I like it when I’m doing it, love it when I’m done and do everything in my power to avoid it.

Running, like writing, is a discipline. And like writing, it can be seen as a metaphor for everything else. An example. I am running in the fog. I am running on faith and a barely discernible path. Trees and people materialize out of the ether as I stay focused on the ground immediately in front of me. Snatches of conversation hang in the heavy air. Perfumes linger, the only molecules left from someone long disappeared. Slowly the fog follows the waves offshore and the sun begins to sketch the skyline.

I sit at my keyboard, determined to let the words march, to not think too much, to not analyze or pause too long, for fear that the momentum will stop and the always welcome alternative of collapsing on the couch will win the day. I write through the fog, staying only one word in front of myself at a time, and slowly, slowly, I watch the warmth of my fingers push back the cold blankness to reveal the world I am creating.

Like the discipline of running, if I just keep moving forward, thoughts materialize, characters morph out of shreds of low-lying cloud. Maples, cedars and wet dark roads appear. Screaming flat-grey gulls take shape as if by misty magic. But it is not magic.

It is the discipline, it is the faith of moving forward. It is the calling forth of the gods that will not listen unless I suit up to meet them halfway. I must show up at the page, at the road, at the piano or the easel, and most of all, at my life.

It is tying up my shoes, snugging on the rain jacket, facing the cold wet and going one footfall at a time with the faith that it’s been done before, it will be done again and I will likely live to tell the tale.
And, like running or any other discipline, there is no way around the dailiness of it all. Even though I do everything I can to avoid the actual work of it with my expert attention to email, my mind boggling googling abilities, my investigative ways at finding perfect writerly websites and the never ending piles of books from libraries and bookstores that beckon to be read. It is so lovely to weave and wander through it all and to call it studying and learning.

And it is.

And it’s also avoidance. One does not learn to ride a horse by reading Black Stallion. Admittedly, it’s a lovely vicarious way to have the wind in your hair and I know you can almost hear the heavy thrumming hoof beats. It is, however, a poor replacement to reining in that wild thing on your own, your heart heaving and breath gasping in pace with the beast.

Saddle up. Strap on your shoes. Fire up the laptop. Show up at your life.

Begin. One true word. One true step. Just one. Just for now.