I love this article. I don't carry a notebook with me, but I do keep a running journal and I tend to write a lot of things down that are outside the world of running. Especially when I'm traveling. While it mostly records where I've been and what I've done, it also provides ideas and desires for what I want to do in the future. It gives me a place to record important things that have happened. For example, when my wife askes when I last had a colonoscopy I can say, "Let me check my running journals!"
Hey Martin, thanks for this. I started my journal the last day of 6th grade, and have been writing in it 30 minutes a day until now. I am 52. There have been 2 times I stopped writing, one the end of my relationship, and the other after my dads suicide. The first was just sort of young man melocholy, the second was because I realized I needed intense mental health care. I had crossed a line, and scared myself. It was cool to catch it, and without the journal I might have missed it. I struggle with the pocket notebook. I want it to be a spiral mead thingy, but they always get bent and my brain freaks out.
Dino, that's one hell of a run. You're so right that regularly writing makes you aware of yourself in ways you'd otherwise miss. I think fostering the ability to write things that are scary is so beneficial, most especially when you realize you've gone as far as you can on your own. Good on you, man.
Sometimes I feel like the pocket notebook is an extension of myself--like it's my brain in my pocket. But, yeah, bent metal wouldn't be too comfortable back there.
As I have aged there is also this sense that if you do something (almost anything) long enough that it begins to have a life of its own. I swim as my form of exercise, and if I swim for 45 minutes, it is one experience, and if I swim for 2 hours, it is a vastly different experience. I think that at some point it all is like that. Walk for ten minutes, one thing, walk for 2 hours, something else.
In regards to the second stoppage, my dad had taken his own life. Which forces you to address that act. And at some point I wrote something to the effect of, 'Life has not meaning and value' and I realized that on some level one has to have that thought prior to taking you own life. So, I immediately brought in some help.
I love this article. I don't carry a notebook with me, but I do keep a running journal and I tend to write a lot of things down that are outside the world of running. Especially when I'm traveling. While it mostly records where I've been and what I've done, it also provides ideas and desires for what I want to do in the future. It gives me a place to record important things that have happened. For example, when my wife askes when I last had a colonoscopy I can say, "Let me check my running journals!"
Hey Martin, thanks for this. I started my journal the last day of 6th grade, and have been writing in it 30 minutes a day until now. I am 52. There have been 2 times I stopped writing, one the end of my relationship, and the other after my dads suicide. The first was just sort of young man melocholy, the second was because I realized I needed intense mental health care. I had crossed a line, and scared myself. It was cool to catch it, and without the journal I might have missed it. I struggle with the pocket notebook. I want it to be a spiral mead thingy, but they always get bent and my brain freaks out.
Dino, that's one hell of a run. You're so right that regularly writing makes you aware of yourself in ways you'd otherwise miss. I think fostering the ability to write things that are scary is so beneficial, most especially when you realize you've gone as far as you can on your own. Good on you, man.
Sometimes I feel like the pocket notebook is an extension of myself--like it's my brain in my pocket. But, yeah, bent metal wouldn't be too comfortable back there.
As I have aged there is also this sense that if you do something (almost anything) long enough that it begins to have a life of its own. I swim as my form of exercise, and if I swim for 45 minutes, it is one experience, and if I swim for 2 hours, it is a vastly different experience. I think that at some point it all is like that. Walk for ten minutes, one thing, walk for 2 hours, something else.
In regards to the second stoppage, my dad had taken his own life. Which forces you to address that act. And at some point I wrote something to the effect of, 'Life has not meaning and value' and I realized that on some level one has to have that thought prior to taking you own life. So, I immediately brought in some help.
One cup of coffee vs three cups of coffee: vastly different experience. But sometimes I like to see how far I can go.
I have some experience with suicide, too. Nothing upends the world quite like that.
One can never go far enough with coffee. I am going to write about the coffee mornings in college.
Notebook wise, you sort have convinced me to move to the Field Notes size. I will have guilt because I have a small pile of the mead spirals.