Happiness: 10 Years of Day-on-Day Obsession
My Big Decade is a geeky exercise in focus, and it involves plenty of data keeping for the sake of monitoring. Most people are relaxed and monitor nothing. At the other extreme are those within the “quantified self” movement, dedicated to (in Wiki words) “incorporate[ing] technology into data acquisition on aspects of a person’s daily life.” This seems extreme even to me. But one could get fascinated . . .
Check out Steven Jonas’s article “Shannon Conners: A Lifetime of Personal Data.”
Man, these big years squeeze you. I’m working on online stuff. You know, website, palette, fonts, image sizes, landing page . . . stuff I am a klutz at, stuff I kind of know but know nothing. Everything eventually works but clunkily. It all takes too much time. And meantime the Writing Big Year is a pressure cooker waiting to explode. Where I should be is back in the writing cave, from early in the morning. Tomorrow? Monday?
I’m here. Pen glides. Won’t that suffice?
One of my nieces suggests I join her in a half marathon. Ah, if only . . . My weekly 40 kms could in theory qualify me for 21-km fitness, but I’m sure my ankles would crash well before the race ended. Why threaten the annual target, with its known or sensed virtues, for a different adventure altogether?
(VisualHunt photo)
Wasting time on something important is still wasting time. After 9 days of maundering around the business of online “platforming,” this morning I was meant to spring up on time and get back to Reactor. No didn’t happen.
Okay, the Jogging Big Year is back on track. But the Writing Big Year is lurching. Back to Bar Ristretto and reorient and recalibrate and go!
Having missed the mandatory Friday 10-kmer, all panicky, Saturday saw a catch-up run. Yesterday was the mandatory Saturday 10-kmer – all went well – so now I’m up to date. I even caught up on gym yesterday. And this is the unexpected aspect: a great calmness suddenly sat on my shoulders.
Today is the mandatory 10-kmer. Will my left foot and hip be kind to me?
A lesson hard won – a Big Year activity just can’t be dropped. The whole point is the daily discipline and surely something good will come of it (that’s something to debate at another time). So I donned my new green joggers and the instant I raced down the hill, all that tension dissipated: “I am back on track.” By the way, perhaps because of all that unsettling worry, I ran as fast as I have in weeks, a 10-km pace of 6:00/km. And I saw a Cormorant drying its wings.
Panic. Just before the middle of the Jogging Big Year, yesterday I failed myself. Until now, on every day not spent on a plane or out hiking, I’ve kept up the discipline – jog 10 kms on M/W/F/S, gym the other three days, stretching every day. Absorbed, busy, pressured, call it what you will, yesterday I did none of these. Burgers, wine, biscuits for dinner . . . why not fail spectacularly. I woke up this morning panicky. What to do?
I’m still worrying about the left outside ankle, the threat of lameness. And the muscle on or around the left hip bone is strained from gym work. Woe is me . . . but hey, what a day I encountered when last on my north route along the Yarra River!