On Training and Discipline

Image courtesy of Dirty Girl Facebook

In 19 days I will join the exhausted, muddied ranks of women participating in the Dirty Girl mud run.  It's a 5k obstacle course, involving mud pits and climbing walls and any number of unexpected booby traps, and it's also not the kind of event that my 15 yr old self would ever have imagined that I would willingly sign up to complete.

Five years ago (!) I entered my first ever "sporty event".  Having been a dedicated non-athlete for my entire life, I, being of sound mind and body, actually chose to sign up for a sprint triathlon (500 yard swim, 6 mile bike, and 2 mile run).  After my initial panic attack, I settled into the daily workout routine created for me by my personal trainer-slash-awesome husband.  I won't bore you with the details, but ultimately I learned how to train in timed intervals, increasing the amount of time on my feet while simultaneously gaining in speed on days with a shorter run.  It was methodical and soothing, and difficult enough to keep me at my edge.  It was also unlike any form of discipline I had ever known.

Having spent my entire adolescence holed up in various dark corners in pursuit of becoming an author, I am hardwired for working at a frenetic and haphazard pace.  Days of down time followed by all-night writing binges, hours filled with plot structure and verse and character development that end abruptly, until ready to strike again, are a natural part of my DNA.  I spent all of my college, and the majority of my post-graduate, years pushing up against deadlines, working until the wee hours to get a project completed on time.  It was always a bit of an adrenaline rush piled onto a creative high.  Like drinking red bulls and vodka (am I dating myself here?) on top of multiple double macchiatos.

Apparently, you can't work that way when it comes to performing amazing feats of physical prowess.  I'm not teaching you anything new when I tell you that the body needs to build muscle slowly, one tiny fiber at a time.  Gaining strength, like staying healthy, is all about the process and not so much the product. 

For three and a half months I slugged through my training schedule, unaccustomed to the prolonged accumulation of endurance and control.  (Mostly I listened to Haruki Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running" on my iPod.  No joke.  Best running book, ever.)  Although I understood that I was accomplishing something, I didn't really understand the magnitude of this type of training until the week of my event.  Two days before the triathlon, I was ordered to go to yoga.  The day before, I was to do nothing (nothing!) and be off of my feet by 4 p.m.  Looking at the schedule in advance, I certainly had no complaints.

Except, I was a wreck.  Edgy and restless, I kept asking what else I needed to do to prepare.  I knew I couldn't just sit there and let all that perfectly good time go to waste.  I had to cram! 

Nothing could take away the uneasy feeling of not being ready.  (Although, being forced to lay on the couch with a magazine while my sweetie cooked me an unnecessarily carb-heavy meal was a great start.)  And nothing could prepare me for how it felt the next morning when I dove into the freezing Pacific Ocean at 7 a.m.  My body was completely ready.  I was completely ready.

It's a lesson that I vowed to take with me into the future.  I promised myself from that point on, I would approach my writing, my creative projects, and my life as an endurance sport.  No more last minute cram sessions, or acceptable bouts of non-activity.  I was going to learn the basic act of daily maintenance.

Of course, one loses a bit of that bright-eyed veneer after five years.  The edge has gone, along with the majority of my "free" time.  After recognizing that my power drive seems to have settled into a bit of a cruise, I've decided another event is in order to restore that urge. 

This time, when I run, I think about a comment spoken to me by one of the senior writing teachers in my graduate program.  We were meeting during office hours, and she was critiquing my work.  Almost as an aside, clearly without much intent, she gave me the best piece of advice I learned from the entire two years of study:

"It's clear that you have an innate sense of language.  You never seem like you have to try very hard to make it work.  Which is a large part of the problem.  You don't have any discipline in your writing."

True, but I'm in training.

everything I own in a paper bag

Paper is the most fascinating medium.  It can be so pliable, so malleable to the touch, and yet, so fragile to manipulate.  I imagine it takes a great deal of patience and calm to create these amazing structures created by Alexandra Zaharova & Ilya Plotnikov (hat, b&w dresses, bottom) and Matthew Brodie (technicolor piece, top).  I also imagine it takes a great deal of time.

I'm pinning these images on my wall today to remind myself that a creative project is only as good as the time invested in its cultivation.  Every few minutes applied towards even a fragment of that project means something.  Sometimes a cut, no matter how small, makes the entire piece fit together.  That goes for poems, stories, paintings, sewing projects, and sourdough starters, as well.

MIssed Connections

Everyone has something they thought they would be by this stage in their lives, and I'm guessing a great many of those people aren't quite there yet.  Any number of (best-selling) inspirational, motivational, or self-help guides will try to instill in you the importance of recognizing what you really want and changing the course of your life in order to get back on that original track.  And I do support this kind of thinking to a certain extent.  However, my issue with these messages is the belief that one should make definite and goal-oriented decisions regarding one's entire life journey.  (And believe me, I work much better under specific goals and deadlines, so I understand the allure of a definite and goal-oriented path!)  It's just hard to understand sometimes how we're supposed to pick which one of the available life tracks we should actually take.  

There are so many.  On any given day, there are a billion lives I wish I was leading.  More often than not, those lives intersect and run course along with the one I'm currently cultivating.  Yet, there is always an additional fantasy.  There will always be adjustments, and mistakes, and missteps, and unexpected surprises.  There will always be the opportunity to discover, and the chance of complete failure.  Choosing one particular path, one deep set goal, means losing out on the potential for growth, experience, laughter, engagement, or disappointment.  Does that seem a bit too shallow?  I don't mean that I wish I could do it all, without ever having to make a commitment.  There are so many choices I have made, so many definitive paths that I have chosen above all others, that define me.  These choices make up the foundation for the life I live, and bring me the greatest pleasure I could ever seek.  

No, I'm not talking about a lack of commitment.  Mostly, I'm talking about looking at the picture as a living whole.  Determining which direction you are headed, and aiming to reach there when you can.  It's a lot like parenting.  We don't get to choose the personality of the little ones that enter our lives, but we do get to help them wade their way through the world.  Sometimes this looks easy, and sometimes it is.  Usually, it is messy, and disorganized, and covered in a kind of beautiful chaos.  I'm hoping that in the long run, it's the chaos that I'll look back on as means of understanding how I was able to make it where I needed to go.

Harold and the Purple Crayon has been in heavy rotation around these parts, and I must admit that I'm pretty excited about this new development.  Obj. #4 has been tearing through the paper bin, scribbling purposefully across a page, and then throwing it behind her on the floor as she dives into the pile for her next blank canvas.  By the end of a session, she's sitting in the middle of a volcano of color, most of it having settled in on her forehead, chin, and eyebrows.  

There's so much joy in the act, so much development inherent in the process, that I started reading up on the cognitive and emotional benefits of drawing.  There are so many!  Physically, socially, intellectually.  Along the way, I stumbled upon this little gem, "preschoolers draw what they know about the world, rather than attempting to capture a photographic mirror of reality. That is why we see drawings depicting both the outside and inside of an object at the same time (transparencies or x-rays)."  This phrase strikes a chord deep within me, and it makes me realize that really, we are all just preschoolers at heart.  Drawing our way through this world, projecting little microcosms of reality that are reflections of what we know to be true.  Sometimes, our truths accurately mirror reality.  But more often than not, we're just a bit off.  We overlap the inner bits of our own peculiar beings with the outside world, which itself is a mish-mosh of a billion other unique perspectives.  Every one of them packing as much vital information, intellect, release, relief, joy, hurt, and curiosity as one can possibly hold.