Accomplishment

While exercising today I found myself become more and more irate.
Nothing particularly frustrating had happened during the day, nor was I experiencing any discomfort, so it wasn't anything external.
I began to observe myself, watching this irritation and my own reaction. The more irate I became the harder I pushed my body, trying to force my mind to quiet down, to let the physical exhaustion take over, to find that sweet place where all thoughts and emotion are drowned out in a haze of exertion.
I saw a pattern emerging. I was pushing too hard, like so many other areas in my life, trying to make up for this unfulfillable void with effort and strain, reaching outwards to mend emptiness with immaterial things: accomplishments, control, progress -- all positive things, but sorely misplaced. Instead of things to be cherished they were thrown haphazardly into this bottomless pit. I was doing everything I could to avoid the source of this emptiness.
And in this struggle I was losing myself. In the strain for more things to do, to try to validate myself, I was becoming less and less aware of why it was there to begin with. I didn't know what I wanted, only what I didn't want, which was clarity. With clarity comes realization, comes responsibility, because then I would know why and I would make a choice to deal with it or not and not dealing with it was irresponsible so it was easier to just avoid the whole thing altogether, to cover it up with falsities, lurid goals disguised as good intent.
But it wasn't what I truly wanted, and those aspirations became less and less, my motivation waning as I pulled myself further from the truth. Eventually I didn't even know what it was I was avoiding, only that these feelings came and went and I was at an utter loss to control them. I could deal with them, in a way, pushing them down or aside, pushing my body to its limits to shut the brain down. And on the surface this appeared alright, because I was doing things. But they were useless, disconnected. And the core of the issue remained.
Of course it's not all bad, there is some virtue to this method, and for some it's a valid option to continue on this way, but for me it wasn't enough. I couldn't keep it up and the system spun out of control, tearing itself apart, leaving me stranded in its wake with only a haze, lost.
And in a way I suppose that was a blessing because I've been forced to discover other, way better ways of dealing with these things. I think one off the reasons cultivation works so well for me is because of its gentle nature -- I'm never forced to do anything I don't want, and the realizations come softly. If I choose irresponsibility, which is only temporary anyways, I am aware of the discomforts it brings, and when I grow weary of it I know the path to discover, to realize, to transform, and to heal.