Enough of chill winds. This next period will see mostly hiking but I need to jog often enough to hit the year-end target. Bring on the European summer sun!
Big Decade: Habit forming?
Does obsessing about one passion over twelve months lead to a cast-iron habit? I’m not sure. I read Charles Duhigg’s wonderful book four years ago, found it interesting, but didn’t tackle it seriously. Now is the time to revisit it, in light of the Big Decade. And of course airplanes are the ideal places to dig into books.
Big Decade check-in
Greeting the dawn
The writer’s engine room before the real world bestirs
Writing Big Year: The critique group from heaven
90 minutes on a Tuesday morning each fortnight. Three pieces of startlingly different fiction from three talented Melbourne writers. The Inner City Writers’ Workshop has a membership of some eight or nine. To join you submit a sample and the existing members are polled. People drift in and out, one year hammered by life and day jobs, another year freer to create. Like all writers, not everyone ships enough product to readily sustain writerly dreams, but my abiding joy within this critique group is the clear and obvious quality of writing.
Critique groups, I’ve seen a few, I can tell you, and inevitably, until now, either the quality or personality aberrations have led me to flee. For me, ICWW is the long haul.
Jogging Big Year: Further than last year
In 2015 I jogged 1,053 kms, yesterday my 2016 kms reached 1,061. Call it a meaningless achievement in one sense, for I set out to run further and more often this year, so of course I’ll overtake during the year. But I whinge on the track too much too often, so tomorrow night I’ll celebrate with a Choc Top at the cinema.
Writing Big Year: Nailed it!
Barriers, frustrations, fear, disgust, qualms . . . I simply must record a rare, and hopefully not fleeting, emotion of triumph, bliss even. After working and reworking a convoluted four-page narrative, into place it fell.
Writing Big Year: Oh if I could be faster
I’m working hard but . . . although the chapter’s content is settled (almost), although the words are written (mostly) . . . this construction phase is only 55% done and I could feel desperate. Why can’t I bang it out and end up with a desk like this (photo by Vadim Sherbakov on Unsplash)? Onward . . .
Now for the fun part: Cut and paste . . .
Actually, the method – improvised upon impulse – is cut and staple. Desperation forces me to resort to non-digital text manipulation.
What then in the presence of greatness?
I was awed, a couple of weeks back, to spend a few moments watching Pedal Pete (aka Peter Arnott) complete yet another Everesting, one imbued with grief after the death of his niece. I watched him glide down his steep Everesting hill (he’d end up ascending and descending 150 times), not a muscle moving, a study in aerodynamic skill. He banked at the bottom, turned round. I watched him effortlessly rise up out of his seat and pump ferocious leg muscles smoothly, powerfully, as he made his way back up the road. I imagined myself doing this once, twice, three times, hey, maybe four, but could contemplate no more.
We’re besieged by images and stories of super sportspeople, to the extent that they rarely excite awe in us. Too many of us invent narratives in our heads that allow us to dismiss performance or skill that we ourselves can’t find the willpower to work towards. It’s as if we imagine that the extraordinary is, after all, ordinary.
I watched Pete and the question that surfaced startled me. In the face of such talent and dedication, what should I ask of myself? Does this sense of awe just wash over me? Or does it compel me to find something to tackle, to strive to master it?
(Photo courtesy of Brendan Edwards – check out his varied and fascinating cycling blog.)