Stay of Execution

Rest

Instead of our morning run this morning Housemate and I just sat nursing our injuries and discussing the fact that both of us now can't walk without pain. I have these shin splints, or whatever they are, and Housemate has an achilles/calf pain that she describes as occasionally "stabbing." Yes, we've been increasing our mileage too fast and although we've been decent about stretching it wasn't until we both started to hurt that we became quite serious about it. We discussed walking today instead of running and then reluctantly decided to think about resting completely until it doesn't hurt anymore to walk.

Which means I don't think we're on schedule to run the half marathon on October 3rd. We might walk it instead. We found a half-marathon on October 24th that might be a better training goal -- it would let us rest for a week. We're going to work on a reasonable training schedule. We hashed one out before that seemed consistent with the rules: don't increase mileage more than 10% a week, have a couple of rest days, etc. But we've both been running on our off days, Housemate more than me, and we've upped our base distances, so we really haven't been following our own plan. And the "ignore the little nagging pain and maybe it will go away" philosophy hasn't been working for either of us and our legs don't like being used right now.

We'd each already decided that this half-marathon will probably be our only event as runners; we'd like to go back to walking. I miss a lot of things about walking -- mostly my ability to notice the landscape while doing it -- and what I have read about running says that if you run you WILL be injured -- it's not a matter of whether, it's a matter of when and what injuries you'll get. Not true of walking. After some of the longest walks I had tired legs and sometimes muscle soreness but nothing that felt like an injury.

I was talking to someone the other day and mentioned that I was doing the road race this past Sunday. "I'm not a runner though," I announced. "It's just because I'm training to run this half marathon, but don't get any ideas -- I'm definitely not a runner." Why are you doing this, he asked. "Because I like to train for things," I answered without thinking about it, and I realized that was true. It's fun to set a goal that seems a little harder than I imagine is do-able, and then set out a pace for achieving it, and then do it. I've already walked a marathon, albeit not an official one, and a half-marathon. Running one will be a nifty and new experience. When this is done I wonder what our next goal becomes. Just walking a faster time in a marathon or a half? A triathalon would be cool next summer, maybe. We'll see. For now, rest.

He/She Is Very Accomplished And Important And Interesting

I'm writing and editing the biographical information for a bunch of our Pop!Tech speakers. We start with bios provided by the speaker or his/her agent and we edit them for a consistent voice and tone, tailored to our format and our audience. The raw materials for these bios as they come to us vary wildly in detail and tone. Some of them are so modest and dry, and others trumpet every accomplishment and name drop institutions and publications, sneaking a sideways glance at you to see whether you're impressed yet. I take about equal pleasure in jazzing up the shrinking violets with active verbs and text meant to invoke curiosity and fascination, and in cutting back some of the florid prose and credential-heavy paragraphs of the self-promoters.

Ex Marks the Spot

So yesterday I ran my first road race, a somewhat informal affair -- four miles, up and over the Casco Bay Bridge and a short way into downtown and then back into South Portland.  It was very hot, and my shins were hurting pretty badly for the first three miles, but I finished strong and wasn't last and felt great afterwards.  After the race the friend I'd run with and I met my parents and took a ride on my dad's little motorboat out to Great Chebeague Island, where we had brunch at the Chebeague Island Inn. 

While we were lounging about on the wicker porch furniture looking out at the bay waiting to be called in to the dining room who should walk by but my ex boyfriend and his new sweetie.  They were out for a weekend getaway, and had spent yesterday bicycling around the island.  We all chatted for a while and then they went further down the porch and settled in to read and drink coffee.  My parents and friend were slightly mortified and kept peering at me to make sure I was all right. 

And I was all right, and not all right at the same time.  I run into the two of them with some regularity and it's not hard to be friendly and I think I'm honest about wishing them well.  I think they're a good pair.  I don't want him back, haven't for some time, and if I were drawing up a list of things I want and things I don't want in my next relationship I think he'd have too few on the first list and too many on the second. So there's no jealousy or bitterness when I see him.  But it opens up this wistfulness for what it represents: someone I loved who didn't love me back.  Something about me that isn't compelling; something about her that is.  Something I'm missing, something I don't know how to bring about in my life.  I'd like to understand it better.  Once upon a time, in years past, I imagined that I was doomed or broken in some kind of subtle way that only becomes visible to worthy men who get romantically involved with me.  In the past couple of years I've left that behind -- pretty sure I'm not doomed, and that whatever it is that makes me loveable to myself and to my friends and family will one day make me loveable to a smart fun cute boy.  But on the motorboat ride home yesterday I do admit to having some doubts, at least until we entered the mouth of the Royal River and there were herons to look at on the shoreline and motorboats passing us and the sun on the grassy banks made it hard to pay too much attention to being lonely. 

I'm More of an Omnivore

You know, half of me wants to roll my eyes at the pseudo-consulty-business-reinvention and reimagining vocabulary and half of me eats it up like Fig Newtons. Evelyn Rodriguez is all about passion in the workplace and the search for meaning and creativity and productivity and today she links to an article calling certain kinds of workers "soulitarians":

He [author Kane] identifies a new type of worker - the "soulitarians", who, if and when they work, shun high salaries in favour of "meaningful" work, are keen to experiment with technology and happily flit between start-up and corporation, self-employment and job-sharing. They are capable of hard work in the right endeavour and their creativity and technological skills make them increasingly sought-after. But they are militant about putting work in its place so they can have time for travel, personal growth and new experiences.

I'm rolling my eyes even now while I look at the description and yet part of me is thinking wistfully, "Am I a soulitarian? Are these my people? Are there folks who really understand this? I wonder if I should buy this book?" And the other half of me is thinking, "What a stupid label, and who are these people who make bucks selling gimmicky business books centered around made-up demographics and silly words like 'soulitarians' when people are, fundamentally, the same as they ever were?"

People like Evelyn and Hugh MacLeod and Matt Homann I find both hopeful and wearisome. I think it's because I'm part free spirit anarchic radical who's interested in the stuff nobody's figured out yet and part conservative, with a deep respect for substance, discipline, and tradition and a huge fear of being a flake. So I love the idea of passionately re-invented careers but something about the militant announcing and embracing of new workplace paradigms and the denouncing of everything that's come before is tiring to me and a little overwhelming and I always suspect it of being faddish. And yet I'm inspired and I do believe -- in creativity and passion and meaning and authenticity and voice and enterprise and adaptability and connection. I think these things are fundamental to being a person who is grounded and therefore good at what you do. But does it all need to be such a crusade, with silly words like "soulitarian" and a zillion books in the Business section turning over each season and urgently announcing that a sea-change has arrived in business that you need this book or consultant to explain? Are these books just an excuse for people to be self-indulgent and noncommittal and undisciplined and call it "creative" and "passionate"?

The question of building a worthwhile professional career is a noble pursuit. And one that obviously has huge relevance for me right now. Do I take a job that exists or do I need to invent my own? What kind of balance between work and play, influence and indolence, accomplishment and experimentation, security and risk, service and reward, do I want in my life? How do I think about this stuff and where do I find like-minded people? So I read Evelyn and Matt and Hugh with interest, because they're thinking about all the same questions. And my reaction is visceral and ambivalent -- strong inspiration, and a fearful distrust, at the same time.

Swim In A River

Yesterday afternoon I investigated a new trail I'd heard about, leading from an inauspicious suburban neighborhood through a narrow strip of woods into a wider strip of woods and then down and along a riverbank. At the river I stripped down to my bathing suit and waded in. Fresh water is so different than salt water. It smells brown and green and silty. And the water moves. I swam upstream for a while and then looked at the bank and realized I wasn't going anywhere. I swam a little harder and made some progress, then floated on my back and looked at the tree branches overhead and kicked just enough to stay put. When I was ready I stopped paddling and drifted back down to the rock I'd started at, and then paddled back up the river and did it again.

It was cool and quiet and occasionally a fish splashed. I sat on the rock and dried off and read the New Yorker for a couple of hours, then walked the mile and a half out of the woods. As I walked out of the woods I could feel the temperature creeping back up and realized that my shady rock by the river was perhaps 10 degrees cooler than the suburban street where I'd parked.

Sleep Under A Tree

It's hot and sticky and still outside. I can hear neighborhood kids shrieking to one another as they invent some kind of game in the street outside. It's the kind of day where you try to sit so none of your limbs is touching any other part of you.

I tried to go sailing with my friend the eligible bachelor. Before he arrived I went out to my boat to replace a pin on the outhaul. There was a praying mantis on the bow of my boat. How does a praying mantis get onto a sailboat 600 yards from shore? I decided to bring her back to land and set her free in the meadow behind the yacht club. She moved away from my hands but finally skittered up my fingers and spread big green wings and flew crookedly away. The launch driver and I looked at one another and raised our eyebrows. I was afraid she wouldn't make it back to shore so I asked him to drive us along her path so if she flew too low she would have a place to land. But we lost sight of her by the time we'd pulled away from my boat so I'll just have to imagine that she's a very strong flyer, or that she stopped to rest on a mooring ball or another boat.

There wasn't enough wind to sail so my friend and I took his little dinghy out around Clapboard Island, near a sandbar and rocky ledge where a half a dozen seals approached us and stared with their sleek wet doglike heads. One silvery-grey baby seal kept circling around us, staring, then getting scared and diving away, only to surface on another side of us and look quizzically.

Now I'm home, and I think I'll go looking for a swimming hole at a nearby river, and then find a shady tree to lie under, reading the New Yorker, until I doze off....

Pay Attention!

So I haven't stopped thinking about the backchannel. I set up a conference call for this morning with Clay Shirky and Greg Elin and some others about the question of implementing a thoughtful one at Pop!Tech this year. While we talked on the phone we played around with the technology. There were certainly moments when I had trouble listening to the telephone conversation because I was messing around with the capabilities of the software. But I was also able to ask clarifying questions without interrupting -- "do you mean show a picture of the person speaking on stage, or a picture of the chat participant?" and at one point Greg posted a URL to an article Clay referenced in conversation and I pulled that up and skimmed it during the call to get some background information.

Another working group member joined the call partway through and logged in to the chat room late. He began asking some questions that we'd already addressed, and I asked him whether he could scroll up in the chat transcript. The version of software we were using didn't permit him to see the room's conversation prior to his entrance, so I cut and pasted the transcript from the chat box and sent it to him by email. A moment later, in the chat room (but not on the conference call) he thanked me for sending along the transcript.

What we were talking about was very interesting, but what also interested me was the new social expectation of the participants. Instead of the illusion that everyone on the conference call was doing nothing other than listening to the call, the expectation was that everyone on the call was not only listening to the call, but also chatting in the room, sending and receiving email, and following URLs found in emails or on the chat space to get background info about the conversation. In other words, the phenomenon of continued partial attention was acknowledged and expected -- you were SUPPOSED to be doing six things at once. In fact, during the conversation Clay left his computer, got into a taxi, and headed someplace, and apologized to us that all he could do from that point on was listen and talk.

I Like These Rules

Corita Kent's Rules for Students and Teachers.

I Wish

I wish I knew how to program. It feels like it's too late in life to learn. I know it isn't, probably, but it just feels like a lot to take on. I think my imagination about technology and what it can do is limited because programming is a black box to me.

Tardy All-Request Response: Training Schedule

Someone wrote to ask about my marathon walking training routine. The first thing to say is that I'm currently training to run a half-marathon, on October 3. It's a farce, because I'm not a runner, but it's been fun to train for and at this point at least I believe that I'll be able to finish the thing. And then I can get back to walking. And the running regime has been good for me -- my legs feel stronger, and it's nice to be able to go for a run with a friend. There's something about going for a run that gives me a great rush, a feeling of being cleaned out, being strong and healthy, that even the longest walk doesn't quite give. Maybe it's the sweat or the endorphins.

But I don't think I'm a runner and when the half-marathon is over I think the next event I'll train for is a walk. Running has given me persistent low-grade shin pain. And I can't see the world quite as well as when I'm walking, nor can I think as freely or have the kind of conversations I can have on a good long walk. Running is more of an exercise for me, so my attention is on my body and what it's doing and feeling. Walking lets me experience the world while I'm moving myself through it. Which I like a little better.

The current training regime is: three official weekday training runs, between 3 and 5 miles. One of these days includes some interval training where we sprint for a little while and then go back to our sloggish pace. My housemate and I both tend to run another weekday, maybe two, on our own, but sometimes that is pretty short. And then a long run on the weekend. My longest so far has been 8.9 miles. Last weekend I didn't have time to do a long run so I've got some trepidation about this weekend's run. I'll try to do 9 again, I think. This low-grade shin soreness stinks. I think I must not be stretching enough, or right.

In walking season, we walked five miles a day, three days a week, and then on Sundays did long walks. We started with eight miles, and then built up by two mile increments each week, peaking at 22 miles for the marathon. For the half marathon we did some training walks that were longer than the half marathon distance, just to give us confidence and endurance. We regularly did fartleks, speed intervals from one telephone pole to the next, and we used this speedwalking burst technique to do the half-marathon event in very very good time.