Or, how i’m gonna try running 21km with no training

Tomorrow is a day I face with some trepidation. Other useful descriptions include expectation, anticipation, dawning alarm, alarming indifference… but trepidation pretty much averages it out and sums it up.

Reason: It’s the half-marathon tomorrow, and despite having it labeled prominently on my calendar, somehow it must have slipped between the cracks of my foggy mind. Every procrastinating reason aside, the simple fact remains that I’ll be at the starting line in about six hours. Eek!

Now, 21 km isn’t actually so bad (not that I’ve done it before). Anybody in reasonably good health can run/walk that distance. It’s just that
1. I’ve never run more than 10km before, and more importantly
2. I’ve got pride/self-esteem tied up in this and want a respectable time and 3. I don’t want to suffer too much and limp half-dead over the finish line.

So, my fault for missing the Sunday morning runs with dad’s running club (how do people twice my age wake up so early?!), and my fault for studiously avoiding the idea and not training.

Which brings me to WHY am I not training, despite knowing I have to run this tomorrow, and knowing that I want to do a full marathon in December. Why this strange inability to carry out a well-laid intention to fulfill one of my personal goals for this year?

A conversation with my sister comes to mind. She was commenting on a typical runner during a typical timed race: usually head down, heaving/gasping/panting, entirely focused on the burning goal of completing within a desired time limit, with absolutely no interest in looking at the pretty scenery around them! How Type-A, how competitive, how boring! And of course I agreed, because deep-down I’m pretty sure that I’m an Aesthetic Runner.

A what? Aesthetic Runners (I’ve just coined this term…) are people who can only run when the air is fresh, and the environs are beautiful. The type of runner who looks up and around, stops to smell the flowers, has a smile on her face. The runner who’s there mainly for the experience of running, and all the surroundings and people she encounters along the way. This sort of runner is likely to run fast and fluid while happy, and exceedingly indifferently otherwise.

This might explain why I seldom, and almost never pant or feel short of breath while running – this would disrupt the smooth, happy, easy flow. Correspondingly it means I could probably run faster or in better time if I increase the speed enough to warrant gasping for breath. Ah well. It also explains why I’m fairly indifferent and spotty about training – I’d only go for ‘training sessions’ that give me maximum aesthetic pleasure. So the usual training grounds – running tracks, routes with heavy morning traffic, residential and populated areas – are out. And quieter, more nature-y places I sometimes prefer to walk through, because there’s more enjoyment that way.

(Methinks as well: how much of this post is an attempt at pointing the finger away from the more typical culprits of procrastination and laziness? Hmm…)

Okay enough musings. Off to bed so lack of sleep doesn’t become an excuse either!

Update:
So I did it in 2 hours and 34 minutes after all! The road was ridiculously clogged with army boys forced to run the 21km, so I spent a good deal of time in the initial hour ducking around strolling and chatting walkers. Grr! That said, a pretty parts included the beach (which allowed me run off-road and ease the poor aching feet) and running across the Marina Battery and Sheares Bridge. The toughest stretch was this horrible dirt road, potholed and muddy, in the middle of nowhere (read: ugly scenery). I almost cried when I realized it lasted only two km, because I was so sure it must have been almost 5! But all in all, a good run. No injuries or icky black toes (or burst nipples – thank you, Claire, for that memorable warning…), aside from an inflamed jaw (!) and diarrhoea (!!). I’m now signed up for the December full marathon… wish me luck!

Or, how I attempted to write an Important Blog Post but delayed it over and over again, and decided to write about my attempt to write instead…

Willpower is a strange strange thing. One can spend all day prepping for it, cajoling it out of its hidey-hole, building it up piece by piece in preparation for some project … then it disappears just when you need it, abducted by its evil twin, Apathy, heralding the appearance of its cousin, Guilt.

Guilt and Apathy co-exist rather uneasily. Their alliance is necessarily infected by the truism of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, but really, they are cats of different stripes. Guilt is a nervous, high-strung and disorganised individual, swinging between extremes of anxious nagging and studious avoidance. Apathy is a chill-out laid-back comfortable depressive who yo-yos gently between mild dissatisfaction and insensate listlessness. Guilt will say lots of things but won’t do anything. Apathy doesn’t do anything, period.

Guilt is a pest, Apathy is a bum. Their fundamental modus operandi aren’t aligned with each other, much less so their personalities. So by any rational thought, Guilt and Apathy ought to be nemeses. How did they get inducted into the same dark brotherhood, set in opposition to the shining light of Willpower?

Perhaps because both are resistant to change. At its most basic, Willpower is the intent to inflict and engage in change. Change requires more effort than status quo, but Guilt is too scared and Apathy is too lazy.

While there’s no change on the horizon, all three probably fall into an equilateral triangle, like this:
(all oppose each other to some equal degree)

But once Guilt and Apathy sniff out any change that requires a significant amount of either courage or effort, the triangle quickly becomes isoceles, like this

And if these were vectors or forces in equilibrium, any beginning physics student will tell you that at any vertex in equilateral Fig. 1, the magnitudes of the vertical and horizontal components are equal, but in isoceles Fig. 2. the former is always more than the latter.

In other words, in Fig 1 (no change), Guilt, Willpower and Apathy are all fighting each other in an equal three-way battle. Once we get to Fig 2 (change), Guilt and Apathy might have mini internal bickerings, but are definitely united in an alliance against Willpower.

So the question is – how to make Guilt and Apathy fight each other instead? How to play off fundamental misalignments, incite dissent and leave Guilt and Apathy tangled up in each other so that Willpower has breathing space to act? How do we make the diagram look like this:

Anybody have any ideas?

Note: Before I wear out the personification and physics analogy (if there are glaring inconsistencies in the physics, please ignore them), here’s some background on these musings. Since going offline sometime in Feb, and on a rather questionable note , I wanted to write a post updating readers (if there are any left) about my life. Unfortunately I hit by, you guessed it, Apathy and Guilt!
And after writing about all that, I still haven’t written what I was going to write. Productive procrastination, indeed!

“Hello world!”

… after months of neglect, i’ll be writing in here again. there is a season to everything, and for a while it was time to lie fallow, to fall asleep, to hide. And as anybody who has had trouble waking up in the morning knows, getting up is tougher than falling into bed. It’s much easier to hit the snooze button and go right back asleep. But nobody can sleep forever… (apologies to readers who have been asking about what’s up with me – a case of ‘blog hypersomnia’!)

So, a little bit of action beats no action at all, and this post is a reminder/declaration that:

I want to say hello to the world! I’ll write something here again! I want to write about figuring out what to do with my life! Hopefully it’ll be meaningful, literary, wise, interesting! (but i’ll also settle for simple narrative and refrain from detailing my daily lunches and/or toothbrushing) Feel free to comment and chatter!

Hello world!

Yesterday I wallowed in the half-asleep lethargy brought on by cold medicine, the kind that says ‘May cause drowsiness. Do not drive or operate machinery.’ It was my excuse for bumming around the house, desultorily surfing the net, refusing a short stint to relief-teach at a nearby school, rejecting all social invites, being generally brain-dead, dull, negative, dead.

Of course, I was under the weather and needed to rest, but what came as a quiet shock was that my day of sick rest was no different from my usual day! I repeated the same pattern of time-wasting, committing to nothing, creating nothing, just hanging around and maintaining my current immediate needs like food, Facebook chatter, emails, picking up around the house, job-searching and sleep.

Clearly, one hits a minima at some point, and I think I’ve hit mine.

There is no risk in my current life. Inertia and apathy comes about when there is no risk, and no fear, making me slide comfortably down to sleepy la-la-land. Which makes me realize that everything I’ve done before worth anything has been motivated by fear/insecurity/deadlines… in other words, no simple certainty of success, or risk.

Somewhere along the line I’ve forgotten what risk tastes like, and was content to chug along. End result: end up lazier, narrow, smaller, flying under the radar. And it’s an exponential decline from there.

So how to drag myself outta that muck? Actually, I exaggerate. Things aren’t that bad, with jobs and social life etc getting somewhere. The problem of inertia and apathy is actually located closer to the heart – the lethargy I feel when questioned about what I love and what I want to do, and the quiet little very sian feeling that it doesn’t really matter. Contrast this to my previous post where I swore that I must must must find a passion. I think I’m facing a slide into the Quester’s Apathy, or at least a questioning of the belief that I will find what I love.

Note to self: beliefs are often almost religious in nature. By this I mean, no matter how much rational and reason prop it up, there will always be a gap and you got to take the last leap of faith and say, regardless of anything, I believe!

On second thought, isn’t believing, beyond rhyme or reason, but the pure act of will, actually the greatest risk of all? The thought that I will find what I love, and I will jump into the abyss after it (if necessary), and f**k all notions of money, prestige, expectations, opinions?

I am still uncertain about my appetite for risk in life, especially in such large ideological doses. So let’s start small again. More in another post, on how to structure my day-to day life to bring about practical and manageable risk, and eliminate inertia!

In the time-honored field of career counseling, they always tell you to ‘work from your passion’, because if you do what you love, any job becomes enjoyable, you’re willing to put in a lot more work, and hence that brings about a bigger chance of success, not to mention all the good stuff like personal fulfillment and growth.

Well, after quite a bit of soul-searching and equivalent avoidance, I realised that I don’t know what my passion is. Everything so far in my life has come very easily – the sequential progression through educational institutions, the various achievements. I never had to think about what to do, and naturally focused on the short-term objective of ‘doing what I’m doing now well’ instead of asking ‘why am I doing this, what do I want to do, and how do I do it?’ That’s not to say I didn’t love what I was doing, but that it wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened.

So, in this day and age, where people are solidly divided into two camps, the practical ones and the idealists, what’s preventing me from following the former and chasing indicators of success like respectability, status, achievement, and wealth? Answer: I am, at heart, an idealist.

An idealist without a passion exists in a spiritual vacuum, like a chicken without a head (or heart). Not happy, and fundamentally frustrated. Toss in my perfectionism and you get inertia.

(Of course, there is a distinct possibility too, that subconsciously I do know what I would love to do, but am not willing to consciously admit it lest it withers under the glare of cold reality. But that’s the subject of another post)

So, goal time. I will instill in myself the belief that:

I will find what I love. I will keep searching and never settle until I find it.

I have to take the personal responsibility of laying the groundwork, looking for, and actually defining a passion to align my life with. Nobody’s going to present it nicely on a platter. In fact, passion is probably not found, but chosen. After all, where I am is the combined result of all my past choices. Where I will be depends on what I choose now.

With that, somehow I think I can rest easier. The stakes are lower now. I’m not looking for an eternal spiritual marriage with my career anymore (which hung me up over the past few months). I’m just looking for a job, while I dedicate myself to fulfilling all these idiosyncratic idealistic tendencies.

And if it comes to be that if I can’t define it soon, I ought to take heart in this quote by Joseph Campbell:

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. “

So, Live!

is no life indeed.

It’s 2008, and I’m back home in Singapore, pondering what to do next. Again. Three months ago, since I left America, I’ve traveled to Spain, France, and Laos. But mostly what I’ve done is one or two desultory part-time jobs and a lot of lazing around at home, waiting for a saviour to hand me my destiny on a platter.

But that won’t happen. And so I can’t think out of this mental box that I’ve created – the notion that I can’t take any action until I figure out what I really want to do. And that’s a really bad trap to be in. It makes you wake up late, peruse the career books and job listings (but not actually apply to anything), swing wildly between almost-revelation and despair…. until even uncertainty gets too comfortable, and you get used to feeling it and ignoring the vague sensation of quietly sinking into somnolence.

Analysis paralysis. Bad decision making. Poor metacognition. Call it whatever you want, but oh, it’s there.

I want to feel alive again, and not quite so useless. Lack of motivation or direction happens when you’re lazy and unfocused, and it becomes a pretty vicious cycle with ever decreasing energy levels.

What I need now is Action. I am, simply put, stuck in a rut. And a very comfortable rut it is. Still, ruts can sometimes be instructive, holding up a mirror and forcing me to see the gaps in my life-planning, the weakness in my thinking, and most importantly, my ignorance of the world, my dependence, and unwillingness to grow up. So, what to do now? How shall I move on?

Here goes. Some ideas, from the rusty brain.

Instead of ‘what should i do next’ I ought to think about what to do next, and think about where I want to be in 10 years, 20 years, etc etc. This is the time-honoured practice of setting goals. They can be miniature ones, like ‘today I’m going to write my blog again’, to long-term goals of financial independance. And of course, life goals like writing a novel (and getting it published), and walking all of the AT. The point is, write them down! And then break them down! And the start doing them!

Also important is the idea of setting up a daily habit, so that each day doesn’t pass in a blur. With the notion that you can learn discipline from it, and that habits gradually become a natural part of your life. I’m going to try to 1. wake up early and 2. do yoga or go running and 3. journal or draw or blog.

Hmm. Look at the sentence above. What’s the problem with it? Well, the first part is try. In order to get anything done, the operative word is don’t just try, DO. Excuses have a tendency to compound. Which is why some people (like me!!) need a carrot and a stick to enforce discipline. I have two wooden boxes. Every day I get it right I’ll drop some money into the large box. Every day I miss out, I take that amount, plus 10 percent interest, out of the large and put it in the small. It starts compounding, if you serially miss days. Once a month I do an accounting, and the money in the large is for me to spend on me, and the small goes to other people (Alumni fund, anyone? hehe). Voila! A mini-economy! (Am off to place a dollar into the large box now)

Lastly, and the hardest thing to convince myself of is, there are no wrong decisions. Some decisions may be better or worse, but there are no wrong decisions! Every next step leads from the previous one, whether continuously (I like this job, let’s continue) or tangentially (meh, maybe something else) or in total reverse (time to go to grad school and study physics!). I’m in my mid-twenties, which is plenty of time to try new things, and conversely, plenty of time to waste worrying about doing the wrong thing.

So, with that, let’s see me take some Action!

A listing of cafes I’ve sat and read and internetted and chatted in, just for my personal enjoyment, in case I ever come back to Cambridge, Massachusetts.  I spend way too much time in cafes! (I guess this is my obligatory tourism post since I’ve been bumming around here for a month)

Darwin’s (Cambridge St): Pluses – 5 minutes away from Claire’s house, very cheap coffee, famous for their sandwiches though I’ve never had any,  good if very sweet cookies. They also serve sushi, tea bottles, organic whatever .. basically you can stay there all day. Indie rock music. Definitely a student cafe, and usually crowded. If you can grab the armchairs, they’re great! Minuses – internet occasionally down, closes early at 9pm! Also, there’s another Darwin’s in Harvard Sq, nearer to the Allston side, and wow that place looks cute!

Tealuxe (Harvard Sq): Wonderful selection of teas, brewed by expert tea people. Good scones (half-off after 8pm). Chill and quiet, with dark wood paneling. Not cosy enough to curl up with a book, but probably very good for working.

Rosie’s Bakery (Inman Square): Cutest little grandmother’s shop ever! Love the cushioned seat with the big puppet on it. So pretty! Good steamers and cake stuff. BUT! no internet! so that’s a big downer, though the old lady characters who pass through are pretty interesting. Not a place to study or read, but good for meetups and the morning paper.

1369 (Inman Square): Hm. Only been here once, and the counter girl was quite rude. Ordered a coffee, and this is only place where the didn’t have milk sitting out, so I couldn’t control how much milk I wanted. Not a happy experience, though I’ve heard good things from other people. Probably your average student cafe with not too much atmosphere. There’s another 1369 in Central Sq, but it’s always too busy and loud.

Dado Tea (Harvard Sq): what can I say… they have bubble tea! and lots of wierd tea cooler stuff. and mochi ice cream. and Japanese cheese cake. And of course, still pretty good coffee stuff. Not the cheapest for munchies, but a pretty calm serene atmosphere. Have seen Harvard students sitting with books and laptops, so it seems to be a prime study spot too.
Cafe Algiers (Harvard Sq): this place wins hands down for atmosphere – upstairs feels like a cathedral nave with Arabic art all over the walls. You know those cafes in Europe where writers gather and people plot revolutions? Feels like it here. I had a lovely pot of mint tea… but unfortunately a dry stale biscotti. The food did look good though, middle eastern fare. Pricey place, but perfect for tea after an indie film at the Brattle Theater next door….

Peets (Harvard Sq): the longest line of any cafe in Cambridge, partly because it’s a prime location next to the park, partly because people like chains, and partly because they do have good coffee. It’s worth the wait. I love the window seats (that fill up last because it’s more a counter than a table) because the floor to ceiling glass window means you can stare out at the world go by. Or, grab a coffee and sit at the park and watch the musicians.

Okay , more cafe reviews later. I’ll have to go further afield now!

Oh, career angst!

Jipei, Amy, Miranda and I have been playing a game of Gmail tag where we mope about our mutual aimlessness with regards to careers and general life direction. We stare at all our college friends who are in graduate school or some job they’re invested in emotionally, not just physically, and feel the insecurity traitorously overshadowing our supposed carefree and exploratory twenty-something lives.

Which begs the question. Why? Everyone says this is the best time to be indecisive, with the lowest opportunity cost. Nothing to lose, don’t consume much, tons of energy. We’re educated, supposedly bright, personable and nice, have lots of friends. Why this career angst that threatens to overshadow any past achievements or notions of self worth?

I’ve been thinking about it, and it seems that while everyone consoling says that ‘don’t worry, the stakes are low at this age’, there is a simultaneous perception that actually they aren’t. And that’s because this attitude is usually perpetuated by people comfortably secure, though slightly envious/uncertain, but not enough to exchange their security for our purported freedom. It is a fact of human nature that the grass is always greener, so that we peripatetic purposeless profligates can envy you your stability, and you can envy us our lack of structure and then pat our heads and tell us it’s all right.

So anyway, why are the stakes high?

First, people identify. Fresh out of college kids suddenly lose the identity of a student and are grabbing around for something to fill the vacuum. Since motherhood or family comes later, right now that identity is tied up with what you do. Also, those of the idealistic ilk (hello, world!) take this way too seriously – a job isn’t just a label, it’s got to be a calling. There has to be authenticity, meaning, purpose etc, else you’re selling out.

Next, the workplace isn’t the same old static arena it used to be. Jobs are more temporary/contract, new jobs come out all the time, new skills need to be learned, employers expect you to hit the ground running, job descriptions are getting increasingly specialized… the general chaos and exclusivity makes it rather intimidating for new liberal arts college grads with general skills. Maybe that’s why more savvy peers pick the straight and narrow, and hop on the secure path as fast as they can.

Third, time is running out. Again another aspect of human nature – to compare. If so-and-so you grew up with is earning a lot of money/getting a PhD early/starting a family etc, and you’re still hanging around not having a clue in the world, it does feel like you’ll soon be left behind. Soon your best years will be behind you etc etc, and you frantically try to find something, anything, ignoring the little voice saying ‘this won’t be right for you anyway’.

This leads us to #4: success versus fulfillment. Actually, external success and internal fulfillment, and where the twain does meet. Everyone knows it’s easy to confuse indicators of success with personal fulfillment (eg. nice house/high status/great network vs satisfaction at a job well done) and we turn up our idealistic noses at those who choose the former over the latter… but what if an upbringing in a supremely materialistic/success-obsessed society and a very liberal, almost hippie education makes you want BOTH? But! because of your identity crisis (see #1) you can’t quite figure out the first step, or don’t see how the two fit together. Don’t you just kind of end up having….neither?

See, the stakes ARE high. Hence decisions are difficult because we can’t deal with making the wrong decision because we’ve made the stakes so high for ourselves.

Whew! Now, how to work around that? How to deal with fears, identity issues, expectations, perceptions etc etc? It’s not just a job anymore, playing on this stage called ‘career’ is a life! How does one decide to enter the stage – with a splash or with a whimper? Does an entry even matter? Can a understudy become a star? Can you switch characters? What if the stage lights fall and interrupt the flow of the play? (okay, the metaphor is wearing thin)

And I suspect any resolutions are the subject of another post. Off to explore Somerville and find me more fun cafes!

I am susceptible to a rather ineffectual combination of envy and apathy.

Envy might be attributed to living in city that really is a huge college town, and being surrounded on all sides by students, professors, bookstores etc the squirming organisms of life that populate the big drafty ivory towers of universities. I miss being in a petri dish. I mean the academic bubble. (Hanging around two biologists affects my language, and Claire’s worms are actually very cute) I miss the general lack of responsibility a student has. Having no fixed routine, but stressed to the faultlines every other day over some new crisis. I’d take that any day, that willing, meaningful busyness, over a 9 to 5 braindead employee chained to a desk. Heck, sometimes I’d take that over just being a bum sitting at home and indulging in fun novels and reality tv. The problem being, if I am not kept busy by some constraint/deadline/threat of failure, I am very liable to dissolve in a puddle of languor, lethargy, straight-out laziness.

I am so apathetic! This is unlikely to change until I find some purpose in my life, or some fixed target to aim for. Which brings me back to the gradschool problem. The question is this:

Am I wanting to go to graduate school because 1) I don’t know what else to do, I like school and its culture a lot, all my friends are in school, I hate having a real cog-in-the-wheel job or 2) I’d really like to study physics/theater/literature/language (fill in the blanks) and believe that gradschool is the next step in my imagined ideal career?

As much as I hope for the latter, it’s quite clearly the former right now. One main reason being I can’t quite decide what I want to do in life. I’m having problems narrowing down the boundaries to encompass some small related grouping of fields that gives me enough flexibility to play with my interests but enough specialization that I can actually find some sort of training for it.

One always hears that if you like too many things, you have to give up some of them in order to move forward. Playing with possibilities is great, but only one possibility becomes reality. Right now I’m a clump of superpositioned photons waiting for the wave function to collapse. Waiting, and realizing that it isn’t going to happen unless I choose to myself.

Gone are the days of an easy structured path, from school to school up the academic ladder. If I have already (and indeed I have, pretty unconsciously, but quite certainly) renounced the traditional way of good school -> job in finance/law/engineering/medicine -> accumulate money/house/car/husband/kids, then any deviations have to be self-marked, and consequently marked with uncertainty. How envious I am over those who have some vested faith in an absolute belief! But fundamentally, I think I distrust that more than anything else. Maybe I like it the hard way, having to make choices and carve out a path. And I might end up in the same place as everyone else but at least I was the one who walked along the path, wide awake.

Or maybe I’m a passive-aggressive control freak, patching together a destiny, Frankenstein-style.

Scary thought.

I’ll believe I’m just confused, and am allowed to be confused for a few years more. In the meantime, I really ought to check out more grad schools.

Cheers!

So I got off the trail a few weeks ago, and spent all the time lazing around Cambridge, Massachusetts. I am clearly a very lazy person, which is why this isn’t a complete post. But I promise to soon

1. update on the AT adventure (from scrawls on the blue tissue paper that functioned as my journal)

2. tell everyone about what I do here in Cambridge. Which can be summarized along the lines of laze around/cook/read trashy novels/watch reality tv, and in my better moments, hang around wonderful people, and actually attempt to research graduate school programs (!) and teach myself Spanish.

More posts to come! Clearly, I have a very short attention span, which is a natural condition for a very comfortable bum.