Alright, so I decided on my next 30 day habit and it’s going to be writing at least one post on this here website. I’ve tried multiple times to get this rolling on a daily basis and failed. What makes me think that this time will be different is the success of this little 30 day habit thing that I started in mid-January.
In january, I read a blog posting on Tim Ferriss’ website talking about another blogger who had a simple way to add productive habits to his life. After reading it, I decided that I wanted to be healthier and running would be a good option. The initial goal was simple: run at least 10 minutes a day, everyday. When I told people about it, most thought that was too easy and I wouldn’t see any advances. They were right about it being easy, that was the point, to make the goal manageable. At first, the dilemma was getting to the gym, once there I would usually push to 15 to 20 minutes, but there were times when I thought of skipping it and heading home. What kept me on track? Mant times it was the negotiation in ny head that 10 minutes was nothing, little over a mile and that if I did it the wine or beer I had later would taste that much better. Often, these days were my best runs. Now, maybe my experience is different, as I took to running and started running longer distances. The 10 minutes became 10K and eventually,over time a half marathon. The two things that kept me moving were not wanting to break the streak and the attainable goal of only 10 minutes. With this as my routine, I have gone from 204lbs to 180lbs in about 12 weeks. Running is now a happy part of my daily routine, like taking a shower or brushing my teeth. And that’s the key; it is now a habit, something that arrives naturally during the day. I find time for it, enjoy it and welcome its inclusion in the day.
Hot off the heels of that success, I decided that writing would be the next thing that I wanted to include in my life. With a couple of co-workers, I am reading The Artist Way, a book that helps one release their creativity. One of the activities is the book is to write three pages of thoughts, notes or whatever first thing in the morning, everyday. This aligned with exactly the same time that I was thinking about starting a new habit. Or what the book calls syncronocity. It was easy for me to jump in, I would usually write whatever came into my head while on the subway, commuting to work everyday. Sure it looks a bit silly writing in a journal on a train,but I am used to it now and love it. The writing is a great exercise in free thought, scrambling down whatever comes to mind. Its a great way to air out things that are aggravating and just flow. Now, I want to step it up a notch. Looking for this next habit to kick into high gear the formal writing that I used to love. The idea will be to post at least one original, creative story a day. Video, quick links and two sentence blurbs don’t count. The story should have some beneficial aspect. Besides that, I am free to write. Excited to add this to my list of habits, the 30 days begins now…
At this point, I pretty much have a 10K on lock down. Running at a decent clip, this is now my norm for a weekend run, which is cool but I want to step up the pace a bit. What I love about running is that you can take it a couple of ways: 1) run further or 2) run faster. Right now, my body can barely handle getting to the half marathon mark and I am thinking that maybe its time to step up the pace rather than coninuing the longest run steez that I have been working with for the past few months. That is the beauty of running, there are always ways to improve, always new goals to conquer. You can never master running. There is no high score or ultimate distance that you can run. Someone (maybe even you) can go out there the next day and beat it. It’s a beautiful struggle, an enduring battle within yourself to see how far you can go.
Today was a rather shabby 10K, my stomach ached and my time wasn’t anything to be proud of. But it is the strength that I gain from plodding through the crappy runs that will eventually lead me to a new best time. Even after the worst of runs, the sense of accomplishment is gratifying and the yearning to push harder grows.
Clay’s Shirkey’s blog post “Newspapers and Thinking the Unthinkable” was linked to by a few different people I follow on Twitter, so I was compelled to give it a go and check out what he was saying. The piece is probably the most thoughtful and put together assessment of what went wrong with the newspaper industry during the internet revolution. He argues that they did see the coming change come, but attempted tired models that would continue to the old thinking and that new ideas were shunned. Its a great read on the revolution that we are in right now. Here is an excerpt:
And so it is today. When someone demands to know how we are going to replace newspapers, they are really demanding to be told that we are not living through a revolution. They are demanding to be told that old systems won’t break before new systems are in place. They are demanding to be told that ancient social bargains aren’t in peril, that core institutions will be spared, that new methods of spreading information will improve previous practice rather than upending it. They are demanding to be lied to.
There are fewer and fewer people who can convincingly tell such a lie.
This week, along with a few co-workers, I have embarked on the challenge of reading and following the activities in the seminal book “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron. The intentions for all of us are to open up our creative spirits and allow ourselves to discover aspects of us that we did not realize exist.
Our first meeting took place in the training room on the 4th floor, we talked about the basics of the book, how it can be difficult to stay with it and how parts of your life will change because of doing it. I will not divulge much else we talked about, as we decided it was best to keep it in the circle of trust that we created. My hopes are that the creative energy realized in the course we are doing will help spark this website and I can make it a thoughtful and creative place to post my thoughts.
The first action in the book, after all the basics are layed out about how we are in fact all artists, we just need to allow it come be present, is to create a morning pages. The morning pages is a notebook intended to be a stream of conciousness activity conducted each morning, right when you wake up. Three pages of hand-written notes, on whatever the fuck comes to mind, is to be completed before anything else, every day. I must say, I started doing the morning pages about a week ago and it has added a sense of clarity to the day. Getting out some of the emotions, some of the crap that lingers in the back of your mind has lead to days where I want to write at the end, where I feel like doing more and creating more. I am only at the beginning stages of this, so let’s see if there is a “dark” period, but right now, I am pumped to see where this activity takes me.
Will keep the website posted on my progress and hopefully will see a difference in the amount and quality that I write on here. The experiment begins…now.
The New York Daily News is reporting some great news: the amazing Spanish lessons taught by Professor Jose Reyes between inninngs will return this season. They took a one-year hiatus last year, replaced by John Maine’s lame “Maine Street USA”. This was easily the most entertaining between inning feature at Shea in 2007 and I am super excited to see it make its return as the Mets start play at Citi Field.
