Once upon a Time...

When I look back on the course my life took as a teenager, it's amazing to think that I ever took up running, or writing for that matter (especially writing a blog).

In the case of running I'd always enjoyed sprinting through crowded places like malls, but I never had very much endurance.  This fact was driven home when I joined the "polar bears" in high school, which was a gym program where students ran progressively longer distances outdoors in progressively colder temperatures as fall turned into winter.  I think they topped out in the neighborhood of three or five miles.  For my part, I found just one mile to be a struggle.  I'd push for about a quarter mile, then have to take a long break, then try pushing again.  It was getting so that I wouldn't even be able to complete the class's mileage before we had to go back inside, so eventually I gave up and switched over to the weightlifting class, where I could go at my own pace and stay in relative warmth.  I remember lifting the entire rack on the squat machine in that class, which my young back fortunately survived.

Then there was the writing, which I had a couple of odd experiences with in middle school.  The first was when I took an admissions test for a specialized school and had to write an essay, which was something I'd never done formally in my life.  I had a vague notion that an essay was like a story, so in order to write mine---on the topic of the difference between intelligence and wisdom---I told a clumsy allegory that heavily ripped off a scene from The Princess Bride.  Needless to say, I did not get into that school.

Then a year or two later I took a summer writing course out in the wilds of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I'd done other courses through the program the two previous summers---in math and computer programming---and had a pretty good time both those years.  Math and computers have always come easily to me, and beyond that I fondly recall setting many a high score on the Star Wars pinball machine in the tiny mall across the road from the college campus where the program took place.  That year it was different though.  I thought I had gone there to write stories, but it turned out that they expected us to write nonfiction.  Nonfiction about our own lives.  I panicked.  What had I ever done that was interesting enough to write about?  I didn't know the first thing about structure, or choosing an event that represented a theme.  And there was so much reading we had to do...  After only a few days I couldn't take it anymore, and went to see my resident advisor about dropping out.  He said that I wouldn't be able to leave unless I was considered a suicide risk, so I went so far as to say that I was seriously thinking about killing myself.  He let me play Doom on his computer that evening while my parents were contacted.  They picked me up the next day, and took me to Action Park (which I've since learned was something of a death trap) to cheer me up.  I recovered, but I never did go back to that program again (though that may not have been my choice to make---my parents kept those kinds of details away from me back then).

Looking back on those experiences, the high school running I can live with, since that was long before I discovered how to breathe steadily and pace myself (which they didn't really give us much help with in the class).  Maybe I'd have been able to accomplish something in track and field on the academic circuit if I started running earlier in my life, but then again that could just be wishful thinking, and at any rate I'm really happy with where I am with it now.

The writing, though...  It bothered me then, and it still bothers me now.  Granted, it came at a time in my life when I was bullied relentlessly, to the point where I developed an instinctive fear of expressing myself.  Even so I wish I'd found a way to stick it out, especially given how dramatic the circumstances of my exit were.  I've learned the most in my life from the situations where I've gone out of my way to make myself uncomfortable---to shake up my routine and try new things.  But even that realization wouldn't come to me until many years later, so maybe I shouldn't be so hard on thirteen-year-old me.  There are only two things I know for sure.  The first is that there's nothing I miss about being that young, naive, selfish, and lost.  The second is that I now have events in my life worth writing about (and probably always did).

Regarding Arrogant Jerkiness

My wife wondered about that "arrogant jerk" comment I made about myself in the last entry I posted to my blog.  When she pressed me for an example of that happening, I couldn't come up with one.  Now I'm starting to wonder whether those perceptions were mostly based on me reading my past writing and thinking what an arrogant jerk the guy who wrote it must have been.  Granted, that persona was trapped in a world of his own mind most of the time, but it grates on me just to know that I used to think that way.  But maybe I didn't even think that way, and was just bad at expressing myself in words.  That certainly explains why I didn't (and still don't) talk too much, even though I don't consider myself to be a shy person.  I'm still trying to find my words.  I can pump out forty a minute now when I do my daily entries, and I've gotten better about just letting them flow instead of getting stuck on trying to find the perfect phrasing for everything.  I still write slower when I think I'm going to post something to the blog though.  I feel I have to be more careful if there's a chance that other people are going to read what I'm writing.  To a certain degree that makes sense, since I know how much grammatical gaffes and inarticulate phrasing bother me when I'm reading, and I wouldn't want to inflict that on anyone else if I could help it.  But it's still a form of self-censorship, and I have to be wary of that.

...And Doggone It, People LIKE Me!

I've been reading a book by Lawrence Block, Write for Your Life, which has had a lot of great advice so far that can be applied not just to writing, but also to a wide variety of other creative pursuits.  It's reintroduced me to the concept of affirmations.  You know what I'm talking about: writing positive statements out repeatedly, or reciting them to yourself in a mirror (calling to mind Al Franken's Stuart Smalley sketches from SNL back in the day).  It seems like a good idea that a lot of people could benefit from, but I haven't gotten around to really trying it myself.  Part of that is just not thinking about it when I have the time to try it, but I think there's also an element of concern in there.

As I look back across my life, I've found that when things go well for me long enough, and my confidence gets raised high enough, I tend to turn into somewhat of an arrogant jerk.  It's not that I mean to put other people down, but there's a point at which I stop paying enough attention to other people's feelings, and that inevitably sets me up for a fall.

So how do I deal with that?  Should I try to temper my feelings, and never become too confident in myself?  There's a part of me that fears affirmations could have a disastrous effect on my ego.  (And there's another part of me that thinks I'd look just plain silly talking to myself in front of a mirror, of course)  But is that the kind of thinking that's holding be back from being successful as a writer?  Should my affirmation be "Success with my writing will not make me a bad person"?  Or would it be arrogant to presume success at this point?  In some ways it feels like saying I'll remember the little people when I win the lottery.  Surely it can't be THAT random, though.  A big part of success comes from desire.  A lot of people aren't successful because they can't find the energy or the self confidence to commit to their goals strongly enough.  There's that "self confidence" thing again.

In a bizarre way, I see Martin Scorsese's movie The King of Comedy as an inspiration.  Sure it's about a madman who resorts to kidnapping in pursuing his dreams of show business success, and sure a lot of the scenes of Robert De Niro pushing himself on people are intensely uncomfortable.  But how many of us have the guts to be so self-assured that we can just walk right up to the people capable of fulfilling our dreams and ask that they do so?  Maybe the character's methods in the movie are highly suspect, but he's still doing more that most of us do.  It all comes down to reinforcing our beliefs enough to take risks, and maybe affirmations could help me and a great many of us to accomplish that.  We just need to be careful not to overreach.  You can't tell when you've gone over the line though until you reach it.  Maybe it's time to think more about just getting to that line in the first place.  Mirror, here I come!  I apologize in advance.

Another Year Over...

The year is almost over, and I suppose it's time to set resolutions again.  It's been a pretty good year for my writing.  I've gotten a ton of great feedback on my blog, and even if it's only read by a couple dozen people who click on my Facebook links to it, they're still people whose opinions I value a great deal, so it's been extremely encouraging.  I've probably done more writing this year than I have in any other one, and I'm hoping to break that record soon.

Looking ahead to resolutions, I want to resolve right here and now that I'm going to finally finish revising a novel for publication this year.  Granted, I've made that resolution before, but I'm doing it now on a (somewhat) public forum, which will give me more incentive not to look like an idiot by failing at it.  I've already gotten a few chapters under my belt, and there's no reason I can't go all the way through with it if I keep myself to a schedule.  Granted, there's always the doubt in my mind that the world doesn't need another book about vampires or vampire-like creatures, and that may well be true, but I really feel that I brought a unique voice to this one, and the feedback I've gotten from some not-easily-impressed friends has kept me determined to see this through.

I'm also going to resolve to run a 3:30 marathon in L.A. this year, although I'm only going to get one chance in that case, so I can't be to hard on myself if lousy weather, or an illness, or injury, or any number of other unexpected variables gets in my way.  There'll be other marathons eventually.  I'm at least going to stick to my training, even if it means doing a lot of long runs in the cold of winter (or boring myself half to death on the treadmill with them if the weather just becomes completely unworkable).

This has been a remarkable year for me, and I'm truly grateful for all the people in my life who made it that way.  I hope you all are heading into the new year ready to meet the challenges it brings, and that you find the determination and support you need to reach whatever goals matter to you the most!

The Unbearable Awkwardness of Being

Listening to Dan Harmon's Harmontown podcast today really got me thinking about the nature of creative minds, and how to care for them.  He was reading from the old journals he kept as a teenager on the show, and they had a certain pretention in them that he openly acknowledged, and which I immediately recognized from my own past writings, which I've often winced at (and still do with some of my recent stuff).  There was also a segment near the end where he was talking to a guy in the audience who'd deferred his creative dreams in order to pursue a more practical line of work, and again I saw echoes of my own life choices.

The most important advice Harmon had to give was to keep writing, and that you're probably going to write a whole ton of shitty words to get to the good ones.  That's advice I keep reminding myself about, and it's advice that I've tried to put into practice with my daily entries on 750 Words.  I've written nearly 150,000 words there so far, which is the equivalent of nearly three years of National Novel Writing Month.  Granted, the vast majority of what I've written there hasn't been fiction, but there's a certain level at which it's all just expository writing, and I feel that we could all stand to develop a solid narrative voice even when describing our own lives.  I think that voice is still a work in progress for me, and maybe it'll always be that, but I know that I'm not wincing now as much as I once did.

I've also noticed that creativity, my case included, often runs hand in hand with obsessive behavior.  Sometimes I can use this obsessive behavior for good, like when I apply it to running, or writing, or cleaning.  Other times it drags me down, like when I become obsessed with a video game, or checking social media for updates.  I can't always control where my obsessions head (especially when I'm feeling tired and/or depressed), but I think I'm finally starting to understand this behavior better.  I think it's what makes creative people so prone to addiction.  Thank god I haven't had to deal with that in my own life, but it's something I keep at the back of my mind.

I think having other people in my life to support me---especially my wife, whom I can never thank enough for that---has really helped me keep my obsessions on the positive side.  That's not to say I don't still slip up every now and then, but the cycles are shorter and less frequent now.  I even feel that I'm being more productive at work, although it helps to have a job where I finally feel like I'm part of a highly capable team on that front.

It's funny---I was always somewhat of a loner growing up.  I always thought I was better off on my own, and that other people didn't understand me well enough to be my friends.  I was focusing, though, on the things that I couldn't change (i.e. other people's reactions to me) instead of the things that I could (my behavior).  Granted, when I finally did learn how to be a fully functioning social creature, there was a lot of trial and error.  That's what often scared me off from it when I was younger---I was an incredibly easily embarrassed boy, and kids my own age could be especially cruel when dealing with my weirdness.  Through it all though, I always regretted the times I didn't try reaching out to people more than the times I did.  I even managed to get over my all-time most awkward moments eventually (though perhaps that may have something to do with the passage of time making them less vivid).

There was one particular event that haunted me for ages.  Tim Robbins went to the same high school as me, and while I was there he came in to give a speech at the auditorium.  There was a Q & A session afterwards, and I got it into my head that this was my big chance to ask a celebrity a question.  The only question I managed to come up with, however, when I raised my hand and the kid with the microphone came over, was whether the veteran actor/director had heard any good dirty jokes from Walter Matthau on the set of I.Q.  The response he gave was a polite demurral, which is probably what I would have done in the same situation, but good lord did it ever take me a long time to live that down---and nobody had even made fun of me for it!  Even that, though, is finally something I can look back on and... well maybe not laugh about yet, but I'm getting there.

So I Ran a 60K This Morning...

Today I ran my first ultra marathon: a 60K, which worked out to about 37.2 miles.  It was fun, then less fun, then excruciating, as endurance tests often are.  It's funny how quickly one can go from finding climbing hills uncomfortable, to finding descending hills uncomfortable, to finding walking uncomfortable, to finding standing uncomfortable, as happened to me during the final twelve miles.  The race was a 1.2-mile warmup followed by nine laps around Central Park.  The scenery got repetitive pretty quickly, which I've heard isn't the case with the better ultras out there, but knowing the terrain as well as I do certainly helped me pace myself better.  The whole course took me about six hours and twenty-three minutes, which I guess was pretty good for my first time (60K is such an unusual distance that there really aren't metrics for it).

When I was in my seventh lap I saw a guy pass me going backwards, which first made me think, "Jesus what a fucking showoff!"  After a bit of reflection, however, I realized that he was doing it to switch up which muscle groups he was using, so that he could wear them out more evenly.  I ended up adopting this tactic myself a little further down the course, and I found it to be quite a relief.

The weather was pretty nice---a bit cold, but quite sunny.  I ran the first seven laps with my backpack, where I'd stored the sweatshirt I wore to the race, the souvenir shirt I got that morning as a part of my race entry, and other various race-related odds and ends.  After seven laps of carting it around (it was fairly light), I finally stowed it near everyone else's backpacks at the start.  It was actually more to get people to stop saying, "Wow, you're going all that way with that heavy backpack?" than it was for actual ease of running.

At the end of the race I was given a very nice lucite plaque to commemorate my finish.  I promptly dropped it while trying to put it in my pocket, my coordination not being all that great after running more miles than I ever have in my life.  The damage was minimal though---I didn't even notice it until I got home.

Epilogue:

While riding the G train home from the race, I met a man that I feel very sorry for.  He was trying to get to Coney Island to visit his mother, and I had to explain to him that in order to do so he would have to switch to another G train at Bedford-Nostrand (it's running in two sections this weekend), then take that G train to Hoyt-Schermerhorn (which is where it's being cut off this weekend), then take an A train one stop to Jay Street (maybe on a different platform, maybe not; I didn't even know how the MTA was handling it), then go upstairs and take a shuttle bus (the limited shuttle bus, not the local one, which doesn't go far enough) to the F train at 18th Avenue, because that was the closest stop that the F was running to this weekend.  For those of you not familiar with these particular trains, the trip in question usually involves making ONE transfer, to a train that runs on the same track.  As if Coney Islanders hadn't suffered enough in recent weeks...

On top of all that, the man I was talking to---although he didn't appear to be much older than me---walked with a cane.  There's never a good story behind a situation like that.  I really hope he made it to his mother's house all right...

The Marathon That Wasn't

Today was supposed to be the day I ran my marathon, after 16 weeks and almost 600 miles of training.  I guess it wasn't as big a deal for me as it would've been for other people: it wasn't my first marathon, and it wouldn't have been my last.  I also didn't have to travel to get here, and it'd be just as easy for me to try again next year (I heard we're all getting automatic entry into next year's race after this, but that might involve paying the entry fee all over again).  I was hoping to improve on my last official time for the NYC Marathon by about an hour, bit it's not like all the gains I've made during my training are just going to disappear overnight.

There were some people thinking that we could just get the marathon postponed, but I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen---the money's already been spent, and the work's already been done.  At least it's good to know that NYRR is planning on donating all the water and supplies that would've been given to runners to people who could use it a lot more right now.

Instead of running 26.2 miles today I ran about 14 and a third, tracing the marathon route up to the Queensboro Bridge, then heading back along Third Avenue in Manhattan to make a loop.  I remember Bloomberg saying at one point that running the marathon would be a morale booster, a sign that New York City was back and open for business, like when they ran the marathon back in 2001 after the September 11th attacks.  Running the route today, it was pretty clear that we were NOT back.  Endless lines of cars on Bedford Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard were still waiting for gas.  If the marathon were happening those streets would have been closed off, and I have no idea where those cars would've had to go.

I did see a number of runners along the route wearing the long-sleeve marathon t-shirts that they were giving out at the marathon expo this weekend to people who'd registered.  One of them even had her race number pinned to it.  I smiled and gave them a thumbs-up.  Even though their plans were dashed they were still out there working at it.  Of course that got me to wondering whether all the energy we were spending on this running could be better used to help in the recovery efforts somewhere...