The Lonely Desk

At the far end of the subway platform at High Street sits what is perhaps the saddest desk in the world. It's inclosed in its own plexiglass case, with only room for a single chair and the desk itself, and it sits unadorned except for a monitor showing camera views of the subway platform, and an honest-to-goodness large paper log book in which the activity monitored is written down, with the handwriting changing occasionally (presumably as different shifts spend their time in this curious purgatory). about seven feet off the ground, the imprints of three bullets dent the plexiglass. One time I saw a 20-ounce bottle of Wild Cherry Pepsi on the desk, as if that beverage by its very essence could add color to the drab world into which it was thrust. The A and C trains scream by both sides of the little desk, each in their turn, and I can only hope that whoever is condemned to keep their watch in that place is at least adequately compensated for their sacrifice. I haven't seen anyone in there, mind you---or at least I haven't seen anyone recently. I imagine that it's the off hours when that cubicle serves its true function, monitoring a place that could potentially become quite dangerous in its desolation once the intimidating forces of crowds no longer stay the hand of whatever lowlifes attempt to engage in the dishonorable practice of subway crime. Are there heroes who inhabit that small space? Will history remember any of their names? I can't imagine anyone would take that position seeking glory, but then again many of the greatest heroes are the ones who don't see themselves as heroes, and are constantly seeking ways to do what they do better. I'm not even sure who runs that place---whether it falls under the jurisdiction of the police department or the MTA. Do they ever get visits from people who dwell in the tunnels beneath this vast city? I wonder if there are any books about such people... I've certainly spent a fair amount of time imagining what their existence may be like, and at this point I'm not sure whether the truth would help or hurt my creative vision.

Marathon Training: Week 9 (And the Writing it Eclipses)

Last night I started on Week 9 of my marathon training.  I've now run 300 miles over the course of 47 hours in the last two months.  It gives me pause to contemplate that.  Two whole days out of that time were spent running.  That's five percent of my waking life.  It's definitely shown results.  Last night I ran over six 8:20 miles and felt great; my miles were about a minute longer than that back when I started.  There was also the half marathon the other weekend, where I kept running faster and faster as it went along until I began to wonder whether I'd been holding back too much, and yet it was still the fastest pace I've officially run anything more than 5 miles at.

On the other hand I haven't been writing very much.  (Or at least I haven't been writing very much fiction---my daily writing has kept up fairly well, but it's been mostly journal stuff)  My piano and guitar playing has been pretty sparse too.  If I had those two days back, would I have devoted them to creative pursuits?  There's no guarantee of that, so I need to tell myself that the important thing is I used them for something productive.  No sense beating myself up when I've actually been accomplishing some of my goals.  The creative ones are always the hardest to satisfy, too, since I can't just hunker down and be creative whenever I feel like it.  If I made writing my job of course I'd devote more time to it, but I find that I need a large chunk of time to ease into a good rhythm.  With running I can accomplish a good day's progress in half an hour anywhere there's a road, but when I write I need at least a full hour, devoid of distractions.  Hopefully I'll get some good work done at the write-in this Thursday, but last time I found myself drawn into conversations too much.  Maybe I should go find a place off by myself if that happens again; it's nice to meet with friends, but if they're not being productive around me it's hard to do it myself.

One of the biggest boons to my running lately has been my discovery of the marvelous effects that wearing a compression shirt can have on cooling me down.  Sweating waterfalls in high humidity has always been a problem for me, and the new compression shirts I got just suck all that sweat right through them, where it runs right off their slick surfaces.  On top of that they also help me better feel the cool breeze that my running creates.  I almost never feel a long and/or hard run in my legs; it's always been the heat in my face and chest that's hit me first.  With that problem gone I think I've been able to shave at least good thirty seconds off my pace.

I wish that there were some similar tool that would help me crank out a couple more hundred words per hour.  Writing every day certainly helps, but there's nothing in the way of purchases that really has an effect on the level of the compression shirts.  NaNoWriMo is coming up again soon, and I don't think I'll have my novel revised before it starts.  I'll have to make my peace with that.  I just wish there was a realistic schedule I could get into and stick with; something similar to my marathon training program, except with words.  I guess I could always devise a schedule of my own, but I don't know what goals would be realistic.  I suppose it's hard to devise a universal system for this sort of process---writers are very different from each other in terms of how much they can produce and how consistently they can produce it.  Plus, I don't know how realistic it would be to lay two rigorous schedules on top of each other and stick to both of them.  I already spend little enough time with my wife between my running and her long hours at work, and I'd feel terrible about cutting into that time any more.  As it is the night seems to fly by once the cooking, cleaning, and eating of dinner starts.  Things should cool down once the marathon and NaNoWriMo are over, but should I really put it off for that long?  Won't other appointments and obligations start to creep in then and fill up my calendar?  I need to devise a more systematic approach, but for the time being it continues to elude me...

Marathon Training: Week 5

I've been spending so much of my time running lately that it's started taking over my thoughts.  I think about how I can go faster, hold out longer, chafe less, and ignore the intense heat that I feel whenever I'm out running in the humidity and sweating all over the place.  I hear the Pace Lady, as I've taken to calling her, in my head, telling me that my pace is at 11 minutes per mile, or seven and a half minutes per mile, constantly fluctuating as if to mock me, and still it's probably the most accurate running app I've used so far (including the watch I used to use with the foot attachment).

At least I'm pretty sure I can rely on my legs.  My upper body might be doing all kinds of crazy things with the sweating, and the heart racing, and the constant need for more air than it seems possible to glean from the air around me, but I've hardly felt anything at all that's worried me about my legs.  Occasionally my calves or my knees will make themselves known more than they should, but it hasn't really gotten to the point of what I'd call pain.  I think that could serve me well if I ever worked up the nerve to try an ultramarathon, but I'm not there yet.  I still haven't gotten through a regular marathon without hitting a point where my legs made themselves known quite vociferously, though I'm hoping that'll change if I can get my time down far enough under 4 hours.  My best so far is around 4:15, but last year was the first time I got really serious about sticking to an official training schedule, and the one I'm on this year is more intense than that one.  It's been working out pretty well: I'm on week 5, and I've actually been running more miles than I've been scheduled to.  It can be hard to fit the runs into my schedule sometimes, but the only time I've outright skipped one was last night when a thunderstorm was raging outside.  Even then I took the opportunity to get back to P90X and do some plyometrics.  I definitely felt that it my calves this morning, which I hope is for the better.

In three days I'm doing the second NYRR Long Training Run in Central Park.  I'm either going to go 16 or 20 miles, depending on how my legs are feeling.  I've gotten to 20 before, but I'm not even sure it's a good idea to be running that many miles so long before the marathon, when I haven't been running anywhere close to that distance yet, nor do I need to in order to ramp up to where I need to be.  I've got 11 weeks still, and a number of long races to run before then.  I actually feel bad that I've scheduled so many races, since it leaves only a few weekends when my wife and I are free to get out of the city for a couple of days.  Even when we do get away I'll still have to keep up with my runs, since my schedule has me running 6 or 7 days out of practically every week.

Running has also become a major part of my Tuesday nights now, since that's when I'm taking my running class.  Including the warm ups and cool downs, each class has racked up nearly 7 miles for me, and some of them are the most intense miles of my whole week.  I've done three classes so far, and two of them have had us running loops in the north end of the park, where the most punishing hills are.  I've run some of my fastest miles there, but I can't keep up that kind of pace, and by the third of the three laps I've been dropping back a pace group to keep myself from keeling over.  The other week the course took place along what are roughly the last three miles of the New York City marathon, which helped remind me what I'm in for in November.  There were two minute breaks between miles during the class, which helped my pace tremendously.  Lord knows I won't be running nearly as fast after I've put 23 miles behind me, but it still felt good to know that I can keep up with everybody else when the hills and the humidity are a little less intense than they were on the nights when we were in the north end of the park.  I'd have to say that, from my two experiences with the NYC marathon so far, the mile coming up to Central Park has to be the most dispiriting mile I've ever run, since it's uphill pretty much the whole way.  It's not even a steep uphill, but it's constant, and it comes at a time when most runners don't have a whole lot left to give.  I'm not looking forward to that mile this year, but hopefully I'll be better prepared for it than I've ever been before.

Wish I Was There...

I'm writing at the end of the day instead of the beginning today, since I ended up getting in here late this morning.  The reason for that was because I forgot to move my car last night, and as a result ended up having to spend a half hour driving around the neighborhood looking for a space.  I should really know better by now, but I suppose my memory will never be perfect.  It feels like the parking situation in Bed-Stuy has gotten noticeably worse every time I've forgotten to move my car the evening before.  Some streets are even lined with double-parked cars that are sitting around specifically in anticipation of the street cleaner coming through.  It's enough to make me want to give up my car entirely (or buy a space in the lot nearby, although I still balk at the notion of paying $200 per month for something that STILL isn't technically worth it in opportunity costs when compared with the gas I spent looking for a space and the time I wasted doing it).  Along the way there were a few near misses, and at one point I'd actually parked my car and gotten out of it before seeing the "NO STANDING" sign that somebody else had already parked in front of.

It's times like this when the density of New York starts to bother me.  I've said in the past that I don't think I'd be able to enjoy life in a small town, and I still believe that's true in the long run, but every so often I feel a desperate need to get away from here, and this is one of those times.  It's been a couple months now since I've left the city, actually---I feel like I'm overdue for a trip.  Going to visit my brother in California over the Labor Day weekend, and heading out to Iowa the weekend after that may help, but I can't commit to anything sooner, since I have NYRR runs scheduled for the two weekends before that.  I really wish I could take more than a long weekend's worth of days off, too, but I'm still working off all the time I took for my honeymoon, and I don't feel like getting myself in any deeper just yet (plus I'm going to need to take off a couple days around Christmas anyways).

There's also the notion of just taking some time to hang out at home, since it feels like one social responsibility or another has been tugging at me.  Then again, the prospect of staying at home might not be so appetizing once the contractors invade my apartment in the near future.

Plus, when you come right down to it, is being "away" necessarily even a relaxing, restorative experience?  In order to reach whatever haven you're heading for there's going to be a trip involved, be it by car or plane or train or whatever, with all the attendant stress those modes of transportation entail.  Worse still is the trip back, where the deadening grind of the commute steadily unravels what peace of mind you managed to gain from the trip.  Okay, so I'm being cynical here: not every trip is stressful.  In fact, some can be quite pleasant.  There's no way to be certain when you leave, however, what kind of travel experience you're going to have.  I'd be the last one to argue, though, that something shouldn't be done because you're uncertain of the outcome.  I guess I'm just arguing in circles now.

I'd love to get upstate sometime soon, before it gets cold.  There's so much more space up there, and the lousy cell coverage actively encourages me to cut the cord and engage with the world around me.  My family has a place up there, but I'm not sure that any of them have been to it yet this year.  The house was my grandfather's legacy, and now it would appear that his descendants are too busy to enjoy it the way he did.  It's an old barn that my grandfather converted into a two-story home by the sweat of his own labor, and I have many fond memories of making the trip up into the mountains, through the trees, to a place where there are blueberry bushes to pick in the daytime and millions of stars to gaze upon at night.  It's a quiet place: a place where drive-in movie theaters can still be found, and where being early to bed and early to rise can reward you with the sight of deer grazing in the fields.  There's even a baby grand piano up there...  It might need tuning, but it still plays well enough.  Plus, there are miles upon miles of potential runs to take, with hardly any traffic to worry about.  Maybe I'm romanticizing it too much after being away for a while, but I feel a powerful need to return there soon.  I may have to wait a month or two, but I desperately want to find a way to make it work somehow.

I Really Like to Think and Stuff

One of the nicest things about 750 Words is the list of my most commonly used words that it gives me at the bottom of my stats every day.  It's been very instructive to learn what terms I overuse, like "really", "like", "though", "think", and others.  It's helped me cut down on qualifiers, as I've seen certain offending words disappear over time.  We actually had a discussion about qualifiers in Writers Group this past Saturday, and it really made me think about how often I use them in my own writing.  For example, I often talk about how I "think" something is the case, even when I don't have any strong doubts about it.  I'm not entirely sure how I use "like" the most---whether it's through similes, giving examples, or talking about preferences.  Maybe it's a combination of the three.  I know that I don't use it as an interjection in print, because lord knows how irritating that would get.  At any rate it's a weak word, and I should cut down on it.  Of course the point of these entries isn't to write perfectly, it's just to write.  I shouldn't stop myself for word choice during NaNo, since the whole point of it is to quickly produce a rough draft that I can then revise with better word choices (and possibly better plot and character choices, depending on how seriously I go off track).  If I don't catch myself now though, I'll never be able to hone my instincts to make the correct choices sooner.  After all, I don't always have the time to proofread what I write, and I'd like to know that there's a good possibility that I got things right the first time.

One particularly troublesome word I've been trying to strike from my commonly used list is "thing".  It's one of the most vague nouns in the world, and as a result it suggests itself all the time.  Often there's a better word waiting right around the corner if I give it an extra moment's thought, but sometimes I'm dealing with a category so broad that I'd need to completely redefine my argument in order to bring a more specific term to the surface, and I'm not always prepared to do that.

Something else I've noticed in the statistics of my daily entries is that I'm a lot more introspective on the days when I'm thinking of posting my entry to my blog.  I don't talk about my recent activities as much, and I try not to be as judgmental of others, which often leads to me not talking about others at all.  Does that really make an entry more worthy of being shared with other people?  I mean, I'm not naive: I know that there can be real, damaging consequences to the wrong person reading an opinion that I should have just kept to myself in the first place, and I don't want to overstep the bounds of my confidentiality agreement when I talk about my job.  There's a layer of self consciousness to it too though, and I need to try and peel that back as much as I can.  Not that I have any obligations to anybody, but there are a lot of parts of my life that could benefit from me being more open and honest (as long as I choose my words carefully, at least).

A Quick Run through My Mind

I want to attack a piano right about now, but I'm still at work so I guess I'll just have to get my percussive urge out in another daily entry.  I was actually feeling somewhat listless and unmotivated earlier this afternoon, but then I had a cup of coffee (MEDIUM strength coffee at that), and now I'm bursting at the seams.  I want to create something.  Something spontaneous and awkward and raw and possibly terrible but then again maybe not.  It's like it's there inside of me, bouncing around, not yet fully formed but itching to get out like some kind of horrific demon fetus.  I want to run up and down the rows of cubicles, I want to parkour up the walls and lounge in the little window up by the high ceilings.  I want to do half a dozen things that would probably result in me breaking multiple bones, but I can't do any of them right now so I just need to keep furiously typing away at my laptop.  There's work to be done, and I'll get back to it, but I need my primal moment right now, even if I can't express it with my whole body.  It's the reason I snap my fingers and clap my hands as I go down the hallways.  I'm not sure how many people notice that, but it's an impulse too strong for me to contain.  The fact that it comes out so spastically is part of the reason I've never been able to play an instrument consistently.  My brain's always bouncing from one thing to another, and sometimes it's all I can do to focus for even a minute.  When it's something like writing where I have the luxury of starting and stopping and giving the thoughts time to resolve themselves it usually works well enough, but it's always much harder for me to do that in the moment.  I guess it makes sense, then, that running is my sport of choice: it's built on enough ingrained reflex that I can just keep putting one foot in front of the other while letting my brain take it's occasional wanderings.  I've run far enough in my life that I'm not going to just trip the second I think of something else.  Wait, no, that's not it.  It's more like running is such a physically demanding activity that my brain doesn't have enough oxygen to focus on anything other than making sure I have enough oxygen and don't bump into the people around me.  I actually CAN exhaust myself, instead of having to hold it all in and wait for another time to let loose.  I guess I could theoretically leave the office for a few minutes and run around for a bit outside when I get to feeling like this, but I'd end up coming back drenched in sweat, which would be awkward for a number of reasons.  Maybe it's the city.  Maybe it's the nonstop pace of New York that hooks me like a drug until I have to keep moving constantly or go insane (or both).  Maybe I need more sleep.  For the first time in many days I didn't feel tired when I woke up this morning, but I could still be paying the price from days past.  I have to wake up early tomorrow for a race, so things might not improve soon on that front.  Racing in the heat of summer can be awfully frustrating, since I never run as fast as I do in the cooler weather because I'm inevitably drenched and stifled by the humidity about a mile in.  Even the air feels harder to breathe, like it's too thick to fit into my lungs.  Still, I have to keep in mind that the heat's slowing everybody else down too, so it's not like I'm going to place lower in the rankings (not that I'm anywhere near good enough to actually win anything yet).  Nonetheless it's discouraging to see people passing me left and right and not feel like I can push myself any harder.  Sometimes I envy my wife's almost nonexistent sweating, but on the other hand she also is a lot more susceptible to hot and cold, to a degree that I wouldn't wish on anyone (especially her).  I have to remind myself that I'm still getting faster, slowly but surely, and I just need to keep at it and stay disciplined.  If I had that kind of discipline with playing music I'd probably be a lot better at it by now.  At least with my writing I can do things like this, which is essentially just keeping my head down and pushing until I hit the finish line.

The More Things Change...

Today at work I went to a "speed networking" event, where a bunch of us formed into two lines and then had two minutes to introduce ourselves to each other before moving down to the next person.  It was kind of chaotic, but it was a nice way to get to know a few more people there.  Granted, there are still hundreds of other people in that office alone that I haven't met and may never meet, but it's always good to have a few more familiar faces out there.  Even having the chance to practice my small talk was nice.  It's the kind of event that I'd never have been able to force myself to go to ten years ago, but I feel like I've changed dramatically since then.

I have NaNoWriMo to thank for that mostly, I think.  I'd known nerds before I did NaNo, but I'd never known a group of such GREGARIOUS nerds before.  I was used to folks who were mostly quiet and kept to themselves; the type of guys (and they were almost always guys) who, even when they talked, were almost inaudible.  Now I have more female friends than I ever had before in my life, and even if a crowd is still not my favorite place to be I'm at least up for diving into one for a while.  In fact, my social calendar's gotten to the point that I'm starting to miss my old solitary stretches a bit.  But then when I finally do get some time to myself I usually grow lonely surprisingly quickly unless I have a task to keep myself focused on.  My video games are gathering dust, and it seems that the more I read and write, the more those hackneyed plots suffer by comparison.

The downside of not having those quiet times is that I feel like I'm not creating enough.  I mean, I'm writing these blog entries, and the daily entries beyond them, but I'm not really telling stories or making music of my own.  Not that the world doesn't have enough stories or music, but I still feel like I have something to say that's unique to me.  Otherwise I'd be more than happy to just consume the great works of the world and just be a programmer for the rest of my life.  But every so often I'll get a song stuck in my head, and know that I can't pull it up on iTunes because it's never been written or performed.  Or I'll get an idea for a character or a plot in my head, and I desperately don't want it to die there.  I think that's what I fear the most about death: dying with ideas in my head that I'll never be able to share with anybody.  Now maybe nobody'll be interested in hearing at least some of those ideas, but there has to be something worthwhile in that great clattering heap of thoughts that keeps me up at night and taunts me when I'm least able to write things down.  I've gotten some good feedback on some of the stuff I've written, and I'd like to go further with it.

I'm definitely planning on getting back to revising my novel this weekend.  The longer I spend on it, the easier it'll be to keep going, so I want to really plug away at it when I get the chance.  I'm looking at a big stretch of Sunday afternoon in particular that should be able to get me off to a good start.  I've taken a few passes before, but the only time I've had the momentum to go all the way through it was when I was getting my revised sections critiqued by friends.  The story still needed another draft at that point, but the fact that I committed myself to a series of deadlines really helped me stay motivated.  Maybe I should set a schedule for my revising, but I don't know what kind of pace would be realistic for me to meet without falling behind and getting discouraged.  That's even more of a question mark because I'm about to officially start my marathon training next week.  Now THERE'S something that has a set schedule I need to stick to.  But then again running is something that's much easier to break down into discrete units of achievement, since there isn't any creativity involved.  There's a psychological aspect to it, but it's not on the same level as creating a whole world and making sure that everything in it fits organically.  That's no excuse though.  If I'm going to get this revising done, a schedule is the only way I know to make it work.  Now I just need to find the time to create one...