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:
Cold and rainy, and I was being wimpy.
Hurt my left ankle, and I was feeling gimpy.
Was a little weary of the routine, it’d became a stale scene.
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….
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.
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?”
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.
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.
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.
I usually walk a bit of Ashland before my writing session. Walking frees my thinking. Thinking is often useful when I’m trying to write. You can probably find some critics who claim that my writing is mindless, so they’re probably surprised to find that I actually think…sometimes.
This morning, I walked down Main Street to Lithia Park, and then crossed over and took Water Street to B Street. B Street was followed to Pioneer, where I turned left and went down to A Street. From there, it was easy; I walked A Street to 8th Street, then took 8th Street to B Street. I went down one side of B Street to Mountain, crossed B, and then walked the other side back down to Pioneer. At Pioneer, I returned to Lithia, turned left onto it, and then went up until I picked up C Street. C Street was then followed to 8th street. By then, it was warm and sunny, and I was sweaty, so I headed for the Boulevard Cafe on Siskiyou Boulevard.
See that? A, B, and C Streets.
It’s a pleasant walk in the morning. Predominantly residential areas, sidewalks shaded with trees keep it cool and comfortable. Grizzly Peak, other mountains, and the vineyards on the other side of the valley are frequently visible. Crosswalks are at most corners, and all the drivers encountered today acknowledged me crossing in the crosswalks, so my blood pressure stayed down.
The walk took an hour, and gained me three miles and fourteen flights of stairs, with the elevation changes. Those miles add up. My daily average for the last week is up to eight point zero four miles. Sweet.
My monthly average has increased to seven point five six miles, and my three month average has gone over six.
I’m in the cross walk, crossing Siskiyou Avenue in Ashland, Oregon. Ashland is supposed to be a walker friendly town, but I walk this town a bit, using eighteen crosswalks a day on average. I expect, from experience, for drivers not to yield to a pedestrian at four to five crosswalks a day.
It’s worse in the mornings. I was caught between two cars in a crosswalk the other day. One was turning left. He ran the stop sign and ignored me in the crosswalk, giving me a jaunty wave as he missed me by two feet. Meanwhile, the SUV coming straight thought that I would be by, so he kept coming. But because I drew up to avoid behind hit by the other guy, he missed me by less than two feet.
Today, these five drivers didn’t yield. It wasn’t that they didn’t see me. Visibility was great, and there was plenty of time. In what seemed like they were giving me the finger, they sped up. Already exceeding the twenty-five miles per hour speed limit, they were zipping along at thirty-five to forty when they passed me, standing in the cross walk. I heard the lead white Ford F250 accelerate from the vehicle’s location thirty feet away. Felt its breeze as its mirrors whipped past my head. Saw the driver through his window two feet away as he went by.
It outraged me. I spun through the usual shit that I spin through when someone gives me the finger or blows me off. I know I’m not a perfect driver. Never have been, and never will be. But I try to minimize shit. I try to do right with others.
Others don’t always play nicely. That’s what it seemed like these five drivers were doing. For whatever fucking reasons going on in their heads, stopping to let someone cross the street wasn’t on their list of things to do.
After venting to myself, I thought about the more pragmatic impacts of a car hitting me. Yes, I know I would suffer an injury, the levels and extent T.B.D., but my friends and family can share multiple stories about the injuries I’ve endured. There wouldn’t be anything I could do about that.
Instead, I worried about my computer files. That’s my writing, dude. I’d neglected to back it up the other day when the reminder went off. I’d hit the snooze. When it went off again, I ignored it.
I imagined losing those files, and swore in a dozen different ways. The crosswalk encounter reminded me that the back up was required. Time to plug the zip drives back in and back up the files, because, hey, you never know.
The latest weekly average (steps and miles): 15,611 / 6.99
The three month averages are lower, eaten by travel and then sickness: 12,310 / 5.78
But those weekly averages please me. Buoyed by the fine weather, I’d increased my target miles to six per day in the second half of May. This week, I increased the target to seven miles per day. We’ll see how it progresses.
Michael Seidel, writer 