Category: walking

Fitbit Dip

Yeah, last week, I dipped. Fell to my third lowest miles total, forty.

I knew it would be a down week. Let me post the reasons:

  1. Cold and rainy, and I was being wimpy.
  2. Hurt my left ankle, and I was feeling gimpy.
  3. Was a little weary of the routine, it’d became a stale scene.
  4. And was looking for a change, and treating my life with disdain.

It’s all part of the funk of life, you know?

This week isn’t greatly better. I’m averaging a little over six miles a day, so I’ll be at least forty-two miles, maybe forty-three, but I’m not making a strong effort.

Flip this thing over, though, and the reduced effort to walk was put into writing. I like that. My life is a zero-sum game. Whenever effort is removed from one place, it’s put into another. Last night, I was thinking, I need to read more….

Time to adjust the balances anon.

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The Fitbit Gait

I managed to walk eight miles on Wednesday. I was feeling pretty good about that. I generally do five on Sunday, six on four of the other days, and seven on two days. I find that walking in smaller periods, say, twenty to forty minutes at a time, helps me achieve my goals, so I that’s my plan. Eight miles was an impromptu reach.

That effort changed in my final hour. Somewhere in that time, my left Achilles tendon began expressing second thoughts. I pushed through it. Eventually, when you get old enough, some part of your body has second thoughts about going on. Although they manage to make themselves a vocal minority, I can usually push through. Seeing that they’re not stopping me, they then shut up.

Ah, not this tendon. No. It remained as vocal as a starving cat.

The tendon stiffened overnight. Yesterday was painful, especially up hills and steps. Only five and a half miles were achieved, and a flight less than the ten flights that were my goal.

The tendon remains troubling today. I’ve learned through testing that it’ll stiffen up when I sit for extended period, but flexing it when I first stand loosens it. Then, as I walk, it grows a little looser, although it remains a painful process. With a little grit, I can manage a slower imitation of my usual gait, but sometimes, when I’m first struggling with it, I’m moving like John Wayne in “True Grit,” pilgrim.

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Today’s Theme Music

Do you have daily theme music, or music that highlights an activity?

My daily theme music is often a reflection of a momentary lapse of reason, or a thought in the nick of time. Themes vary through the day, though, mirroring moods and events. Sometimes I find myself with the themes from the television series “Mission Impossible” or “Sanford and Son” in my head.

The smoke levels dropped today. The A.Q.I. remains listed as unhealthy, but it seems much clearer and more comfortable. The air temp was a comfortable seventy-six F under partly cloudy skies. That allowed me to walk in comfort.

I wrote in my head as I walked around town (actually designing the Epitomy, the starship serving as base in “Black Dust”). Bonnie Tyler’s song, “Holding Out For A Hero,” accompanied my thoughts. The song was in a movie you might have seen, “Footloose,” in nineteen eighty-four, but it’s been used for multiple campaigns. Bonnie puts a lot into singing the song, which was written by the talented Dean Pritchford.

I could use a hero this year, not just in my novels, but in life. Maybe I just place an ad: “Wanted: principled individual to save the world.”

 

 

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The Air, the Fitbit, the Writing, the Dreams

Our outdoor air sucks. Need more?

Smoke from wildfires is filling our air. The Air Quality Index leaped to one hundred fifteen last night. DANGEROUS. It hasn’t been hot, only into the nineties. We open the house at night to cool it off, and then close the blinds and windows during the day. Opening the windows last night sent us into coughing fits as wet smoke smells wafted in. Eventually, we donned masks.

Today isn’t as bad. The A.Q.I. is in the fifties, and officially, moderate. Visibility remains down. It’s like a white-out beyond a a few hundred feet.

All this wildfire smoke has reduced my Fitbit activities. Walking is way down, to five miles a day average. It’s not as critical as many other issues resulting from wildfires. None of the fires are directly affecting our community. We feel for all those being evacuated in those areas, and appreciate the firefighters’ efforts. If this stuff is terrible for me, a guy in his early sixties who considers himself in good health, those with emphysema and other respiratory issues must be deeply suffering.

I took to the Orson Scott Card method for visualizing and organizing the novel in progress. O.S.C. talked about just drawing places, like a city, and then adding details. With each detail and area added or defined, entertain questions about why those areas and details exist. I’ve done this exercise before, with excellent results. I wasn’t disappointed this time.

I had been editing the novel’s first draft. Halfway through that process, I perceived a problem. A new ‘greater arc’ was required as the solution. I could be wrong, but this is how I decided to address the issue. It’s essentially an epic. I like epics. Bigger is better.

This was decided over a four day period. Then, after deciding it was necessary, I went on a reading sprint. I finished reading two novels, and read two others, in five days. I also read fiction stories and news articles online. This reading stimulated my writing juices and invigorated my writing dreams. I found myself re-committed to who I was, and what I was doing. It’s a matter of taking a deep breath, turning on the computer, and putting the ass in chair, and the fingers on a keyboard.

This new arc takes place on a planet where technology fails. An outpost is established using outdated technology. Suddenly, it’s like living in a frontier castle. I loved that difference in direction from my usual challenges of visualizing the far future and other intelligent races.

I drew the outpost on my computer, and brainstormed about how the lack of technology affects them, and solutions and work-arounds. The team living in the outpost are hunting for people, but can’t use their suits or vehicles. They fall back to horses. Having horses adds more problems and dimensions.

So do the powerful windstorms endured on the planet. That’s why the outpost becomes a castle; something stout enough to survive the windstorms are necessary. That’s the iceberg view of all the scenes, problems, and challenges realized. I don’t want to give away more. Drawing and brainstorming in this manner was a catalyst to my imagination. I scrambled to capture ideas an create an event timeline. It resulted in *shudder* an outline. 

As an organic writer, the outline overwhelmed me. Suddenly, there it all was, this part of the novel mapped out in all its complications and key events. I could imagine, see, and hear them. Writing them was required. It’s daunting for an organic pantser. I decided I would scramble to write key scenes and moments, and patch them together with bridge and pivot scenes, and build the story in layers, much like I used to do when oil painting, or writing a business case, or analyzing data.

I think that whatever opened my creative floodgates also turned the dream valves to full open. I had six remembered dreams last night. Friends from my past were featured. My wife also made an appearance. Of course, maybe it was the eclipse opening the dream and creativity gates. Who can say?

Trying to capture details this morning diverted personal resources already earmarked for other activities. I resorted to dream summaries. The dreams were wild. Once again, my muses were prominently featured. They were attempting to guide and assist me in different manners. Sorting the chaos was a fascinating exercise.

Having your muses show up in my dreams injects high confidence levels. I felt empowered and emboldened when I awaken. Yet, being me, the confidence evaporates to more normal levels by midday. Having your muses and some higher beings populate your dreams and offer encouragement has a good thing. I’m certainly not going to kick them out.

Time to write like crazy, at least one more time. How about you, writers? Have you seen increased creativity? Maybe it is the eclipse.

Or maybe it’s the coffee.

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Lesson Learned

He’d discovered a small stone in his sandal during his evening walk. He tried dislodging it through contortions that involved kicking. He knew he could remove the sandal and get rid of the stone. He didn’t do that. Instead, as the stone inflicted a more painful moment on a toe, he complained, “Is there anything worse than a stone in your shoe?”

“Maybe,” he replied to himself. “A hair in your soup?”

“That’s not worse.”

“Okay. A shot in the head. Getting stabbed in the heart.”

“I get your point.”

“Acid thrown on your face. Your throat slit. Being set on fire.”

“That’s enough.”

“Starving to death. Dying of thirst. Suffocating. Drowning.”

“Enough!”

He fell silent. That would teach him to talk to himself.

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The Nagging Fitbit

I’ve been going under during the last few days, consumed by smoke and heat. Hard hit with a sinus infection that induced impressions that my head and eyeballs were due to burst open with an alien presence, I had no energy and needed rest. Sleep, though, contemptuously dismissed my efforts.

My Fitbit, however, didn’t care.

The Fitbit doesn’t have an atom of empathy. Noticing that I was walking less on Friday, it said, “Come on, let’s step,” in its usual friendly manner that morning. By the late afternoon, its tone shifted to, “Are you going to move, you lazy slob?” On Saturday, it was asking, “Why do I bother to count? You’re not doing anything. Come on, get up.”

Instead of pestering me once every hour, it took to dinging me about every ten minutes. “Are you going to do anything today?” it asked with a sulking cadence.

“I told you, I’m not feeling well,” I answered it.

“So you’re not going to do anything.”

I popped Advil, and then gargled with warm salt water before answering. “I’m going to try to do something, just not right now. I’m having some tea first.”

“Malingerer,” it muttered back. “I want to go out.”

I put it on the cat. “There you go.”

“Hey,” the Fitbit said. The cat shook it off its paw with an angry, offended look. Neither of them were happy with me.

At three thirty that afternoon, I left the house to walk to a friend’s place to assist them with a computer problem. The weather was remarkably cool, and the smoke had dispersed enough to clearly see the Grizzly Peak across the valley. We experienced a temp spike while I was there. Coming home, it was much hotter, and I was much sweatier.

“Oh, you’ve at four miles,” my Fitbit said. “Why, you’re an Olympic athlete.”

There were no fireworks from the Fitbit that night. It settled into a sullen silence. Finally getting a few hours of sleep, I renewed my determination to reach my goals today. I noticed that the Fitbit hadn’t said anything.

“What’s the matter?” I asked it.

“I’m feeling a little under the weather,” it replied. “Do you mind if we just stay in today?”

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Errant Priorities

I caught myself in a neat trap. I set it, and walked myself into it. I’d been trapped in it for a few weeks before I realized what had happened.

To step back, I bought a Fitbit last January. I like it. I enjoy walking. Walking, like writing, helps me think. The Fitbit tracked my walking and gave me quantified results. That was beautiful. I had goals, and could stretch myself against those goals. Great.

Similar to playing video games, walking and measuring my progress and activities sucked me in. I play video games every day. They’re small, online games; I don’t let myself buy or enroll in more, because I know I’ll get sucked into them. It happened a long time ago with a computer game called “Empire.” The game with its attendant strategies and tactics sucked me in. Huge swaths of time and energy were lost to playing that game. It was an ugly lesson learned.

It was also an insight into myself. Like many people, I hunt validation about who I am, and my relative merits. They’re hard to come by in the modern world, especially when you’re in the military or working for a corporation. They like to give you “Atta-boys.” That’s a reward where they beam at you, and say, “Thanks. Well done!” Yes, it worked for a while, but as I realized the emptiness of those rewards, and the challenges became easier and easier, the rewards became meaningless for me. Winning video games became more rewarding in my schema, thus validating me.

Coping with myself and my tendencies, I began seeking things that can be tangibly measured to reward me. In turning to writing, I discovered, hey, I can achieve the same sort of satisfaction by writing one to two thousand words a day. That made me feel good about myself. Finishing a story made me feel better. Selling one made me feel great.

In the cascading process, I then went after another prize: writing a novel. Each step in the process was again a tangible reward, an objective achieved. From finishing a chapter to finishing a novel was a wonderful experience.

Selling it, however, was not easy. Dejected with the publishing process, I went the Amazon publishing route. The rewards fall miles short of my hopes and dreams. So….

Writing became less rewarding. Well, writing remains rewarding. I find writing novels to be akin to solving logic problems. They hold an inherent challenge and reward. But writing doesn’t provide me the validation from outside myself that I know I need. Being thin-skinned and insecure, I need huge quantities of validation.

Enter the Fitbit.

Just like that, I started increasing my goals and exceeding them. I stretched goals from ten thousand steps to fourteen thousand steps, from five miles to six, to seven, to eight.

Naturally, these goals absorbed time and energy, especially in these summer months when it’s ninety degrees or more. Reluctantly, I realized, I needed to draw back from the Fitbit and the walking goals, because they were distracting me from my writing goals and activities. Why, of course, was obvious: the Fitbit goals were tangible and reachable. Writing goals of writing novels, publishing them, and selling novels were tangible, but not easy reached. Not reaching them despite the efforts made became a depressing effort. Mad sequences of Peggy Lee singing, “Is that all there is, my friends, then let’s keep dancing,” kept streaming into my head. “Let’s break out the booze, and have a ball. If that’s all. There is.”

So, seizing myself by my metaphysical scruff, I drag myself away from Fitbit goals and re-prioritized. Whereas I had been targeting six to ten thousand steps before writing, I now write first, and then hunt the steps and miles.

Someday, I believe, or hope, that I’ll find something more, something that will finally quiet the desperation and disillusionment in me. Meanwhile, I’m going to avoid boozing, except for a few beers and wine, reduce my Fitbit goals, and keep on writing.

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music, from two thousand eight, is by Lady Gaga. When I hear a song, I try understanding what’s being sung and the words’ meanings. “Poker Face” seemed ambiguous, at once about sex and gambling. I liked the combination because sex and love is a gamble taken, a roll of the dice, and relationships often become efforts in reading others’ expressions to discern agenda, meanings, and truth.

I later read that Lady Gaga wrote the song about her rock and roll boyfriends. That knowledge didn’t answer all my questions about the lyrics. Still, it’s a good song to stream as you beat the street in the heat.

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Riddled with Variations

In a day of routines dribbling into a week of routines which flow into months and years of routines, I hunt variations.

Most of these come through my daily walks. I wear a Fitbit. My goal before sitting down to write each day is to achieve six thousand steps. Six thousand steps will provide me a comfortable start to the day’s walking goals. The steps, while a carrot, aren’t the day’s goal. I strive for seven miles plus.

Walking to the coffee shop where I write would help me with my walking goals. It’s two miles in either direction. I’ve walked it, and therein found why I don’t like it: it’s a boring, tedious, mundane walk. It’s literally a straight walk. To reach the coffee shop, I make two turns before walking one point nine six miles. Then I make another turn to enter the coffee shop. It’s a slight downward grade on the way into town, and an uphill walk in the other way. The monotony of this route throttles my senses.

To counter this, I drive three quarters of the way. Then I park and walk the downtown areas of Ashland. In this way, I can change routines on whim, and see variations that I’d not otherwise encounter. The variations stimulate my imagination, creativity and productivity.

That’s more critical now. I’m cop- editing a completed novel and just finished publishing a paperback edition of one of my previously published novels. These are not creative outlets. I invent stories as I walk, stories lost to the mind stream by the time I sit down and embrace the business of novel editing and publishing.

Sometimes my need and desire for routines sicken me. It seems seem unhealthy. On the other hand, the routines keep me on a sane path, pushing toward my goals.

Now, with my regular quad shot mocha in hand, sitting at the table and my documents open, it’s time to edit like crazy, at least one more time. It’ a grind, but it must be done.

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