The WordSpider

Happy New Year!

 As I write this, I am feeling both proud and humble—and pleasantly fatigued, and smugly virtuous as well.  Today I took part in the Bremerton YMCA’s Resolution Walk/Run.

I am proud of my out-of-shape, overweight, sixty-something self for staying the five kilometer course (just over three miles) at a fairly brisk walk, and humble about being the very last straggler on that course.  (Others returned later than me, but they had gone much further.)  Uphill and down the course ran, along quiet Sunday morning streets, in perfect weather, crisp and dry and partly sunny—I don’t think I could have done this in icy rain.  It was hard work for me all the same, especially the steep hills, but I kept on going.  Eventually I hit my stride and then dogged endurance gave way to enjoyment. 

When I reached the halfway point, at Viewcrest Drive, I stopped to rest, drink from my water bottle, and admire the vista of water and land, distant city and still more distant mountains.  I picked myself a sprig of long-needled pine as a little trophy.  (After four decades in Washington, I love cedars like a native Northwesterner, but I was born and raised among pine woods, and the scent of pinesap in winter still carries me straight back to my earliest memories of joy.)

my victory bouquet

I turned to complete the second half and was immediately passed at a fast jog by a woman at least ten years older than me:  another humbling moment.   But I was still feeling good about being outdoors bright and early, moving well in my body, and taking part in a community celebration of renewal and commitment to good health, and so although I was humbled, I was not ashamed.   I went on walking, picked up another little pine branch along the way, and then a branch of red berries:  my victory bouquet.

Yes, that woman is older and thinner and faster than I am.   But one thing I’ve learned to avoid, as a person and especially as an artist, is the toxic folly of measuring myself against others.  There’s no point in comparing apples to oranges, aardvarks to orangutans.  Nor is there much point in comparing me, for good or ill, to Mother Teresa, Queen Elizabeth, Jon-Benét Ramsey or Ellen DeGeneres, Sarah Palin or Tina Fey.  The one trait I share with all the above is our gender.  With the trim and speedy lady of the pink jacket and the slightly rigid-looking gray curls who passed me this morning, I have this much in common:  we are both alive, both over sixty years old, and both care about staying healthy and active.  The reasons why she is—apparently—in so much better physical shape than I am will probably never be known to either of us.

What matters to me today is that I made the effort, at my own pace, and by doing so, I found my joy:  that place where work and pleasure meet and become one.

And so it is with my writing.  I have not done much lately, for many of the same reasons that my weight has slid back up the last few months:  a complex work schedule made more complicated by illness followed by holidays.  I accept responsibility:  these are explanations, not excuses.  I must do better if I want anyone—myself included —to take my writing seriously, and I will.  I will keep working steadily and I will pace myself.

Call that my New Year’s Resolution.

This blog helps keep me honest:  I have to write something every week.  (The one time I “cheated” by publishing my unfinished story Joy here, at least I had been working all week on that story.) 

An odd thing I’ve discovered about myself is that my natural rhythm is one of stops and starts.  A “steady” pace for me essentially means a fairly regular alternation of periods of intense work with periods of lying fallow.  Accepting that about myself has made it much easier for me to tell the difference between lying fallow and just being lazy—of which I am quite as capable as the next writer.  Having a better sense of when I can and should burst into intensely creative activity and when I just have to grit my teeth and plod along keeps me from despair.  Those times when I am apparently accomplishing nothing, I’ve learned to recognize as periods of building up my strength and skills, preparing myself for frenetic activity later.

My next big venture— this is a New Year’s Resolution as well—will be a mystery novel set in Kitsap County.  That’s all I’m going to say about it now; it’s far too young a project to be exposed to the harsh elements.   Thanks to my readers’ comments for the inspiration and encouragement.

 Another resolution:  I will take part in National Novel Writing Month in November.  Last year was the first time I seriously considered it, and I was struck ill before I could make more than a gesture at beginning.  By the time I was well enough to write, I had lost too many days for someone who also has a day job.  But this year I’m determined to make it happen.  I’ve been told it’s not considered cheating to plan out in advance the characters, location, and even a rough sense of the arc of the plot, so long as the actual writing of the tale begins in November.

Tags: blogs, depression, joy, mysteries, NaNoWriMo, resolutions, writing life

This entry was posted on Monday, January 2nd, 2012 at 4:17 am by Alison Jean Ash and is filed under discouragement, writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.